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The Best Science Writing Online 2012
Showcasing more than fifty of the most provocative, original, and significant online essays from 2011, The Best Science Writing Online 2012 will change the way...
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In space, as was first noted in the ad campaign for the movie Alien, no one can hear you scream. What prompts that screaming in the Alien franchise and other space opera sci-fi is typically terror, dismemberment or larval-monster intestinal occupation. But more mundane issues make real-life astronauts want to scream. Because in space, everybody can smell your gas.
Space, when done with people living together in close quarters, stinks. Best-selling author Mary Roach catalogues the rank unpleasantness of space travel in her new book Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void (W. W. Norton, 2010). Her introduction’s first words encapsulate, if you will, the situation: “To the rocket scientist, you are a problem. You are the most irritating piece of machinery he or she will ever have to deal with.”
We humans are incredibly demanding because of our hunger and thirst—and the messy, odoriferous products of our satiety. Humans are the reason the space shuttle needs toilets. And humans in zero gravity are the reason the toilets have rearview mirrors. (You can find the details in Roach’s book or spend a moment to think about the various ramifications of weightless evacuation.)
The Mercury, Gemini and Apollo spacecraft didn’t even have toilets—rudimentary devices were used for docking and capture, ruling out the chances of anybody boldly going. Showers are also too tricky to deal with out there. So it’s no surprise that the interior of your average spaceship quickly winds up smelling very, very bad. Think of a car ride with three immature guys for whom “pull my finger” is considered a droll example of classic wit. Now imagine spending a week in the car with the windows rolled up.
In an interview, Roach recounted her gentle interrogation of Apollo 13 hero James A. Lovell about the stank: “So when the capsule came down and those frogmen came and they opened the hatch, what was that like for them?” she asked him. “And he said, ‘Well, it was ...’—then his gentlemanly instincts took over, and he said, ‘It was quite different than the fresh ocean breezes outside.’ But elsewhere I saw him describe it as like living in a Porta Potty.”
On shorter jaunts into space, some of the stuff humans produce is simply chucked from the ship. The physiologically confusing term of art for one such action is the “urine dump.” And, believe it or not, space pee is pretty. “A number of astronaut memoirs mentioned how these flash-frozen droplets, illuminated, would look like this silvery snowstorm,” Roach told me. “I think three different astronauts mentioned how beautiful the urine dump was.”
For manned Mars voyages, however, recycling is mandatory. As on the International Space Station now, treated urine would be a treat, sort of. “Once the salt is taken care of and the distasteful organic molecules have been trapped in an activated charcoal filter,” Roach writes in the book, “urine is a restorative and surprisingly drinkable lunchtime beverage. I was about to use the word unobjectionable, but that’s not accurate. People object. They object a lot.”
Nevertheless, urine is the easy part. On a Mars trip, the captain’s log, if you will, presents a whole different set of problems—and possibilities. “Hydrocarbons are good radiation shielding,” Roach told an audience at a Manhattan bookstore just before our conversation. “So the thinking is that on the way to Mars, you would use your food to line the interior of the module that you’re living in. And at NASA, they have this device where you could make tiles that would contain fecal material. It’s like an Easy-Bake Oven. And on the way back, you would line the capsule with the new tiles. So you’d fly to Mars in a can of food, and then you’d fly home in a can of poop.” Only she didn’t say “poop.”
This article was originally published with the title Oh, We Have Liftoff All Right.
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11 Comments
Add CommentToo bad they can't do a "poop dump" also.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBut running into that at 20 miles/second wouldn't be much fun.....
Space garbage is bad enough !
So (I won't be upset or surprised if this comment gets tossed out the airlock) essentially the astronauts get to travel in a shitcan?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisInteresting. Of course the current conditions in which astronauts are forced to live are a result of the seemingly unavoidable and super excessive costs of getting materials into orbit...and low earth orbit at that! If our leadership were to listen to the scientists who were originally in charge of our space program they would recognize that the method of using ballistic missiles to launch probes and relatively small satellite payloads was not intended to take humans to space as it has over the long run. They envisioned truly great heavy launch systems, appropriately scaled to take large amounts of cargo into geosynchronous orbit so that the space stations, instead of being the flimsy school bus sized tin cans we now have in low earth orbit,in danger of being dragged back down into the atmoshpere, they were going to be the size of hotels, with lots of shielding and even designed to rotate axially so that gravity would be simulated. Instead the military's re-purposed missiles were used as the central design concept for launchers and for obvious reason they weren't interested in seeing industrial capacity develope into what they saw as their military high ground.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf we had been really bold and not succumbed to the fear of the cold war we'd now be building space based solar and using our permanent and robust space stations to further explore the solar system while industrially developing the capacity to harvest the bounty of the asteroids, as well as building a capability of dealilng with any planet smashing impactors that might come our way. We still can, if we were to cast off the old ideas of space being impossible unless we continue to use the old DoD and NASA approach. We will soon have space taxis for human cargo travelling to space, and wont need to have incredibly expensive, tediously designed, man-rated rockets to haul picayune packages into space, instead we'd have large amounts of cargo and propellant launched into geosynchronous orbits where it will no doubt be expensive but no where near the $10,000 per pound it now costs.
The economy of scale has yet to be applied to space, and we have paid that cost for far too long. Go big, go to stay, and go soon.
Actually, (as Mary roach mentioned) if the astronauts had to build housing made from their own excrement in the construction material, wouldn't it be called a s*** brickhouse?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSorry Steve and all you fearefull of smelly stuff in space travel.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA flying Saucer does not have to hover for days on end accumulating human waste. I discovered the technology of the Saucer in 1967 and patented it. I offered it to Nasa in 1980, suggesting to use it for the Shuttles. They would not need rockets anymore but fly with a constant acceleration of ONE G/sec to the ISSin one hour, the Moon in a couple of hours and Mars inside one day. THe acceleration would be comfortable for the crew and the inherent force field would protect shuttle and crew from collisions with Space Debris and Radiation.
Nasa sent the patent to the John Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio.
The Propulsion Engineers were:"Not interested".
After the Space Disasters they finally decided to experiment with the circuitry, did not contact me for advice like I had urged, got the setting for an E-Bomb instead of the one for Gravity Control and caused the big black-out of 2003.
Then they advised Nasa Headquarters, that the technology of the Flying Saucer was unsuitable for Space Travel.
That is the reason, that Nasa is now not anymore in the front for Space Endeavors.
As a Canadian I tried to make sure that the USA would stay on top but you do not argue with stupidity.
On a long travel there would be a portapotty big enough to bring all human waste back to earth for disposal.
Now, after writing to Mr. Bolden and not receiving an answer, which country should have that technology for only $50 million?
Russia, India or China?
Whoever Rules Space Rules the Earth.
If you still are surprised, look for writings about the One Terminal Capacitor. That are these big spheres under a Saucer.
Some creative plumbing and the right diet might solve a few space travel issues.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe solution might be a propulsion system based on "natural gas"...
Hello Ennui;
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA one G thrust would not get you anywhere.
You would just sit on the launch pad till your fuel ran out.
Maybe that's why they didn't take you seriously?
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Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this.
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Why the suborbital space tourism is TOO DANGEROUS >>>
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http://www.ghostnasa.com/posts2/073spacetourism.html
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Read my article before buy a $200,000 suborbital ticket :D
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Lunar astronauts said moondust smelt like spent cordite and reported hayfever like symptons.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCould it be that the surface of the moon was/is being contaminated with unburnt hydrazine?
Peter Reynolds
reflectogenesis@hotmail.co.uk
All I can think of now is Mike Rowe (of Dirty Jobs on Discovery channel) in space.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe U.S space program IS shit. Seriously, we should worry about actually getting off the ground more before we try to make it more homey. This is getting taken care of now that space exploration is basically becoming privatized.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this