> 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 6 minutes ago [-]
You 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.
ambicapter 43 minutes ago [-]
Not a great lunch read.
the_af 1 hours ago [-]
This 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.
edit: wow... people didn't like my comment? But this is discussed pretty explicitly in the first few paragraphs of the article. It spells out that it is a mess, that NASA estimates this is why astronauts tend to undereat (if you're going to argue against this, argue against the article) and that 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 did). HN is so unpredictable sometimes...
1 hours ago [-]
nQQKTz7dm27oZ 1 hours ago [-]
[dead]
Rendered at 18:10:43 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_toilet
https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20220005710/downloads/NA...
I knew part of the job for astronauts is being intimate with one's crewmates, but I didn't know it was that intimate.
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.
edit: wow... people didn't like my comment? But this is discussed pretty explicitly in the first few paragraphs of the article. It spells out that it is a mess, that NASA estimates this is why astronauts tend to undereat (if you're going to argue against this, argue against the article) and that 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 did). HN is so unpredictable sometimes...