With the progress of space technology and the development of human space industry, astronauts continue to work in space for longer and longer, which is a test for the quality of astronauts in all aspects.
There are huge differences between the environment of space and the surface of the earth, and even astronauts must solve basic life problems, and one of them is to go to the toilet, so how do astronauts go to the toilet in space? The first astronaut in human history to go into space was Gagarin of the former Soviet Union, who orbited the Earth in orbit for a total of 1 hour and 48 minutes. Although the flight around the earth is not very long, but counting the preparation before launch, the whole process is still quite time-consuming, so it is necessary to solve a problem, that is, the problem of "convenience", the method used at that time was very simple, that is, through the tube of a spacesuit to urinate.
Compared with the former Soviet cosmonaut Gagarin, the first American to enter space, Alan Shepard, is more direct.
According to the original plan, Shepard's first space trip was very short, so there was no problem of designing a toilet, but for various reasons, the rocket launch was repeatedly postponed, and finally Shepard could not stand it, so he asked the mission control center whether he could leave the rocket to urinate, but the control center felt that in order to avoid further wasted time, he suggested that he urinate directly in the space suit. Afterwards, Shepard said in an interview that the pants he was wearing were cotton, so the absorption effect was particularly good, and the pants were completely dry before the rocket was launched. It can be seen that the early human space industry did not take into account the toilet problem of astronauts.
Later, with the development of the space industry, astronauts needed to carry out tasks longer and longer, especially astronauts who went to work on the space station, living in space for several months, so we must seriously consider the problem of toileting.
In this context, a device that looks exactly like a safety T was born, as can be seen from the appearance, which is a device that only male astronauts can use, and at the end of this device is connected a hose, through which urine can be discharged out of the cabin. Russell Schweikart, the astronaut of Apollo 9, once said: "The most beautiful scenery in space is the urine discharged by the spacecraft at sunset." However, in the space station, water is very precious, so it is a pity to let urine drain into space.
So later, the astronauts' urine was no longer discharged in vain, but was collected and recycled.
Can urine still be recycled? Of course, you know, 90% of the components in the urine are water, so only special filtration treatment is required to reduce to clean water. Is it necessary to be so frugal? It is necessary that rockets are needed to transport supplies to space, and rockets need a lot of fuel to lift off, so it costs $50,000 to transport an average of 1 kilogram of water to the space station. So an American astronaut said something meaningful: "Today's coffee is tomorrow's coffee," and since then this phrase has been widely circulated among astronauts. In any case, it is relatively easy to urinate in space, so what if it is stool? An astronaut once said something like this: "Everything in space is worth remembering, except going to the toilet."
Defecation in space is the same as poop on Earth, and toilets are required, but toilets in space are not so easy to use.
The opening of the toilet is only one aspect, more importantly, when going to the toilet, it is necessary to ensure a tight seal between the hips and the toilet ring, to know that space is weightless, if the seal is not tight, floating out a little bit can be very embarrassing, and the embarrassment is still good, more importantly, the space station is sensitive equipment, it is easy to have safety hazards. In this context, in 2018, a new type of space toilet was finally born, which consists of two parts, one for urinating and one for poop. The part that urinates is a hose with a funnel at the end, whether standing or sitting, you only need to press the funnel against the skin to complete the urination.
The stool part is very similar to the ordinary toilet, but the size is slightly smaller, and once the toilet is opened, it will begin to pump, generating negative pressure in the toilet, so the astronaut sits on it and goes to the toilet on the earth.
This space toilet may seem less complicated, but it is really expensive, up to $23 million. Now, not only is such a toilet used on the International Space Station, but the space toilet equipped on our Chinese space station is similar to this one. Feces cannot be recycled like urination, and the excrement is dehydrated and then vacuum-sealed, and when the cargo ship transports the cargo for the space station, the sealed excrement is loaded onto the cargo ship and brought back to Earth. But they won't actually be brought back, because cargo ships are disposable, and the excrement will burn up in the atmosphere along with the cargo ship and turn into dust.