Inside the Secret, Surprising Challenges of Astronauts’ Bathroom Breaks in Space
“I think of Peter Fonda in Easy Rider. That’s the right position for me.”
Adding to the indignity, the genuine article aboard the Space Shuttle itself featured a microphone so flight surgeons back on earth could monitor the astronauts’ bowel sounds and gauge their overall digestive health. This, in turn, led to the creation of what has to be the least glamorous job in the history of space exploration. In the early days of the Shuttle program, NASA was often contracted by the U.S. military to deploy top-secret surveillance satellites from the orbiter’s cargo bay. Military intelligence worried that the microphone on the WCS might accidentally pick up conversations about the classified payload, and so some unfortunate officer was tasked with listening to days of astronaut bowel sounds to ensure that no national secrets leaked out. Now your boring day job doesn’t sound so bad, does it? The only saving grace is that while the flight surgeon could hear an astronauts’ every sound, their fellow crewmates couldn’t. Despite the WCS being separated from the rest of the cabin by only a thin curtain, the sound of various pumps and other onboard systems was so loud that the astronauts could use the facilities in relative sonic privacy.
But while far superior to the hated Apollo FCA bags, the WCS was not without its faults, and over the Space Shuttle’s 30-year service life the system suffered a number of major malfunctions. During STS-3, the third shuttle flight in March 1982, the WCS failed on its first use, forcing the two-man crew, Commander Jack Lousma and Pilot C. Gordon Fullerton, to use FCA bags for the rest of the eight-day flight. On September 3, 1984 during STS-41D, the maiden flight of the Space Shuttle Discovery, a malfunction in the liquid disposal system led to the formation of a 60 centimetre or two foot long frozen “pee-sicle” on the orbiter’s hull. Thankfully, the following day mission commander Henry Hartsfield Jr. managed to break off the obstruction using the Shuttle’s Remote Manipulator Arm – AKA the Canadarm. The WCS also had a more fundamental design flaw: sometimes bits of freeze-dried faeces would flake off the tank walls and float out through the bowl into the cabin, fouling the air – ew.
But the most serious malfunction of the WCS occurred on November 23, 1989 – Thanksgiving Day – during STS-33, Discovery’s ninth flight. Early that morning, mission Commander Fred Gregory awoke to use the facilities. Everything went well at first, but when Gregory made to seal off and depressurize the collection tank, the valve connecting the tank to the outside opened but the slider valve connecting the tank to the bowl failed to close. Suddenly, the cabin – and Gregory’s backside – were exposed to the vacuum of space, suctioning him fast to his seat. To make matters worse, the vent for topping up the Shuttle’s atmosphere with fresh oxygen was located right above the WCS. So not only was Gregory stuck in place, the Shuttle’s precious air roaring past his most delicate bits, but he was also being doused with a shower of ice-cold, recently liquefied oxygen. Immediately the cabin depressurization warning klaxon blared, and Gregory’s crewmates rushed over to the rescue. Mission specialist Story Musgrave managed to wrestle the stuck slider valve shut, freeing a grateful – if very chilled – Gregory, but now the crew if STS-33 faced an unpleasant dilemma: if they could not fix the troublesome valve, they would be forced to use the dreaded FCA bags for the rest of the five-day mission. Unsurprisingly, the crew overwhelmingly voted to scrub the mission and return to earth early rather than face this option. However, this would have required the Shuttle to come down at one of its alternate landing sites in Africa, as it was off-track for a conventional landing at the Kennedy Space Centre.
Thankfully, after consulting with Mission Control, the astronauts determined that by ripping off the front cover of the WCS and clamping a pair of vise-grip pliers to the slider valve lever, they could continue to safely use their cosmic commode – proving that Clint Eastwood was right in Gran Torino: you can fix anything with duct tape, WD-40, and vise grips. Their scatological scare averted, the crew tucked in to their Thanksgiving dinner of turkey, potatoes, and broccoli, and enjoyed a largely uneventful mission.
In the year 2000, NASA introduced a new toilet for use aboard the International Space Station, which had just begun construction two years before. Though broadly similar to the Space Shuttle WCS, the ISS toilets use not a single collection tank, but rather 20 litre or 5 gallon micro-perforated plastic bags held in an aluminium container. The microperforations allow air but not liquids or solids to flow through the plastic, allowing the toilet fan to pull waste to the bottom of the bag. Once full, the containers are sealed and, along with the rest of the space station’s trash, loaded aboard unmanned Grumman Cygnus or Russian Progress supply spacecraft to burn up in the atmosphere. So now you know: if you look up into the night sky and see a particularly bright shooting star, there’s a good chance it might be burning astronaut poop.
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