[0x38B]

More on what astronauts found “objectionable” and “distasteful” with Apollo's system, from the PDF linked in the OP (1):

"In general, the Apollo waste management system worked satisfactorily from an engineering standpoint. From the point of view of crew acceptance, however, the system must be given poor marks. The principal problem with both the urine and fecal collection systems was the fact that these required more manipulation than crewmen were used to in the Earth environment and were, as a consequence, found to be objectionable. The urine receptacle assembly represented an attempt to preclude crew handling of urine specimens but, because urine spills were frequent, the objective of “sanitizing” the process was thwarted.

The fecal collection system presented an even more distasteful set of problems. The collection process required a great deal of skill to preclude escape of feces from the collection bag and consequent soiling of the crew, their clothing, or cabin surfaces. The fecal collection process was, moreover, extremely time consuming because of the level of difficulty involved with use of the system. An Apollo 7 astronaut estimated the time required to correctly accomplish the process at 45 minutes.* Good placement of fecal bags was difficult to attain; this was further complicated by the fact that the flap at the back of the constant wear garment created an opening that was too small for easy placement of the bags.** As was noted earlier, kneading of the bags was required for dispersal of the germicide.

*Entry in the log of Apollo 7 by Astronaut Walter Cunningham.

**The configuration of the constant wear garments on later Apollo missions were modified to correct this problem."

1: https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/19760005603/downloads/19...

[pbhjpbhj]

Did they not have the astronauts simulate the mission beforehand, on Earth? Wear the clothing, eat the meals, use the toilet, etc?

It sounds like that would have allowed them to fix the suit before they went?

They must have eaten the meals and such to be sure they could function, make sure they didn't have any intolerance, for example?

[smallmancontrov]

Warning: gross

Of course, but the fundamental problem is that difficulties compound. It starts with: pooping is much harder when gravity isn't there to persistently tug on the turd. Something that is slightly obnoxious on Earth (using a bag, using a suit flap) turns into an absolute trainwreck when you have a bag, a suit flap, and turd separation failure. Now you have to do precise mechanical manipulation of an object you don't want to touch behind your back through a bag and a suit flap, every failure multiplies the work, and now the turds can float away to multiply the work outside your immediate vicinity. Ditto for kneading the antibacterial into the poo: if you fail to do this thoroughly on Earth, bacterial offgassing causes the bag to vent, but in all likelihood that's the end of it because you can arrange for gravity to keep the poo away from the vent. In fact, you would probably do this without even thinking or imagining how it could go wrong. In zero gravity, you can't simply arrange "vent on top, poo on bottom", so the event is likely to launch aerosolized poo into your living environment where you have to put up with it for the next few days.

It's difficult to fully appreciate gravity until it's gone.

Astronauts are heroes for the risks they take, but they are also heroes for dealing with this.

[asdff]

Seems like a big issue is I'm guessing insistence on having this be a solo operation for cultural reasons. Seems like it would be easy with two astronauts. Have the one bend over and spread the cheeks wide with both hands, the other basically does the hand in the dog poop bag trick right as the poop is coming out and wipes them up after. No worse than what a nurse does every day for work.

[smackeyacky]

Perhaps nurses would be a better pool of astronaut candidates than test pilots.

I remember seeing a Russian space toilet when they had it set up in the powerhouse museum in Sydney. It looked like a booth with a vaguely pubic area shaped vacuum attachment designed to be unisex. I stared at it for some time trying to work out how it worked. The Apollo system seems horrendous!

[riffraff]

IIRC from the book " packing for mars" the American man astronauts begged NASA to provide them with diapers at some point, which is what women astronauts got, because the earlier male-only system was a sort of sucking condom which was incredibly bad.

[darkwater]

This really tells you how "bad masculinity" pervaded everything. I'm speaking of the designers here, not the astronauts. Why not a diaper also for male astronauts from the beginning? Isn't manly enough? Does it show weakness, like a toddler or an old dying man?

[brikym]

I'd take it over chasing a floating turd around and cleaning up the mess all over the walls.

[raverbashing]

Honestly replacing gravity with negative air pressure might have been the ideal solution

But I know that air is also a limited resource on space so it can't be solely an "airline-like system"

(Also discarding it "outdoors" might be the best solution in the end)

[the_af]

Space debris would have an additional meaning.

[alfiedotwtf]

I’ve always wanted to be an astronaut, but yeah… pass.

Weird a silicon-like pants that strapped up so there was no leaks (like fisherman’s pants), that has a vacuum you attach (almost catheter style) isn’t used. Actually now that I think about it, it’s weird that astronauts aren’t using catheters 24/7!

[NooneAtAll3]

catheters are very uncomfortable

also apparently an infection risk

[gcanyon]

More like an infection certainty. Don't ask me how I know :-(

[XorNot]

I mean this has also been a problem for fighter pilots as well. The "piddle packs" for F-16 pilots are implicared at least one crash due to the complexity of using them.

[1] https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-03-23-me-542-st...

[scarier]

To be fair they're pretty easy to use as long as you don't have to fly an airplane at the same time...

[1] (NSFW lyrics!) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jd9_RffdmBA

[the_af]

Forget about pee, I always wondered about fighter pilots in one of those long, multi-hour flights, what happens if they really need to go number 2? I suppose they self-select as people without this kind of problems, but it can happen to anyone really.

I suppose in an emergency they just shit their pants, but I wonder what the ground crew says when they touch down.

[ozim]

F16 pilot on radio with airliner.

Doing barrel roll, twist and speed up - radio to airliner „see buddy can you do that?”

Airliner „wait a moment” - some time passes nothing happens - airliner „hey buddy you seen that?” - f16 „what? Nothing happened” - airliner „I went to toilet on the back, took dump, made myself a coffee and strolled back to cockpit”.

[asdff]

Surprised they don't just let them piss on the seat like the bike leg in triathlon

[outworlder]

> Seems like a big issue is I'm guessing insistence on having this be a solo operation for cultural reasons.

I had to do some stool collection and it took every ounce of willpower and a N95 mask to prevent me from vomiting everywhere. And that was my poop. I think it's more than cultural, there's a strong visceral reaction.

On the other hand, I can pickup my dog's poop no problem.

Nurses are heroes.

[pbhjpbhj]

Having an repulsion for shit is a healthy adaptation. But it seems that for some people they're much more sensitive.

Similarly, it's probably useful for a primitive person to vomit on sight of a familiar person vomiting, collective protection. Definitely a trait to find out before going to space!

[mikkupikku]

The one I've never got is how so many people faint or become I'll when they see blood. Always seemed like a massive maladaptive that should create even more risk in a presumably dangerous situation. If a tiger attacks me in the night and the guy next to me faints because I'm getting eaten, we'll both end up dying.

[asdff]

Take a couple proper cowpies over the waterline and you will get over that fast.

[riffraff]

But parents do that all the time with babies.

It is disgusting (I hated doing it) but you get somewhat used to it relatively quickly.

[the_af]

We seem to make a disconnect with our own children. I certainly did. But it doesn't extend to even other people's kids!

[moduspol]

I'm thinking more like Player 2 just operates a shop vac and aims the nozzle at the appropriate area.

Though I guess if that would work, they'd just use those loud suction toilets they use on airplanes.

[asdff]

Shop vac tube would be gross fast and need regular maintenance. Dog poop bag is entirely disposable. Throw it behind the spacecraft and use it as propulsion.

[hammock]

> Seems like a big issue is I'm guessing insistence on having this be a solo operation for cultural reasons

What cultures are you aware of that do pair programming for poopies?

[Marha01]

> Seems like a big issue is I'm guessing insistence on having this be a solo operation for cultural reasons.

Hmm... perhaps train a robot arm to do it?

[yoz-y]

Do they eat things that will 100% avoid liquid stool?

[asdff]

If it was liquid it would probably blow straight into the bag. In my experience there is quite a big of propulsion there. Enough to overcome gravity here on earth at least and spray dead horizontal.

[somenameforme]

Apollo was largely driven with the purpose of achieving the goal rather than obsessing on the details on the way to that goal. In fact during Apollo they even completely scrapped mathematical risk modeling because the results it always gave were basically 'you die.'

So for instance a relevant and famous anecdote is that the original tests for Apollo launches didn't have any sort of urine/fecal disposal systems at all. In one delayed launch during testing Alan Shepard was in the capsule for hours and ended up needing to go pee. He asked for permission to depart the capsule, but that was declined to keep it all on track. So he ended up having to just pee all over himself in the suit.

Another piss poor anecdote is Buzz Aldrin on the Moon! When he departed the lunar lander capsule, the impact ended up breaking the urine collection device inside his suit. So his journey on the Moon involved having a healthy dose of urine sloshing around in his boot where it settled.

Of course there's a balance in all things. It's not like they just YOLO'd their way to the Moon. But things where the worst case outcome would be astronaut discomfort were seen as extremely low priority. In the original design, the capsule didn't even have a window or manual controls. So the astronauts were basically just being treated like human Laikas. They had to fight just to get those 'features.'

---

I think a big part of the reason for this is because there are basically infinite things that can go wrong. And so if you obsess on getting every single thing right, you'll end up never doing anything at all. In 1962 Kennedy gave his famous 'to the Moon' speech. At that time, we'd only just barely put the first man in orbit but had never done anything beyond that, at all. Just 7 years later a man would walk on the Moon. In modern times we've been basically trying to recreate what we did in the 60s, and spent decades doing so. And this obsession on the details is certainly a big part of the reason why.

[ErroneousBosh]

> In fact during Apollo they even completely scrapped mathematical risk modeling because the results it always gave were basically 'you die.'

I've had a similar conversation with the "but if we really went to the Moon in 1969 why has it taken so long to be able to do it again" folk a few times.

The real answer is of course that we did it once, and realised that a project where about 99% of the failure modes are "astronauts turn into a rapidly expanding cloud of fried mince" and all of these failure modes are incredibly likely was not something we really wanted to do again.

[ordu]

> In fact during Apollo they even completely scrapped mathematical risk modeling because the results it always gave were basically 'you die.'

In hindsight we know, that these models were wrong. people were better at predicting risks without relying on formal models. I mean, people were not perfect too, but still they were better. I wonder, if modern engineering has better tools for risk modeling and how good they worked if they were used for Apollo. I mean, if we remove the knowledge specific for space flight, leave only the abstract theory of risk modelling, and then use a time-travel machine to send it to NASA at 1960 or so, could NASA employ modern risk modeling tools to get results on par (or better) to human intuition?

[JumpCrisscross]

> In hindsight we know, that these models were wrong

The number of near misses and actual deaths in the Apollo programme loosely indicate the models were right. We just had to up our risk threshold to make the Moon with the era’s technology.

[Brian_K_White]

People joke about "safety third" but I've always thought that was literally about right. It's a higher priority than many other considerations, but it's no way the highest priority. Doing or having something at all absolutely comes before having it in safety and comfort.

[salawat]

All fun and games til you realize you lose more servicemen & women to mishaps than you do to enemy combatants. Which is a factual reality the military has to deal with. Safety isn't a joke, and no, your safety officer isn't going to be getting on your ass with the Hun at the gates, but after a certain point, you have to temper get-there-itis unless you want to hemorrhage manpower to mishap related casualties.

[malfist]

How do you simulate zero gravity on earth?

[MichaelApproved]

Reduced gravity aircraft. AKA the Vomit Comet.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reduced-gravity_aircraft

[jryb]

You only get ~30 seconds of zero G. How would that work?

[YeGoblynQueenne]

Hold it in for three days. Then you're ready to go in a flash.

[dlcarrier]

That would probably make it take longer. A safer bet would be three really strong cups of coffee and two bran muffins.

[spike021]

or get someone who's lactose intolerant and make them drink a carton of milk.

[__MatrixMan__]

Perhaps buoyancy could be a decent substitute, at least for the solid waste part. I imagine being waist deep and flushing the entire bathroom after each training session. Maybe some kind of spatula/squeegee might assist with separation, coupled with a robotic spatula cleaner and sanitizer. There would be a monitor and cameras so you could calibrate your aim. What an odd workday that would be.

[throwaway173738]

buoyancy only applies in gravity. The buoyant force on an object is equal to and opposite of the weight of the displaced fluid. No gravity, no weight.

[pulvinar]

The goal here is neutral buoyancy when in gravity so that it behaves as though there were no gravity. Put a bag of water in water and it floats like the rest of the water, gravity or no.

[throwaway173738]

So you’re strapping yourself into a material with the same density as poop and then pooping into it? How is that cleaner than pooping in a bag or over a vacuum?

[malfist]

Neutral buoyancy is achieved with very specific densities. You can either make the astronaut buoyant, or you can make the poop, but not both at the same time.

[RataNova]

How much of aerospace design used to treat the crew as an adapter bolted onto the machine