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 . . . .

. . . Space Station poops on you!

Re:In Soviet Russua . . . .

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

Re:In Soviet Russua . . . .

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

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:In Soviet Russua . . . .

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:In Soviet Russua . . . .

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

Usually with an expletive or three thrown in.

No prizes for guessing ....

... 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...

...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...

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

time to innovate

Can't they just piss out the window ?

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

Re:time to innovate

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

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:time to innovate

Can't they just piss out the window ?

Frosty Piss!

Something I have in common with NASA engineers...

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

The good news

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:The good news

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

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

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.

so what are they going to do?

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.

not the fix for *everything*

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"

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"

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.

What I'd say to the astronauts...

"Urine trouble now!"

Re:Special Recepticle?

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

Re:well

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