• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

NASA Astronaut Reveals You Have To Pass The Pee And Poop Test If You Want To Go To Space

May 28, 2024 by Deborah Bloomfield

Astronaut training is pretty rigorous, involving trips to neutral buoyancy labs to simulate to simulate microgravity environments, and learning how to operate and maintain space station modules. But, according to former NASA astronaut José Moreno Hernández, there is another, less talked about training session: the pee and poop module – and it comes with its own fairly disgusting exam.

Advertisement

During the early days of the Apollo missions, NASA didn’t think about peeing and pooping too much. When the first American man went into space, they made no plans at all for if he needed the bathroom. The trip was only supposed to be short, so they figured he’d be able to hold it. However, due to delays prior to launch, he ended up having to wait on the launchpad for hours and ended up having to pee himself.

Advertisement

For longer space trips, NASA had to figure out a better system. Before Apollo 12, the main way astronauts went to the toilet was into collection bags. For peeing, this involved inserting your penis into a tube with a rubber, condom-like end. This had its own problems in that the sheaths would often fly off in space, largely due to a sizing problem.

For pooping, astronauts would take a fecal bag and use a “finger cot” to position it over the anus.

For excursions outside of the spacecraft, astronauts would have to use the fecal containment system (FCS), which is a “pair of underpants of absorbent material worn under the liquid cooling garment.” This is a fancy way of saying that when man first walked on the Moon he was wearing a diaper. 

Thankfully, the toilet situation has moved on somewhat since the early days – at least inside spacecraft – not least because they had to adapt to accommodate female astronauts, for whom a sheath would be somewhat impractical. Now they have an advanced bathroom facility on the ISS. The latest space toilet technology costs a whopping $23 million, in fact.

Advertisement

The problem is that in the microgravity environment on the ISS, liquids and solids tend to float where they are without another external force acting upon them. This is a particularly annoying problem when those solids are poop and pee. Gravity on Earth directs pee and poo into the toilet, where it rests until we send it on its final journey. In space, that doesn’t happen, so pee and poo need to be guided by air flow.

In short, you get a vacuum hose for your pee – but for your poop, you only have a small area to aim into, as creating a normal-sized toilet opening would require too-large of a motor in order to power the airflow. Commander Chris Cassidy explains in the below video how the systems work. 



“You better have good aim,” astronaut José Moreno Hernández told Metro of the toilets. They take some getting used to, with the astronauts required to practice before they go to space.

“And I kid you not, there’s a class – we take potty 101,” Hernández added. “You take a class on going to the restroom and they won’t check you off until you can do a number one and number two.”

Advertisement

To get to the ISS, there are many requirements. But all must pass the poop test.

Deborah Bloomfield
Deborah Bloomfield

Related posts:

  1. Events leading up to the trial of Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes
  2. “Man Of The Hole”: Last Known Member Of Uncontacted Amazon Tribe Has Died
  3. This Is What Cannabis Looks Like Under A Microscope – You Might Be Surprised
  4. Will Lake Mead Go Back To Normal In 2024?

Source Link: NASA Astronaut Reveals You Have To Pass The Pee And Poop Test If You Want To Go To Space

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

  • Love Cheese But Hate Nightmares? Bad News, It Looks Like The Two Really Are Related
  • Project Hail Mary Trailer First Look: What Would Happen If The Sun Got Darker?
  • Newly Discovered Cell Structure Might Hold Key To Understanding Devastating Genetic Disorders
  • What Is Kakeya’s Needle Problem, And Why Do We Want To Solve It?
  • “I Wasn’t Prepared For The Sheer Number Of Them”: Cave Of Mummified Never-Before-Seen Eyeless Invertebrates Amazes Scientists
  • Asteroid Day At 10: How The World Is More Prepared Than Ever To Face Celestial Threats
  • What Happened When A New Zealand Man Fell Butt-First Onto A Powerful Air Hose
  • Ancient DNA Confirms Women’s Unexpected Status In One Of The Oldest Known Neolithic Settlements
  • Earth’s Weather Satellites Catch Cloud Changes… On Venus
  • Scientists Find Common Factors In People Who Have “Out-Of-Body” Experiences
  • Shocking Photos Reveal Extent Of Overfishing’s Impact On “Shrinking” Cod
  • Direct Fusion Drive Could Take Us To Sedna During Its Closest Approach In 11,000 Years
  • Earth’s Energy Imbalance Is More Than Double What It Should Be – And We Don’t Know Why
  • We May Have Misjudged A Fundamental Fact About The Cambrian Explosion
  • The Shoebill Is A Bird So Bizarre That Some People Don’t Even Believe It’s Real
  • Colossal’s “Dire Wolves” Are Now 6 Months Old – And They’ve Doubled In Size
  • How To Fake A Fossil: Find Out More In Issue 36 Of CURIOUS – Out Now
  • Is It True Earth Used To Take 420 Days To Orbit The Sun?
  • One Of The Ocean’s “Most Valuable Habitats” Grows The Only Flowers Known To Bloom In Seawater
  • World’s Largest Digital Camera Snaps 2,104 New Asteroids In 10 Hours, Mice With 2 Dads Father Their Own Offspring, And Much More This Week
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version