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Artemis II's toilet is a moon mission milestone

scientificamerican.com

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Re: Artemis II's toilet is a moon mission milestone

#81

Post by acyou »

Uh oh, that toilet looks pretty heavy, how much does that thing weigh? Will the extra weight be worth it during reentry? Or will the crew push the whole thing out the airlock on the way home?

I wondered why the Artemis crew module weighs twice as much as the Apollo module after 60 years of scientific progress and developments in materials science and aerospace engineering, now I am starting to understand. Plastic bags "worked", not great but they are super light, essentially you are not going to get much lighter than a plastic bag for containing and disposing of waste. On the other hand, that toilet looks insanely overbuilt, how strong do you need the seat to be??

Maybe they can position the astronauts behind it for use as a last-ditch heat shield.

This story reminds be of the tale where during the space race the Americans created a super space pen that works in zero degrees kelvin and vacuum, and the Russians used a pencil.

Re: Artemis II's toilet is a moon mission milestone

#82

Post by jimmySixDOF »

giantrobot wrote: post #24
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #3

This 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…

>toilets are the Brown M&M clause(0)

I have seen engineering shops where the conversation about fixing some small but simple thing before a deadline gets filed into "better to give the consultants reviewing this some low hanging fruit for the snag list."

(0) Actual backstage contract riders for rock stars : https://www.thesmokinggun.com/backstage

Re: Artemis II's toilet is a moon mission milestone

#83

Post by outworlder »

asdff wrote: post #54
smallmancontrov wrote: post #45

Earlier 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.

> Seems like a big issue is I'm guessing insistence on having this be a solo operation for cultural reasons.

I had to do some stool collection and it took every ounce of willpower and a N95 mask to prevent me from vomiting everywhere. And that was my poop. I think it's more than cultural, there's a strong visceral reaction.

On the other hand, I can pickup my dog's poop no problem.

Nurses are heroes.

Re: Artemis II's toilet is a moon mission milestone

#84

Post by rossant »

api wrote: post #62
whackernews wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I had the same realization lately. Shouldn't it be said more specifically that anything that consumes matter to turn it into energy (as all living things on Earth) must poop? If we make the distinction between mass and energy of course.

Re: Artemis II's toilet is a moon mission milestone

#86

Post by khazhoux »

NooneAtAll3 wrote: post #73
Alupis wrote: post #9

Listening 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 -…

> "Yes, we're excited and eager to begin immediate fluid disposal!" corporate talk on a public science mission :/

I hope they remember to cut the mics during the fluid disposal event

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ruCsYGL3QlY

Re: Artemis II's toilet is a moon mission milestone

#87

Post by riffraff »

smackeyacky wrote: post #65
asdff wrote: post #54

Earlier 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.

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!

IIRC from the book " packing for mars" the American man astronauts begged NASA to provide them with diapers at some point, which is what women astronauts got, because the earlier male-only system was a sort of sucking condom which was incredibly bad.

Re: Artemis II's toilet is a moon mission milestone

#90

Post by riffraff »

outworlder wrote: post #83
asdff wrote: post #54

Earlier 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.

> Seems like a big issue is I'm guessing insistence on having this be a solo operation for cultural reasons. I had to do some stool collection and it took every ounce of willpower and a N95 mask to prevent me from vomiting everywhere. And that was my poop. I think it's more than cultural, there's a strong visceral reaction. On the other hand, I can pickup my dog's poop no problem. Nurses are heroes.

But parents do that all the time with babies.

It is disgusting (I hated doing it) but you get somewhat used to it relatively quickly.

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