Space Station Toilets Poop Out

otter42 writes "The International Space Station's toilet has gone kaput. It seems that the system for separating solid and liquid waste has developed a fault. 'Solids' go where they're supposed to, but 'liquids' don't. The astronauts have bypassed the '"the troublesome hardware" for urine collection with a "special receptacle."' Something tells me they're glad the failure wasn't the other way around." Update: 05/28 21:54 GMT by T : According to a post on Engadget, the toilet's now been repaired.

In Soviet Russua . . . .

[Eg0Death (1282452)]

. . . Space Station poops on you!

Re:In Soviet Russua . . . .

[Yvanhoe (564877)]

In Nazi Germany, however, toilet malfunctions sink U-boats : http://www.uboat.net/boats/u1206.htm [uboat.net]

Re:In Soviet Russua . . . .

[AioKits (1235070)]

My favorite line from that article was this: (enabling the boat to use its toilet at greater depth than before).

It sounds almost heroic to use THAT toilet! Men, I'm going to drop a load at a depth in the ocean, GREATER THAN ANY MAN HAS BEFORE!

Almost

[pjt33 (739471)]

That is a great line, but I feel it pales in comparison to

[T]he commander, Schlitt, decided to use the toilet without the help of a trained specialist

Re:Almost

[Guerilla* Napalm (762317)]

Schlitt happens.

Re:Almost

[CrazedWalrus (901897)]

No doubt. Even the commander can't take a Schlitt without supervision.

Re:In Soviet Russua . . . .

[TheRaven64 (641858)]

I don't know if they still do, but toilets on British submarines used to be accompanied by a long checklist for flushing them with the accompanying warning:

Please follow these instructions carefully, or you will get your own back.

Re:

[Opportunist (166417)]

Now that's a war story... "Grandpa, what did you do in the great war?" "I was tracking down shit, sonny."

Re:

[DerekLyons (302214)]

Actually, in the systems I know of, the waste is stored in large containers and eventually sunk to the bottom of the ocean.

Trash is handled this way - not bodily waste.
 
 

Simply pumping the waste out to sea made it possible to track subs based on the resulting floaters.

There isn't going to be any floaters - pumps make very efficient grinders.

Re:In Soviet Russua . . . .

[Eg0Death (1282452)]

. . . SpellCzech says it is spelled Russua!

Re:

[Maljin Jolt (746064)]

. . . SpellCzech says it is spelled Russua!

Real Czechs spell it Rusko.

Re:In Soviet Russua . . . .

[crawling_chaos (23007)]

. . . SpellCzech says it is spelled Russua! Real Czechs spell it Rusko.

Usually with an expletive or three thrown in.

Re:

[iamacat (583406)]

No go. Urine spray will mix with air inside the bottle as little bubbles and escape together with excess air as the bottles feels up. You are better off peeing in a balloon or at least crunching the bottle before use. The later scenario can lead to other body fluids being deposited for male crew members and female ones may need medical help to get the bottle out due to suction.

No prizes for guessing ....

[140Mandak262Jamuna (970587)]

... what hit the fan. From the article:

A NASA status report noted that last week, while using the toilet system in the Russian-built service module, âoethe crew heard a loud noise and the fan stopped working.â The solid waste collector is functioning properly, but the system for collecting liquid waste was not.

Their mission...

[Bazman (4849)]

...to boldly go where no man has gone before.

Any jokes about the Captain's Log will be flushed out by the moderation system...

Re:Their mission...

[Tetsujin (103070)]

Now they have to go to Uranus and wipe out the Klingons!

I've always said it...

[mangu (126918)]

This space station is a piece of shit. And that pisses me off.

time to innovate

[Gothmolly (148874)]

Can't they just piss out the window ?

$.02 says the 'special receptacle' is a Nalgene bottle

Re:time to innovate

[Ihlosi (895663)]

Can't they just piss out the window ?

Regardless of what happens to a part of the human body that is exposed to a hard vaccum (explodes spectacularly as seen in Hollywood movies vs. just becoming freeze-dried really quickly), and attempts at this are a sure way to earn a Darwin award.

Re:time to innovate

[by Anonymous Coward]

Well, no. You neither freeze quickly nor explode.

A human passes out in around 13 seconds when the air is drawn out of the lungs by the vacuum - and then dies in about five to ten minutes - due to - tada - lack of oxygen.

And hard vacuum is a very, very poor conductor, therefore there won't be any freezing anytime soon either. Sure, you grow cold, but that'll be over hours, not over seconds.

All of this is well documented by NASA, too.

Re:

[kmac06 (608921)]

It's not the same situation as holding your breath. When holding your breath, the air in your lungs starts out with a lot of oxygen, which continues to be absorbed by the lungs. In a vacuum, their is no oxygen in your lungs, so your blood loses oxygen to the vacuum as it approaches equilibrium.

Re:time to innovate

[Thelasko (1196535)]

The experiment of exposing an unpressurized hand to near vacuum for a significant time while the pilot went about his business occurred in real life on Aug. 16, 1960. Joe Kittinger, during his ascent to 102,800 ft (19.5 miles) in an open gondola, lost pressurization of his right hand. He decided to continue the mission, and the hand became painful and useless as you would expect. However, once back to lower altitudes following his record-breaking parachute jump, the hand returned to normal.

Quoted from NASA [nasa.gov]
There you have it, you don't explode in space. Your skin is actually very air tight. I think the worst thing that could happen is your bladder would become inverted. Think about it. Ouch!

Re:time to innovate

[by Anonymous Coward]

Can't they just piss out the window ?

Frosty Piss!

Something I have in common with NASA engineers...

[damn_registrars (1103043)]

... I don't understand plumbing, either.

Re:

[damn_registrars (1103043)]

It's just like working with electronics, in fact.

* make sure both surfaces are clean (use a wire brush if needed)
* heat both surfaces to just the right temp
* allow the solder to wick up into the gap by capillary action

note: might be a good idea to use lead-free solder...

Gee, if I have to do all that just to take a dump on the space station, I think I'll pass...

Re:It's easy

[zippthorne (748122)]

If sex for you involves a wire brush, a propane torch, and liquid tin, you've probably got some issues that need to be addressed.

well

[gEvil (beta) (945888)]

Well that sounds pretty shitty.

Re:well

[dreamchaser (49529)]

Yeah, I expected a bunch of crappy posts about how pissed the station crew was.

The good news

[Megane (129182)]

The good news is that we're about to send another shuttle up, maybe they can throw some parts in.

But they only have one toilet up there? I mean, sure it's not a "Criticality One" component, but you'd think that would be a good candidate for redundancy.

Re:

[Megane (129182)]

It appears that there is some kind of toilet on the Soyuz module, [nasa.gov] though I would guess that it probably doesn't have as much capacity or functionality.

Re:

[mapkinase (958129)]

I just overheard news announcement on NPR that that shuttle is loaded up to the brim with 32000 lb of Japanese equipment, so they had to get rid off some observational periscope for outer insulation or smth....

Re:The good news

[by Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately this Shuttle mission is probably the most weight limited mission of the entire program. They are putting up the big part of the Japanese lab, and it is huge! I'd have to check, but I think this is the most massive object a Space Shuttle will ever put up. Unless the toilet weighs less than 100 kg, there probably isn't room for it. They've already cut one member of the crew to save weight.

Re:The good news

[swillden (191260)]

They've already cut one member of the crew to save weight.

How much did they cut off? And what part?

Re:The good news

[ultranova (717540)]

But they only have one toilet up there? I mean, sure it's not a "Criticality One" component, but you'd think that would be a good candidate for redundancy.

Actually, in a small airtight container where the air cannot be exchanged easily (if at all), waste management is Criticality One, especially since there's no gravity and the waste is gas forming and full of micro-organisms.

Breathing powdered shit is dangerous.

Could be worse

[by Anonymous Coward]

My father could be running NASA. I'm sure they wouldn't happy to hear they'd have to hold it until they got home.

Two systems?

[RockMFR (1022315)]

Why is the shit separated from the piss? Is it because the piss will just fly all over the place due to the lack of gravity? If that's the case, I hope nobody has diarrhea :)

Re:

[rtaylor (70602)]

The water is recycled.

so what are they going to do?

[jollyreaper (513215)]

Are they going to relieve themselves in little plastic baggies? And will there be the temptation to take these baggies out on spacewalks, wait until the appropriate continent swings around and let 'em fly? Man, the pigeons will be looking up to these astronauts as gods.

Let me guess...

[Chelloveck (14643)]

a "special receptacle"

Let me guess... A two-liter Mountain Dew bottle which they'll later just throw out the window, right? Because I've soooo been there, man!

not the fix for *everything*

[v1 (525388)]

Quite possibly NASA's first ever major problem that not even the magical duct tape could save the day.

Now watch, we'll read tomorrow about them making a new makeshift toilet with duct tape...

"Russian Built"

[elrous0 (869638)]

Decades after the space race ended and the U.S. media and NASA still feel the need to get in any shot they can at the Russians and downplay their incredible successes. When a Mars probe fails, no one says "The American built Mars rover was lost today." No one says "The American built Columbia space shuttle blew up today." For decades growing up, all any of us heard about was the great Apollo program. No one heard about the Russian space stations, the Russian probe to Mars, etc. In fact, the first time American media reported at any length on the MIR was when it started to have problems (well after it was beyond its projected lifespan).

The U.S. media treats the Russian space program like it were some bunch of morons building substandard machinery. But who did WE rely on to take us into space when our great space shuttle was reduced to bits and pieces? Who has a MUCH lower fatality rate and a MUCH higher rocket success rate?

Re:"Russian Built"

[everphilski (877346)]

No one says "The American built Columbia space shuttle blew up today." For decades growing up, all any of us heard about was the great Apollo program. No one heard about the Russian space stations, the Russian probe to Mars, etc. In fact, the first time American media reported at any length on the MIR was when it started to have problems (well after it was beyond its projected lifespan).

All of those programs were run by a single country. ISS is the international space station. You don't know who contributed what part unless you identify it. People regularly identify Japanese, Russian and other contributions to ISS because it is appropriate, both good and bad.

Now, the Russians have had a string of bad luck the past few months - the computers on ISS (although that might have been induced by new solar panels, who knows who is truly to blame), the explosive bolts on the Soyuz causing non-nominal landings (and now word that the Soyuz docked to ISS, the emergency lifeboat, has the same hardware) and now this. I'm sure they aren't happy about it but it happens. America has had their strings of bad luck as well. How many Redstone rockets exploded on the pad (or within inches of it on ascent) before we ever got a monkey into suborbital space, much less a human?

Shit happens, but I think you are being overly sensitive.

Re:

[HisMother (413313)]

The smart money says the early Soviet space program involved sending large numbers of cosmonauts to near-certain death, then only reporting the successes. You really think a totalitarian regime doesn't sweep its failures under the rug?

Re:"Russian Built"

[Thelasko (1196535)]

Components. American components, Russian Components, ALL MADE IN TAIWAN!

Re:

[mortonda (5175)]

(The Shuttle, to date, has one partial LOM incident and no LOV accidents.)

What ?!?!?!?!?

Challenger and Columbia. I think that counts as two LOV accidents. Challenger was also a LOM, and Columbia was a partial LOM.

yikes...

[apodyopsis (1048476)]

"Solids" go where they're supposed to, but "liquids" don't.

I can't help it. My first reaction (and I am sure other peoples too) was what if an astronaut gets diarrhhea or gastroenteritis? suddenly opening the window would really look like a viable escape strategy. "Apollo bags" seems like an acceptable (albeit ghastly) short term solution.

We may be rational, sensible people but scatological subjects will always affect us badly.

What I'd say to the astronauts...

[Robotech_Master (14247)]

"Urine trouble now!"

The question is...

[Thelasko (1196535)]

how much does a licensed plumber charge for a service call to low earth orbit?

This could blow the budget for both the Moon and Mars!

Relevant situation

[dargaud (518470)]

In Antarctica we use a similar system, build by the European Space Agency, that recycles separately 'grey water' and 'black water' (I'll let you guess what those terms cover). At the time I was there in 2005 the station was new and the black water system wasn't operational, so we were using 'burners'... until something went wrong. There's more details on my pages [gdargaud.net] but here's the main stuff:

The smoke from the incinolets is becoming worse and worse, smoking up the entire building with a pungent stink. Michel takes some pressure measurements inside the evacuation tube and determines that there must be a block of ice formed inside. When they installed the tubes on the last days of the summer campaign, they did use special insulation around them, but at the junction between the tubes there's unprotected metal exposed to the outside. We don't have the crane anymore so we have to tie up to access the top junction from the roof or from a high ladder at the bottom. In the morning the work is atrociously difficult with a strong wind and a temperature of -60ÂC, ensconced in 10 cm of clothing and sausaged up in security slings. Every 10 minutes we break down and head back inside for some warmth. The price of taking a dump ! Fortunately in the afternoon the wind has dropped to a perfect zero and it's actually quite enjoyable to do technical rope work in such a setting. Throughout the day I provide technical rope assistance to Jeff while Stéphane and Jean work from the ladder down below. They finish the work the next day by installing an extractor at the base of the tube. During the 3 days without bathroom we have to use the outside construction toilet, which is fortunately heated but it's not particularly convenient at night !

There are also some pics somewhere.

Re:Special Recepticle?

[ozmanjusri (601766)]

Actually, I understand there's two astronauts and one cup.