6 ms·
Let's talk space toilets
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- nQQKTz7dm27oZ 6mo ago[dead]
- the_af 6mo agoThis story of space toilers clears out many questions I had about spaceflight and... uh, going number 2. Namely: astronauts try NOT to as much as they can, and when they do go, it's a mess for both them and their crew mates. They suffer through it because being in space is a worthy achievement. Apparently it's such a mess that NASA estimates this is why astronauts tend to undereat. Apparently Gemini 7's Frank Borman spent 9 days without going number 2 because of this, and planned to hold it in 2 full weeks (the article doesn't clarify whether he managed). Skylab seems to have done some progress, but we're still in the early eras of space toiletry!
- gwbas1c 6mo agoOn Apollo 13, after the accident, the margins for propellent were so low that the astronauts had to drink very little. Nasa was afraid that venting the pee would set their trajectory off course. One of the astronauts got an infection from dehydration as a result.
- detourdog 6mo agoI was surprised there were no pictures of the actual toilets. Would love more but found this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_toilet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_toilet
- jotux 6mo agoSome info on the new one: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/artemis-iis-toilet-is-a-moon-mission-milestone/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/artemis-iis-toile... https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20220005710/downloads/NASA%20Universal%20Waste%20Management%20System%20and%20Toilet%20Integration%20Hardware%20%20Operations%20on%20ISS%20Issues,%20Modifications%20and%20Accomplishments%202022%20final%20draft.pdf https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20220005710/downloads/NA...
- Groxx 6mo agoSo... it's essentially the same thing that has been on the ISS for three or four years?
- cubefox 6mo agoThis goes into a bit more mechanical detail than the Substack post (which only gestures at "air suction"). I'm still not sure whether there are different urine hose adapters for men and women or not.
- idlewords 6mo agoThe hose is the same but there are different funnel attachments (the part looks kind of like the cup from a jock strap, and is longer and narrower for women)
- cubefox 6mo agoThanks! Any idea why simultaneous operation of seat and hose wasn't possible before ISS/Orion (not sure which)? And why were they able to get rid of the Space Shuttle camera?
- ambicapter 6mo agoNot a great lunch read.
- nozzlegear 6mo ago> One piece of feedback from Skylab was that the toilet needed stronger airflow. This meant the Shuttle toilet opening had to be narrow. To practice correctly positioning their body, astronauts on Earth sat on a special training mockup with a camera mounted in the center of the waste tube. A successful docking with the device meant precisely centering one’s nether eye in the crosshairs of a video screen while crewmates looked on and yelled their encouragement. I knew part of the job for astronauts is being intimate with one's crewmates, but I didn't know it was that intimate.
- remarkEon 6mo agoYou could’ve told me this story without the context and I would’ve assumed it was a barracks game being played with surveillance equipment. Hilarious.
- kotaKat 6mo ago"Mom, Lise, check it out - Dad's on TV!" https://youtu.be/S5lihwyjk8w?t=30 https://youtu.be/S5lihwyjk8w?t=30
- idontwantthis 6mo agoI can totally picture one of the engineers glancing at the Apollo docking simulator and a grin coming across his face.
- ooterness 6mo agoIs it simpler to build a better space toilet, or to build a ship with centrifugal gravity and use a regular toilet?
- TylerE 6mo agoYou wouldn’t want to use a regular toilet even if you could, given how tight water margins are. Urine you can reclaim, feces not so much.
- amluto 6mo agoVacuum flush toilets are common on airplanes, trains, and ships and use a lot less water than a conventional toilet.
- yshamrei 6mo agoThere are two issues: - To build a centrifuge in space of sufficient size, you need to solve the problem of delivering a large amount of materials to orbit, because it has to be hundreds of meters in diameter at least. - Such a centrifuge will create a gyroscopic effect, and the station will quickly become very difficult to control.
- idlewords 6mo agoYou can try it with small capsules and tethers, but it's still a pain.
- VorpalWay 6mo agoCouldn't you have two centrifuges next to each other spinning in opposite directions, cancelling most of the effect out? I believe some helicopters work like that, with two sets of rotors on longer troop transport helis. A few even have two sets on top of each other. And many planes have the props on opposite wings rotate in opposite directions.
- giantrobot 6mo agoEven with centrifugal "gravity" the toilets need to be designed for the worst case scenario (no "gravity"). Even if you could use a "regular" toilet the system needs to sequester and process the septic waste. That precludes even using the likes of an airplane toilet. It's a significant amount of engineering effort, testing, feedback, and iteration to build effective life support systems for manned spaceflight. Long duration spaceflight is orders of magnitude more difficult. Toilets are systems that can incapacitate or even kill the crew if they malfunction. In a low or microgravity environment aerosolized septic material can get in astronauts' eyes or lungs. It can also seep into electronics or other ship systems causing malfunctions. Even just clean water spraying into the cabin could be dangerous in microgravity.
- bdamm 6mo agoThe roasting process is both hypermodern and curiously antique. Burning dung is a tradition passed down across the millenia!
- assimpleaspossi 6mo agoI've always wondered about regular toilets and now this. Someone has to test it. I'm sure they have equivalent items to run through them but, eventually, you have to try the real thing so whose job is it to do that and how do they do that?
- cryzinger 6mo agoOne popular "equivalent" for flush testing is a condom full of soybean paste (yum!) https://slate.com/technology/2025/02/toilets-low-flow-trump-environment-cost-savings.html https://slate.com/technology/2025/02/toilets-low-flow-trump-...
- trollbridge 6mo agoI had a major plumbing problem once, in a rented commercial space. The toilet simply clogged constantly and I had to snake it almost every time. The landlord finally relented and had an expert plumber come out. The guy apparently had a master's degree in plumbing somehow (I thought he was joking but he had indeed put himself all the way into a master's level engineering degree, mostly as a hobby). He first got out his scope and confirmed there was zero blockage in the sewer pipe and the septic tank itself. All good. Then he started simulating flushing a load: wads of toilet paper, measured by number of squares. 17 squares went down just fine, but then he did 25, which he said is the max he expects a toilet to do. Instantly clogged. He then told the landlord to stop buying $90 toilets and that he'd just advised a nursing home that had bought a bunch of the exact same model to rip them out and put in a better, $150 model. So yeah, that's how you test it.
- cobalt 6mo agothis feels like a chute diameter issue, many older (cheaper?) ones are 2in, but high flow are 3in I believe
- cucumber3732842 6mo agoBack in "the day" you could have a toilet that lazily filled up and you only really needed a mild flow rate to send everything for a ride because once that 5gal of water starts spinning it's taking everything with it no questions asked. You need a big hole to dump the tank fast to get the maximum kick out of that federally regulated amount of water you're allowed to dump per flush. Plumbing fixture and residential water consumption regulation in the US is a textbook example of "should be a states issue". The feds basically let the desert states dictate everything and then everywhere east of approx the Missouri river has to suffer through washers that don't wash clothes the first time, constantly clogging drain traps, sewer lines, municipal mains, reduced septic performance, etc, etc. None of this is necessary in the nearly universally surface water consuming east. They'd all be better off using more water and having to size their water treatment plants up a notch to handle it.
- gritspants 6mo agoI've often wondered - what is the exact amount of vacuum (pressure?) that you can get away with without disemboweling someone?
- classichasclass 6mo agoA possible point of comparison might be pool drain injuries (a/k/a suction entrapment), and some of these have disemboweled people, though largely children. Vacuum toilets in cruise ships have also been implicated in such incidents (see, among others, https://www.upi.com/Archives/1987/03/06/70-year-old-womans-intestines-sucked-out-by-vacuum-toilet/8121542005200/ https://www.upi.com/Archives/1987/03/06/70-year-old-womans-i... ). A more, er, pressing concern in adults might be rectal prolapse.
- xzenor 6mo agoThat was an oddly interesting article.. I never thought about doing your business in space.
- gambiting 6mo agoAnd as someone else said....the entire business would be solved if not for our cultural tabboo that requires astronauts to do the whole procedure by themselves. If you could have another crew member actively helping it would be done quicker in a much more hygenic way. But because it's "private" they have to do these crazy acrobatics to do it alone. And like, back on Earth nurses have to do much much worse stuff every day and no one considers that weird - it's just part of the job.
- s5300 6mo ago[dead]
- maptime 6mo ago>A successful docking with the device meant precisely centering one’s nether eye in the crosshairs of a video screen while crewmates looked on and yelled their encouragement. Massive Interstellar vibes, I guess it is "necessary"
- 867-5309 6mo ago> frozen urine accumulates on the hull of Discovery right click -> Save Image As
- vishalontheline 6mo agoThank you for writing and sharing this. I went into a deep dive a few days ago researching waste recycling, and your write up taught me a lot!
- idlewords 6mo agoThanks so much! I'm delighted you enjoyed the piece.
- jcalx 6mo agoIf you like space toilets you may be interested in this [0] HN submission where you can track how full the ISS urine tank is from the comfort of your menu bar. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42505454 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42505454
- nirui 6mo agoDude, I just looked a picture of old socks and urine stuffed together in a waste bag. I think I need some time before I can feel the delight to get interested in any kind of toilet. But thanks for the info.
- negura 6mo agomade me think of zizek's hermeneutics of (gravity-based) toilets https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzXPyCY7jbs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzXPyCY7jbs
- zawakin 6mo agoWe can see how our daily lives are supported by public welfare
- mbo 6mo agoA commonly trotted out argument for continued investment in manned space flight is technological spillover: that all the money we give to NASA generates positive benefits in other sectors of the economy. I'm not so sure space toilets are generating that spillover. This seems like a uniquely expensive humans-in-space engineering problem. I echo the sentiments of Why Not Mars (https://idlewords.com/2023/1/why_not_mars.htm https://idlewords.com/2023/1/why_not_mars.htm): > The web of Rube Goldberg devices that recycles floating animal waste on the space station has already cost twice its weight in gold and there is little appetite for it here on Earth, where plants do a better job for free. [...] I would compare keeping primates alive in spacecraft to trying to build a jet engine out of raisins. Both are colossal engineering problems, possibly the hardest ever attempted, but it does not follow that they are problems worth solving. [...] Humanity does not need a billion dollar shit dehydrator that can work for three years in zero gravity, but a Mars mission can’t leave Earth without it. Why are we doing human spaceflight again?
- whattheheckheck 6mo agoNot because it is easy. But because it is hard
- rkagerer 6mo agoSo liquids are recycled but solids are still bagged and stowed. I hear human excrement is high in methane content... and certain contemporary rockets use methane fuel, right? Poop-powered spacecraft, for the win! Edit - I wrote this tongue in cheek but it turns out there really are scientists working on it: https://explore.research.ufl.edu/process-converts-human-waste-into-rocket-fuel.html https://explore.research.ufl.edu/process-converts-human-wast...