Urinating In Space

[Deepwater6]

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/history-urinating-space/story?id=19641585

 

I'm always amazed how some monumental things come to pass. I can just imagine a group of NASA engineers standing around a table looking at each other. And all of them coming to the conclusion/agreeing that urinating in his suit was Mr Shepards only option.

 

We have come a long way in regards to releiving oneself in space. But I'm getting so old and it seems every week I'm leaking bodily fluid from another orifice I didn't know I had. So I don't think I would have good time up there until they can create a little more gravity.

[CraigD]

I recall the 1983 movie adaptation of Wolf’s The Right Stuff played up the comedy on this, starting with showing a nervous Shepherd chain/comfort-drinking coffee, and ending with a made-up line along the lines of “you have go for urination” :lol:

 

At the same time, there were serious worries, as nobody wanted to make history like:

“America’s first man in space die mysteriously, the mystery compounded by his medical telemetry having short circuited due to urine in his suit”

or worse

“America’s first man in space died tragically, electrocuted in his own piss.”

Fortunately, as the ABC story notes, Shepherd return healthy and relieved (in more ways than one), so the loss of some of his medical telemetry wasn’t a major setback.

 

I’ve heard that “how do you pee/poo in space” is one of or the most common questions asked of astronauts and other spaceflight folk, especially by children. Though, being born in 1960, I’m a “child of the space age” (my favorite snack in the late 1960s were “space food sticks”, rather nasty tasting, waxy, candy-like things appealing mainly due to the clever marketing implication that astronauts ate them in space - they didn’t, actually, ‘til a 1972 Spacelab mission, where they weren’t actually food, but an experiment in food), I didn’t consider the question a very challenging one, likely, I think, because of the astronaut-like conditions imposed on me in my childhood by impatient parents on various long car and boat trips. One confined vehicle is pretty much like another when faced with the mechanics of having to “go” without stopping.

 

The entertainment biz is still getting comedic mileage out of the subject – for example, there’s a whole story arc of the popular present-day TV situation comedy The Big Bang Theory involving a fictional malfunctioning toilet on the ISS. Toilet humor, in my opinion as a student of film and TV, is the most primal kind of all. :)

[Deepwater6]

http://www.cnn.com/2013/07/16/us/spacewalk-ends-early/index.html?hpt=hp_t2

 

Speaking of fluids inside of space suits, what a coincidence? I assume the suits have some temperature control system that circulates through them?

[CraigD]

Speaking of fluids inside of space suits, what a coincidence?

Having your head sealed inside a helmet with lots of stray water in microgravity has to be something between unpleasant and horrifying – good thing it happened to a member of the astronaut profession, one known for keeping their cool in emergencies.

 

Though it reports of it make it sound minor, by best accounts, Luca Parmitano may have come close to dying today. After he reported water in his helmet, there was a concerted rush to get him inside, get his helmet off, and dry him off (in microgravity, you can drown in open air if you airways are covered in blobs of water). Parmitano joked afterwards with mission control "Just so you know, I'm alive and I can answer those questions, too,” referring to his spacewalk partner Christopher Cassidy answering questions for him.

 

I assume the suits have some temperature control system that circulates through them?

They do, much the same design since the 1960s, consisting mostly of a sort of underwear known as a Liquid Cooling and Ventilation Garment. When I heard the news about Luca Parmitano’s aborted spacewalk today, my first thoughts were to a leak in this system, which to the best of my knowledge hasn’t happened in the half century LCGs have been used. Reading more, however, engineers seem to suspect a leak from his bag of drinking water, though the Parmitano says the water didn’t taste like drinking water.

[Deepwater6]

http://www.space.com/21987-how-nasa-spacesuits-work-infographic.html

 

I agree I think the situation may have been a little more serious than NASA wanted to release to the public. Thanks for the explanation of the cooling and ventilation system. I found the infograph above on Space.Com it breaks the suit down in parts somewhat.

[CraigD]

I’ve found only scanty news on Parmitano suit malfunction. This 16 Jul 5:11 PM EDT AL.com article, and this 17 Jul 3:38 PM EDT CNN,com article, quote spacewalk officer and engineer Karina Eversley as saying they’ve found about 1.5 L of water, including in the suit body in addition to in the helmet, more than can be explained by a failure in the slightly less than 1 L drinking bag. Also, after becoming aware of the leak, Parmitano drank all the remaining water in the bag. So it’s looking like it must be cooling water.

 

I found the infograph above on Space.Com it breaks the suit down in parts somewhat.

What’s really cool (pun unintended) about present-day autonomous spacesuit cooling systems is how they dispose of the heat they remove from the astronaut’s body. If they just vented the water after one pass through the cooling garment’s tubing, too much water would be needed. So a metal heat exchanger conducts the heat from the close garment cooling water loop to a second, separate water system which is open to vacuum. This water forms ice, which sublimates into water vapor which is vented into space. 5.2 L (the amount in the latest Apollo moon walk PLSSs) is all that’s needed for 8 hrs of cooling

 

This NASA webpage is the best I’ve found on all the systems in the PLSS backpack. Though the PLSS used for ISS spacewalks is decades newer than the Apollo models described, I don’t think their systems have changed dramatically since the 1960s, changes being mostly in the placement and number of settings of their controls. Surprisingly in these days of computer-controlled systems, the cooling system remains manually controlled. On the Apollo moon missions, the control was a 3-positon lever down by the right hip – on the ISS, it’s a 12-position rotary switch on the chest. Neither can directly be seen by the astronaut. The Apollo’s was adjusted by feel. The ISS suit has a mirror on its wrist, allowing this and controls on the chest Display and Control Module to be seen (labels on its front are mirror image of normal text).

 

Another recollection of my “space-age” childhood is of the heated blanket put on my bed during the winter season. Rather than the usual kind with electric resistance heating wires in them, it had a single thin plastic tube with outlets that coupled with a 2-tube feed hose that went to a little plastic unit that plugged into a wall outlet, had on-off and temperature controls, and a small reservoir that could be open and topped off, or emptied to allowed air to be pumped through the tubes to purge them before storage. It’s had a lit dial, and its pump motor made a faint, constant whirring/whispering sound. The blanket, though as warm as anyone could want, was a bit stiff and un-cuddly. Though we all half-expected it, no part of the system ever leaked.

 

My parents explained that this was essentially the same as used by astronauts – though I don’t recall if they explained or understood that spacesuit LCGs are cooling only – they neither have not need a heater. I think it’s be forgivable if they didn’t – “freezing in space” was and remains a popular but scientifically implausible theme in science fiction. Heat stroke, or, as Parmitano’s experience yesterday shows, drowning, is a plausible way an astronaut could die because of a spacesuit failure.

[Deepwater6]

http://www.cnn.com/2014/01/30/tech/innovation/the-spacesuit-inspired-by-medieval-armor/index.html?hpt=hp_c3

 

A new style with some cool gadgets and a better range of vision.