It's so ironic reading about all of the Orion heat shield engineering problems but at least they have a groundbreaking new toilet!!
Yes they pulled engineers off the heat shield to engineer the toilet. That is totally how it works.
Artemis II's toilet is a moon mission milestone
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Re: Artemis II's toilet is a moon mission milestone
#62Listening to the live stream yesterday evening - they performed a significant amount of troubleshooting for the toilet. This required consulting with a full team of experts, including a "Toilet Lead". It seems it wasn't "flushing" waste into the collection bag or something similar - but they were eventually able to get it working. I found the language NASA and the astronauts used to communicate absolutely hilarious -…
I love this. No matter what we do and how far we push the limits of humanity, we still have to shit.
The second law of thermodynamics dictates that everything poops.
Anything alive that is using energy and doing work and transforming matter must poop in some form or another.
We don’t know what form life out there might take, but we know it poops.
Even post biological machine life would poop in the form of industrial waste, waste heat, etc.
Even near perfect recycling can only be near perfect, not perfect, due to the second law, which means a super efficient organism or closed cycle ecosystem or industry will still poop. Just not much. It will also emit a ton of waste heat, which I guess is kind of poop since mass and energy are ultimately equivalent.
If there’s weird life out there made of plasma or something, it poops. Probably charged particles or something.
The monolith in 2001? It poops. Somehow.
Re: Artemis II's toilet is a moon mission milestone
#63This is one of those stupid, unglamorous works that legitimately facilitates long-term space exploration ambitions in a way just focusing on the sexy bits, e.g. propulsion.
I gauge the seriousness of all manned space exploration proposals by the attention paid to the toilets. If the toilets are not a solved problem with many nines of reliability, you're just writing science function and are not at all serious about actual manned space exploration. Toilets are the brown M&M clause[0] of manned spaceflight proposals. Toilets are unglamorous in the extreme but absolutely vital. Humans make…
Speaking of this: let’s talk about space settlement.
If you’re going to stay, you are going to be having babies.
Any tech tree proposal for a space settlement (planet, moon, spin stations, whatever) that does not address how to make and reuse or recycle diapers is not serious.
I never see this mentioned in sci-fi or in space nerd discourse around stuff like what you need to settle Mars. It’s up there with potable water, at least if you want humans to reproduce.
Re: Artemis II's toilet is a moon mission milestone
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
I see your point. Out of curiosity: > In a sealed environment in microgravity it's even more dangerous than it is on Earth. / Aerosolized fecal matter can enter the lungs and cause deadly infections. Would the air filtration / recycling system minimize this risk?
The air filtration will actually help spread aerosols because air currents will carry them through the cabin before they're captured by a filter. A high power "eliminate aerosols" mode would be one of those infrastructure things that need to be designed (and tested). Even then a single compartment spacecraft like the Orion or Dragon wouldn't have anywhere for the crew to bivouac while some aerosol evacuation mode was…
I could imagine the belters in The Expanse just throwing on suits and venting. Of course that only works if you have a bunch of canned air or something that makes it by cracking minerals on board.
Re: Artemis II's toilet is a moon mission milestone
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
Warning: gross Of course, but the fundamental problem is that difficulties compound. It starts with: pooping is much harder when gravity isn't there to persistently tug on the turd. Something that is slightly obnoxious on Earth (using a bag, using a suit flap) turns into an absolute trainwreck when you have a bag, a suit flap, and turd separation failure. Now you have to do precise mechanical manipulation of an objec…
Seems like a big issue is I'm guessing insistence on having this be a solo operation for cultural reasons. Seems like it would be easy with two astronauts. Have the one bend over and spread the cheeks wide with both hands, the other basically does the hand in the dog poop bag trick right as the poop is coming out and wipes them up after. No worse than what a nurse does every day for work.
Perhaps nurses would be a better pool of astronaut candidates than test pilots.
I remember seeing a Russian space toilet when they had it set up in the powerhouse museum in Sydney. It looked like a booth with a vaguely pubic area shaped vacuum attachment designed to be unisex. I stared at it for some time trying to work out how it worked. The Apollo system seems horrendous!
Re: Artemis II's toilet is a moon mission milestone
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
Warning: gross Of course, but the fundamental problem is that difficulties compound. It starts with: pooping is much harder when gravity isn't there to persistently tug on the turd. Something that is slightly obnoxious on Earth (using a bag, using a suit flap) turns into an absolute trainwreck when you have a bag, a suit flap, and turd separation failure. Now you have to do precise mechanical manipulation of an objec…
Seems like a big issue is I'm guessing insistence on having this be a solo operation for cultural reasons. Seems like it would be easy with two astronauts. Have the one bend over and spread the cheeks wide with both hands, the other basically does the hand in the dog poop bag trick right as the poop is coming out and wipes them up after. No worse than what a nurse does every day for work.
I’ve always wanted to be an astronaut, but yeah… pass.
Weird a silicon-like pants that strapped up so there was no leaks (like fisherman’s pants), that has a vacuum you attach (almost catheter style) isn’t used. Actually now that I think about it, it’s weird that astronauts aren’t using catheters 24/7!
Re: Artemis II's toilet is a moon mission milestone
#67Listening to the live stream yesterday evening - they performed a significant amount of troubleshooting for the toilet. This required consulting with a full team of experts, including a "Toilet Lead". It seems it wasn't "flushing" waste into the collection bag or something similar - but they were eventually able to get it working. I found the language NASA and the astronauts used to communicate absolutely hilarious -…
I love this. No matter what we do and how far we push the limits of humanity, we still have to shit.
... and we seem to be unable to make something that works without "turning it off and turning it on again" :-)
Re: Artemis II's toilet is a moon mission milestone
#68What a frustrating article. It contains a lot of unimportant chitchat but basically no information on how the toilet actually works.
Re: Artemis II's toilet is a moon mission milestone
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
Seems like a big issue is I'm guessing insistence on having this be a solo operation for cultural reasons. Seems like it would be easy with two astronauts. Have the one bend over and spread the cheeks wide with both hands, the other basically does the hand in the dog poop bag trick right as the poop is coming out and wipes them up after. No worse than what a nurse does every day for work.
I’ve always wanted to be an astronaut, but yeah… pass. Weird a silicon-like pants that strapped up so there was no leaks (like fisherman’s pants), that has a vacuum you attach (almost catheter style) isn’t used. Actually now that I think about it, it’s weird that astronauts aren’t using catheters 24/7!
I mean this has also been a problem for fighter pilots as well. The "piddle packs" for F-16 pilots are implicared at least one crash due to the complexity of using them.
[1] https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-03-23-me-542-st...
Re: Artemis II's toilet is a moon mission milestone
#70It's so ironic reading about all of the Orion heat shield engineering problems but at least they have a groundbreaking new toilet!!
Yes they pulled engineers off the heat shield to engineer the toilet. That is totally how it works.
Are you sure? I wouldn't have thought the skills would be transferable. I don't mean to judge, but I think if your toilet needs heat shield engineers, maybe you should see your doctor.