"Today's coffee is tomorrow's coffee!"
This sentence comes from the mouth of an American astronaut!
Since water is heavy and space-intensive, it would be better to recover water-containing liquids from the space station than to bring clean water from Earth, and I think you've guessed what the astronaut meant.
Humans live in space in a weightless environment, which leads to some of the simplest things in our lives, where they can become extremely difficult, and even eating and drinking Lasa is a challenge.
On Earth, whether we're using a simple rural toilet or a fancy gilded toilet, gravity pulls our excrement down and away from us.
For astronauts, the absence of gravity means that any loose water droplets may float out of the toilet, which is not good for the health of astronauts and the sensitive equipment inside the space station.
Image note: Mold from the International Space Station
Because the International Space Station has been in service for a long time, it is now full of all kinds of mold, so it is very important to maintain the hygiene of the space station, especially the matter of going to the toilet.
So, how exactly do astronauts go to the toilet?
Vacuum exhaust toilet
In 1961, Alan Shepard became the first American to go into space, and his trip should have been short, so there were no plans to pee and poop.
However, while Shepard was ready to do it on the rocket waiting for launch, the rocket launch was delayed by more than three hours for various reasons.
Finally, Shepard consulted if he could leave the rocket for a while to pee, but he didn't get permission to avoid wasting more time, and mission control gave him advice that it was safe to urinate in his spacesuit.
So, the first American to go into space actually urinated directly in a spacesuit.
Later, the International Space Station, built by the United States and Russia, had a toilet, but it was originally designed only for men, which was difficult for women to use because they had to stand and pee.
If it is poop, astronauts must fix their thighs to the small toilet and maintain a tight seal between their hips and the toilet seat, otherwise it will be difficult to deal with if they leak a little.
This kind of toilet is a nightmare for every astronaut, and even some astronauts say that everything in space is worth remembering, except for going to the toilet.
So, in 2018, NASA spent $23 million to build a new, improved toilet for the International Space Station, the vacuum extraction toilet, which basically solved the problem of zero gravity toilets.
It consists of two parts: a hose with a funnel at the end for urination, and a raised toilet seat for defecation, and the toilets on our Chinese space station are similar to this one.
When peeing, astronauts can sit or stand, and then attach the funnel and hose tightly to the skin so that nothing leaks out.
Pooping is similar to the size of the toilet on Earth, lift the lid of the toilet, and sit on the toilet seat. But the lid of this toilet will start pumping as soon as it is opened to prevent things from drifting away and control the odor.
In addition, from the pictures transmitted on the Internet, the toilet of the space station is much smaller than our home, which is obviously designed to ensure air tightness.
How are astronaut excrement handled?
We can now explain what the opening sentence means.
In the space station, the importance of water is self-evident, and more than 90% of the urine is water, so in fact the astronauts' urine is collected and converted into clean water for reuse, of course, after treatment it is clean.
Just like we said earlier that water is very heavy and space-consuming, and the cost of sending 1 kilogram of water to space is almost $50,000, and reusing this water in the space station is critical.
The disposal of poop is relatively simple, except for some that will be brought back for study, most of the time, the astronaut's poop and the garbage in the toilet will be burned by the atmosphere
The feces are vacuum-sucked into the garbage bag and then placed in a sealed container. In addition, astronauts will also put toilet paper, wipes and gloves in.
These sealed containers are then loaded into a cargo spacecraft, which is usually a one-way ticket, and will eventually crash into the atmosphere after delivering supplies to the space station.
So, if you see a meteor, don't rush to make a wish, it may just be a cargo spacecraft loaded with excrement from the space station's astronauts.