ISS 'naut: How we collect our POO and DROP it FLAMING on hapless Earthlings Italy's first female astronaut, Samantha Cristoforetti, has offered the internet a full talkthrough on one of the International Space Station's most famous and terrifying facilities: its lavatory. Headlined the "International Space Station toilet tour", Cristoforetti's video explains how a fan creates suction to avoid smells …
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"You've raised the question of how do male astronauts relieve pent-up tension while in space. Into a sock?"
Since it's space, an incredibly hostile and unnatural environment for humans, I'll actually respond.
Considering the low atmospheric pressure *and* microgravity, one is already bloated, has incredibly stuffy sinuses and frequently suffer from motion sickness.
Yeah, not wanting to fuck when I'm about to puke.
And my experience is exclusively on Earth.
There are other issues present, such as stress from being a second to around a minute from being dead, the dread of actual illness with only amateurs to give actual help and the potential for a paint chip to offer you those seconds to a minute time until death.
Now, add in an impressive mission load, where every spare second is consumed, to avoid boredom, idle experimentation that isn't authorized or even opening the airlock to sniff external environment.
Yeah, no sock or anything else required.
Hell, under those conditions, it's likely that an erection would be decidedly uncomfortable.
The problem is that while urine is sterile, feces is the complete opposite as it is generated by millions / billions of bacteria and microbes. They would have to sterilize all of it before it can be re-purposed, and any missed bacteria could cause an outbreak of dysentery, salmonella or something much worse. So as it is now, the reward is no where near large enough to justify the risk. Perhaps in the future when we start launching seed ships, then we might be able to do it.
I had wondered the same thing and this is what my research came up with.
" urine is sterile ". Some weeks ago during this latest earth quake there was a guy who managed to stay alive by drinking his own urine, nothing new there.
Long ago, say during the "thirty year war" in Europe (has it ever stopped) urine was sometimes used to clean wounds rather than water?.
As kids constantly burning our fingers for reasons I cannot remember, except that there seems to exist some wonderful love relationship between kids and fire, we used to piss on the fingers and the pain disappeared like magic.
The love part reminds me of those early northern explorers who found great love among the Eskimo girls but complained about their habit of keeping their skin soft and clean using their own piss. I bet the girls had more reason to complain about hygiene among those heroes, but we can only guess.
There is something "strangelove" with these bodily fluids here, if I could only remember.
any missed bacteria could cause an outbreak of dysentery, salmonella or something much worse
For such an outbreak to occur one of the astronauts would need to be already carrying "dysentery, salmonella or something much worse", which is very unlikely given the health checks carried out before leaving Earth. An occurrence of E. Coli food poisoning would be possible because it can exist in healthy people's lower intestine.
Sterilising poo is actually quite simple though, heat and/or UV light will do the trick, both of which are in plentiful supply on the ISS (due to all the unfiltered sunshine).
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Well, with a dinner of the impossible to fin din orbit beef and beans meal, it's a lot like the scene in RED. Do you want a vest? No, it wouldn't help.
As for me, given a meal of beef and beans in orbit, due to age and an excessively long military career, with all of the physiological insults contained therein, what *I* would produce would sink immediately into a teraton thermonuclear event, destroying the planet and likely, causing harm to Sol.
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