Main Toilet On ISS Craps Out 219
The Narrative Fallacy writes "NASA has spent years getting ready for a crowd in space — adding additional sleeping quarters, learning how to recycle liquid waste into drinking water, and installing a second bathroom last year. But now the main toilet has broken down on the International Space Station while a record 13 astronauts are on board. For now Mission Control has advised the astronauts to hang an 'out of service' sign on the toilet as it may take days to repair. In the meantime, Endeavour's seven astronauts will be restricted to the shuttle bathroom. Last year a Russian cosmonaut complained that he was no longer allowed to use the US toilet because of billing and cost issues. Now the six space ISS residents will have to get in line to use the back-up toilet in the Russian part of the station. The pump separator on the malfunctioning toilet has apparently flooded, and ESA astronaut Frank De Winne is the guy tasked with putting his plumbing skills to work on short notice. 'We don't yet know the extent of the problem,' says flight director Brian Smith, adding that the toilet troubles were 'not going to be an issue' for now."
Shuttle Toilet (Score:5, Informative)
Crew Fix. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:I saw this somewhere... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:oops (Score:5, Informative)
Re:fed up... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:who makes these friggin things (Score:4, Informative)
i've seen this before... (Score:0, Informative)
Contradictory summaries now? (Score:3, Informative)
This one implies that the Russians were being discriminated against (Last year a Russian cosmonaut complained that he was no longer allowed to use the US toilet), but the linked summary says "Padalka, who will be the station's next commander, says the arguments date back to 2003, when Russia started charging other space agencies for the resources used by their astronauts" and also that it was only a *suggestion* that they stick to their own plumbing.
Re:fed up... (Score:4, Informative)
Furthermore, is the product of fuel cells not pure water, meaning completely free of any kinds of minerals? Drinking that as it is isn't particularly healthy either.
Pure urban legend that distilled water is bad for you. It required the assumption that all tap water is the same, however each tap water source is wildly different.
Also, not all tap water is safe to drink, even in the "first world". I live very near a subcontinental divide, and on the east side which drains into the great lakes, I can drink slightly filtered lake water, you know, the lake that we dump untreated sewage into each time it rains and med waste washes ashore every time the wind blows in from the lake, and which very recently killed hundreds due to a cryptosporidium outbreak, or on the west side of the divide which drains into the mighty mississip, ultra-deep wells which are actually pretty healthy except for the off the charts radium level. Or there are the shallow wells in rural areas with off the charts fertilizer and insecticide levels. But somehow, those three options are supposed to be safer than purified distilled H2O.
Re:fed up... (Score:5, Informative)
Feeling lucky on google with cryptosporidium outbreak:
in 1993 .... This abnormal condition at the plant lasted from March 23 through April 8, after which, the plant was shut down. Over the span of approximately two weeks, 403,000 of an estimated 1.61 million residents in the Milwaukee area (of which 880,000 were served by the malfunctioning treatment plant) became ill with the stomach cramps, fever, diarrhea and dehydration caused by the pathogen. Over 100 deaths were attributed to this outbreak,
Re:fed up... (Score:5, Informative)
From tfa: The main toilet, a multi-million-dollar Russian-built unit, was flown up and installed on the US side of the space station last year.
Re:fed up... (Score:5, Informative)
First off, it was a private US company that developed the pressurized ballpoint pen. They donated a few samples to NASA long before the space shuttle flew just so they could call it the "space pen". The US space program never paid a penny for it.
Secondly, what do you think happens when you write with a pencil in free fall? Where does all of that highly conductive graphite dust go? What about a broken tip? Does it know what could happen when it works its way into all those control panels full of exposed electrical switches? In an atmosphere which was still over 60% oxygen?
It's not good. What the Soviets used was a _grease_ pencil, and even they switched to the Fisher Space Pen when it became available.
Re:Man Overboard! All hands on the Poop Deck! (Score:4, Informative)
Just because "someone" has always done it this way doesn't make it right.
Actually, when it comes to language, and when "someone" really is "virtually everyone", then yes, that's EXACTLY what makes it right . . .