Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Artemis II's toilet is a moon mission milestone

scientificamerican.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 183 posts

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

#111

Post by riffraff »

darkwater wrote: post #104
riffraff wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This really tells you how "bad masculinity" pervaded everything. I'm speaking of the designers here, not the astronauts. Why not a diaper also for male astronauts from the beginning? Isn't manly enough? Does it show weakness, like a toddler or an old dying man?

I think the designers just didn't think of it.

Women also started with a feminized version of the uncomfortable device and then switched to diapers, and then men followed.

It's possible there were no women on the design team but I don't think it's a case of bad masculinity.

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

#112

Post by imtringued »

Feathercrown wrote: post #103
acyou wrote: post #81

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 bag…

Correct me if I'm mistaken, but weren't pencils ruled out by NASA because of the dust they create when they write? The toilet engineering could be a similar situation. These people are professionals, we should not assume they built it like this for no reason.

The dust while writing doesn't matter. You can still write with a rounded tip. The problem is sharpening the pencil.

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

#113

Post by brikym »

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!

I'd take it over chasing a floating turd around and cleaning up the mess all over the walls.

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

#114

Post by ordu »

somenameforme wrote: post #99
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did they not have the astronauts simulate the mission beforehand, on Earth? Wear the clothing, eat the meals, use the toilet, etc? It sounds like that would have allowed them to fix the suit before they went? They must have eaten the meals and such to be sure they could function, make sure they didn't have any intolerance, for example?

Apollo was largely driven with the purpose of achieving the goal rather than obsessing on the details on the way to that goal. In fact during Apollo they even completely scrapped mathematical risk modeling because the results it always gave were basically 'you die.' So for instance a relevant and famous anecdote is that the original tests for Apollo launches didn't have any sort of urine/fecal disposal systems at all…

> In fact during Apollo they even completely scrapped mathematical risk modeling because the results it always gave were basically 'you die.'

In hindsight we know, that these models were wrong. people were better at predicting risks without relying on formal models. I mean, people were not perfect too, but still they were better. I wonder, if modern engineering has better tools for risk modeling and how good they worked if they were used for Apollo. I mean, if we remove the knowledge specific for space flight, leave only the abstract theory of risk modelling, and then use a time-travel machine to send it to NASA at 1960 or so, could NASA employ modern risk modeling tools to get results on par (or better) to human intuition?

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

#115

Post by muvlon »

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 :/

This doesn't register as corpo talk to me, more tongue-in-cheek nerdy mission control talk. See also "rapid unscheduled disassembly".

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

#116

Post by gattr »

ricardobeat wrote: post #106
furyofantares wrote: post #14

I just tuned into the NASA live stream after this and the first, and only, thing I've heard is "we've had a successful ejection. toilet is go for use"

A thought: is the ejected space poop going to continue to travel in space at 15000km/h and eventually drop into the sun, or will it also be captured by gravity and land on the moon?

Delta-v relative to the Orion is probably not that big, so I guess the waste will also circle the Moon and follow the crew into Earth's atmosphere.

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

#117

Post by pbhjpbhj »

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.

Having an repulsion for shit is a healthy adaptation. But it seems that for some people they're much more sensitive.

Similarly, it's probably useful for a primitive person to vomit on sight of a familiar person vomiting, collective protection. Definitely a trait to find out before going to space!

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

#118

Post by ozim »

XorNot wrote: post #69
alfiedotwtf wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

F16 pilot on radio with airliner.

Doing barrel roll, twist and speed up - radio to airliner „see buddy can you do that?”

Airliner „wait a moment” - some time passes nothing happens - airliner „hey buddy you seen that?” - f16 „what? Nothing happened” - airliner „I went to toilet on the back, took dump, made myself a coffee and strolled back to cockpit”.

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

#119

Post by gcanyon »

NooneAtAll3 wrote: post #72
alfiedotwtf wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

catheters are very uncomfortable also apparently an infection risk

More like an infection certainty. Don't ask me how I know :-(

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

#120

Post by gcanyon »

Every time early astronaut relief comes up (it's come up two or three times, which is more nickels than I would have expected) I see this line:

> being able to pee and poop simultaneously

... and I know that I could never have been an astronaut. There are many other reasons, but the ability to hold one while doing the other... yeah, I'm out.

Post reply on HN