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When transporting human beings into space, there are so many challenges to overcome such as dangerous space radiation, defying gravity and the awful effects zero gravity has on the body, lack of food and water, and space debris obliterating your spacecraft. Then when you get down to about #4,176,121 on the list of challenges of space travel, you find that simply going to the bathroom in space can be a logistical and messy nightmare. The issue of astronauts having to go to the bathroom while on an intense space mission is being tackled by NASA engineers as they attempt to design the next generation of spacesuits, but they are encountering some hurdles.
A zero-gravity environment makes going to the bathroom a real problem, shit can literally hit the fan. NASA is completely aware of this issue and they are designing the next generation of spacesuits with built-in toilets. Any chance I can get one of these spacesuits before the NFL starts up again so I can enjoy Sunday football by never having to get off the couch?
Spacesuits come equipped with something called “maximum absorbency garments” (MAG’s), which are basically Depends adult diapers for space people. However, these are really only meant to handle “accidents” and are intended for astronauts to only use these suits for up to 10 hours. NASA is currently planning for their upcoming Orion mission which will be able to carry humans well beyond low Earth orbit and possibly to the moon and back. The Orion spacecraft will have toilets in it because when you’re flying through space at 24,000 mph you might get antsy in your space pantsies. But NASA wants to ensure that the future spacesuits will enable astronauts to survive in their space gear for up to six days without removing the outfit in case of an emergency. That means astronauts must be able to eat, drink, breathe, urinate, and defecate in the suits.
The new suits are called the Orion Crew Survival Systems Suits (OCSSS) and they will also have built-in toilets, but NASA is encountering some issues. The most-challenging hurdle is creating a spacesuit with a built-in porta-potty that works for female astronauts.
For male astronauts, NASA pretty much already has a proven system. Spacesuits have had built-in toilets in the past including the Apollo missions from the 1970s. Male astronauts wear a condom-like contraption that has a tube that takes away urine and a fecal bag that collects the freeze-dried carrot dumps. However, for female astronauts, things get a little more complicated because of anatomy. “For females, it gets a little harder, obviously, because of the geometry of a person’s body, and then you have to deal with issues like pubic hair,” Kirstyn Johnson, a NASA engineer told Space.com.
Johnson, who is leading the design of the internal systems of the spacesuit, revealed she started “looking at the camping industry” for answers. “And you start seeing a lot of these portable urination devices that you can carry around with you so you don’t have to squat in the middle of the forest,” Johnson said. “[There are] these paper bags that you can take to a concert and women pull out of their purse so they don’t have to sit on a disgusting toilet,” Johnson added.
“It was almost a revelation for me as a female to see all these products — like, who knew these existed? And it’s kind of taboo to talk about but it’s interesting, because it feeds into stuff like this that we’re trying to do with spacesuits.” Johnson reminds everyone that living “in a suit with all of your waste right by you for that long of a time, it could get gnarly pretty quickly.” Pretty gnarly indeed.
[Space]