In this still image taken from a Nasa TV broadcast, American astronauts Butch Wilmore (right) and Suni Williams are holding a news conference from the International Space Station (ISS) on Sept 13, 2024. Wilmore and Williams, who arrived at the ISS on June 6, 2024, aboard Boeing's 'Starliner', will return home with rival SpaceX in February 2025. — AFP/Nasa
As of Sept 26, 2024, two American astronauts are stuck on the International Space Station after concerns arose that the Boeing Starliner spacecraft normally used to return crew back to Earth was unsafe.
Now those astronauts are stuck until February 2025, when they are scheduled to return on a SpaceX vehicle (yes, Elon Musk rides again). In the meantime they’re living with seven other astronauts on the space station; a recent BBC article delved into what life is like on a space station – in short, it’s harrowing!
First off, space apparently “puts your bones and muscles into an accelerated ageing process”. I looked it up, and a National Geographic article states that “the heart, blood vessels, bones, and muscles deteriorate more than 10 times faster in space than by natural ageing”! That’s not good news for anyone heading to Mercury anytime soon – but then I suppose not many of us will be making that trek despite a couple of space agencies sending probes there.
It turns out that space is such an extreme environment that mitochondrial function and chemical balances can be triggered, which creates the effect of ageing. Luckily for astronauts many of the effects reverse when they return to Earth.
But ageing faster isn’t the only complication in space. To maintain body health in a zero gravity environment, the astronauts must work out for a couple hours each day or they will lose muscle mass. In zero gravity, all that sweat just clings to you – there’s nothing pulling the sweat down, to roll off your face and body. So it just accumulates in a layer on your body. And if you flick it off by shaking your head or running your hand through your hair, the sweat ends up all over the station, floating in little blobs. Zero gravity is disgusting.
This, of course, led me to wonder: How do astronauts attend to calls of nature?
Apparently the toilets operate using air flow to pull urine and faeces into a little bag. Yes, a bag. The peeing part is fairly easy, a funnel and a hose, and you can imagine how you use that.
And since water is scarce in space, and sending water up to the station is expensive, the urine is recycled. Not only that but the aforementioned sweat is also recycled. And those recycled body fluids are then consumed by the astronauts. I know that everything would be completely filtered but I still think, subconsciously, I’m going to be tasting the sweat in the coffee the next day....
But let’s get to the part everyone really wants to know about: Pooping.
As a Washington Post article stated in 2018, “The worst thing in all of space may be pooping”.
This works by hovering over a seat with air flow to pull the faeces into a little baggy. Sounds simple enough – but one can imagine the chances of space poop mishaps is high.
Even with practice – and the astronauts do practice pooping like this before they leave Earth – you’re trying to poop into a small target. Astronauts have fessed up saying that floating poop has been a space hazard ever since the first days of space travel. Floating poop just sounds like a million shades of awful....
And what happens to that poop? Well, they bag it up, and after 10 days they dispose of it. That’s right after 10 days! You know those porta-potties at music festivals that smell so terrible that you immediately run away from them? In space, you can’t run from the toilets. And opening the window is a bit of a safety hazard, so that delightful smell is going to be with you the whole time.
And what happens to those bags of poop that are disposed of? They let them burn up on re-entry to Earth. So the next time I see that bright flame enveloping the astronauts’ ship as it re-enters Earth's atmosphere? I’m going to think: Poop fire.
Luckily they haven’t figured out a way to milk the water out of faeces. Yet. Because you know that is coming.
Big Smile, No Teeth columnist Jason Godfrey – a model who once was told to give the camera a ‘big smile, no teeth’ – has worked internationally for two decades in fashion and continues to work in dramas, documentaries, and lifestyle programming. Write to him at lifestyle@thestar.com.my and follow him on Instagram and Facebook. The views expressed here are entirely the writer's own.
