Many friends are discussing how to go to the toilet on the space station. What if astronauts want to urinate when they defecate? What if the space toilet is blocked? The urine of the space toilet is to be recycled, turned into water and then continue to drink, so should the space feces be used? Space toilets are so expensive, why not use mineral water bottles and plastic bags to solve it? I am Dongcheng Stargazing, and I will talk with you about the topic of convenience in space, and welcome new and old friends to continue to pay attention.
First, the American astronaut peed his pants, and Gagarin dashed once
When the United States first flew manned, all aspects were considered very comprehensively, and the mission was completed very successfully. But engineers forgot a crucial problem, astronauts need convenience. So, the american astronaut who was suffocated received a special order and urinated in the spacesuit. Before I went into space, I peed my pants first, which was really uncomfortable. But he also became the first Earthling in the world to wet the spacesuit.
Before him, Gagarin in the Soviet Union, although he also encountered the problem of urinary urgency, did not pee his pants. The Soviets took this into account when designing spacesuits and installed a tube in it. Gagarin was in a hurry before he got on the spacecraft, and urinated directly through the tube of the spacesuit onto the tires of the car, not as embarrassed as the American astronauts.
Second, when there is no space toilet, how convenient for astronauts
Convenience in space has always been a difficult and awkward thing, and the toilet of the space station is also very expensive equipment. The two new toilets sent to the International Space Station over the years are about twenty million US dollars, that is, more than one hundred million, which is more expensive than the house in the north, Shanghai and Guangzhou, and this does not include freight. The toilet is so expensive, why don't you use a mineral water bottle to solve it? Isn't it the mineral water bottle on the highway that solves the problem?
This is really not OK, there is no gravity in space, and urination will not honestly run to the bottom of the bottle. After the fast-flying urine hits the bottom of the bottle, it will bounce back immediately, which is not good. In space, don't be surprised that urine will rebound when it touches the bottom of the bottle, and when peeing into the toilet, if you don't fix your body, people will be pushed back by their own urine. Therefore, before the space toilet was put into use, astronauts did not use mineral water bottles or plastic bags to solve the problem of urinating.
The first is to urinate into a long rubber tube, and then the urine in the tube is directly excreted into space, or collected into a plastic bag. Later, NASA invented a new thing, a kind of panties made of polymer absorbent material, which can absorb about three bottles of mineral water and keep the inside of the clothes dry. I believe everyone has thought of it, this is the diaper that we are familiar with today, this kind of diaper is said to have been developed by Chinese scientists for Americans. Astronauts can use diapers to resolve embarrassment when the spacecraft is launched, when the spacecraft is out of the cabin, when the spacecraft returns, and other situations that require emergency convenience.
Speaking of other emergencies, there is a female astronaut in the United States who drives to another city for 14 hours in a row in order to kill her love enemy, and in the middle is to rely on diapers to solve the problem of urinating. Of course, after her arrest, the existence of diapers was also made public. Later, diapers became a commodity for the benefit of the public.
The problem of urinating can be solved in this way, but what about stool? Then you have to use plastic bags. As long as it does not make a fuss, the stool is still relatively honest, it will not spray too far, and it will not rebound, so normally it can be discharged directly into the plastic bag. In order not to let the odor spread, the mouth of the plastic bag used to hold the stool is with tape, and when you untie your hand, you need to glue the plastic bag to the body with tape, so that it is convenient to seal it again. What is more embarrassing is that without gravity, the stool will not fall on its own, and you need to use your hands through the plastic bag to assist. The most embarrassing thing is of course the time for diarrhea, so you have to wait until it is convenient to clean yourself.
Why is the space toilet so expensive?
Many friends have to say, since plastic bags and diapers can solve the problem, why spend hundreds of millions of dollars to build a toilet? What a waste, right? The earliest toilets were indeed just upgraded versions of rubber tubes and plastic bags, but they looked tall and more convenient for collecting waste, and indeed should not be expensive. Today's space toilet is not the same, there are expensive reasons, people's scientific name is called universal waste management system (uwms). In layman's terms, this toilet is not only used for convenience, but mainly for waste recycling.
Originally, the urine excreted by astronauts is directly discharged into space through the pipeline is the most convenient, and it does not need to be specially cleaned, saving effort and money. But, in space, water has become something more precious than silver. The cost of transporting water to the space station is about tens of thousands of yuan per kilogram, at least a few thousand pieces. If urine is discharged into space in vain, it will not only be expensive to supplement drinking water, but also increase the risk of spacecraft.
In the early days, the Mir space station, because the urine was directly discharged into space, was found that the solar panels were wrapped in layers of urine and bath water, and the power generation efficiency dropped by 40%. Some of the water in a straight line freezes into ice cubes, which will also cause collision damage to the aircraft. Therefore, scientific recovery of water is very necessary.
The role of the new space toilet is to recycle the water in urine and feces. Although there is a lot of moisture in the urine, there is also 70% water in the feces, and it is very necessary to recover these waters in time. But how to take pure water out of the urine and feces, and does not contain any odor and harmful impurities, is not a simple matter. This involves very complex process steps, as long as the technology is advanced enough, it can greatly improve the recovery rate of moisture. It needs to be said that the water recovered from the urine in the space toilet is cleaner than the water we drink on Earth.
In the early days, Russia's moisture recovery technology was better and the water recovery rate was higher, and in 2009, the United States directly spent $19 million to buy a space toilet from Russia and send it to the International Space Station. But recently, the United States has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on special research and development, and the technology of the new toilet has surpassed. The latest U.S. domestic titanium alloy space toilet can not only recover the water in the urine, but also use a urea bioreactor to use urea to produce water and energy. The U.S. goal is to recover and reuse 98 percent of the water in preparation for future manned exploration of Mars.
Although the water in the urine and feces has been effectively recycled and reused, the recycling of the feces itself has not been reported. Generally speaking, after the feces are dried, they are put into a cargo ship to return to Earth and burned in the atmosphere. However, we saw the scene of using feces to fertilize potatoes in the movie Mars Rescue, although it is a science fiction movie, not a reality, but it does not rule out the future experiment of comprehensive use of feces on the space station, and finally prepare for manned exploration of Mars.
You know, manned exploration of Mars one-way road is more than half a year, a round trip may take about two years, and it is possible to send people to stay on Mars for a long time, if you can't make overall use of organic resources, even if water can solve it, food can't solve it. At present, countries have done a large number of comprehensive ground recycling tests, and it should not be too far away to conduct tests in space.
Fourth, going to the toilet in space is a technical job
Why is convenience in space a technical job? Or because space is a weightless environment, people are floating on the space station, and when they are unarmed, they cannot be easily solved by standing there or sitting on the toilet. You must first fix yourself to the toilet before you start making it convenient. As mentioned earlier, if you do not fix it well, the reverse thrust when urinating will push yourself away. Even if it is fixed, it is not an easy thing to untie. In the state of weightlessness, the intestines of the human body are floating, the intestines are not as easy to control as on Earth, and there are also psychological factors interfering, so astronauts must do a lot of targeted training before going to space.
The biggest improvement of the space toilet compared to the plastic bag is that it has a negative pressure system, which can also be said to be an exhaust toilet. Whether it is a bowel movement or a urination, the excrement can be sucked into a designated position by pumping, without staying in place or bouncing back. It sounds good, but it is still not easy for astronauts, and it is more difficult for male astronauts to urinate. It is not convenient to explain in detail here, anyway, the literature reports that men should prevent injuries when urinating.
In addition, in order to effectively store excrement and reduce leakage, the early space toilet urinal diameter is only about ten centimeters, when the astronaut sits down, must aim, if the aim is not accurate, the consequences are very embarrassing. Therefore, it is necessary to practice well on Earth. In addition, the early toilet, stool and urination are collected separately, want to defecate and urinate at the same time, the system does not support. That has to solve one and then the other.
However, the latest toilet system in the United States has been optimized in this regard. At least for women, it is still possible to defecate and urinate at the same time. Men still need to deal with it separately, not knowing if it can be done at the same time. How about the Chinese toilet, I have not seen relevant reports, can only be everyone together looking forward to the mainstream media decryption. However, we know that previous manned missions have validated the system of urine recovery and reuse.
In space, what if the toilet malfunctions? This is really not a joke, there have been many toilet failures in space, causing many serious consequences, such as the scene of excrement spewing out. In order to re-collect the ejected material, the astronauts need to do a lot of work, but also to prevent water from running into the experimental cabin and causing damage to the electrical facilities, and can only use a large number of towels to trap moisture in the air.
The International Space Station is fine, there are multiple toilets to use, one is wrong, you can also use the other, although the squeeze point, at least there is still use. If there is a problem with the toilet on the Chinese space station, it will be more troublesome. Either fix it as soon as possible, or you have to use alternatives such as diapers and plastic bags. It is hoped that the failure rate can be greatly reduced through a series of technical solutions, or the maintenance and recovery steps can be simplified through technical solutions.
Fifth, the United States offers a reward for designing a new space toilet
In June 2020, NASA in the United States offered a reward of $35,000 to the society to design a new space toilet program that could meet the needs of manned moon landings. The design requirements of the lunar toilet are still quite high, the weight is less than 30 pounds, which is 1/3 of the toilet of the latest space station, the volume is less than 0.12 cubic meters, and the capacity is large, the power saving, and the noise is small. The bounty is now over, with three teams dividing up the $35,000.
If I had to design it, I would consider adding some manual devices to replace some of the electric units, which would be more reliable. Then replace the high-power vacuum pump with a low-power vacuum pump supporting the vacuum box, use the negative pressure of the vacuum box to inhale every time it is convenient, recover the gas through the vacuum pump when not in use, and then open the valve to maintain the vacuum state of the vacuum box outside the space station. In this way, the power is low and the noise is low.
Do you have any good ideas to improve the space toilet, welcome to discuss in the comments section. Maybe our ideas can really be used on future space stations or spacecraft.
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