Former NASA Astronaut Explains How Hygiene Is Different in Space | WIRED

I always felt that the difference between the US and Russian

space

programs could be summed up in the bathroom because it was indicative of what a lot of the differences were. I'm Mike Massimino and this is how

hygiene

is

different

in

space

hygiene

in Space is very important. You'll have to do the same kinds of things you want to do on Earth, like brush your teeth and stay clean in the bathroom. All of these things are very important and very

different

because you are doing them in space. So, they require some training and you want to do it correctly because if you don't it could cause problems on the ground.

We deal with flush toilets if available. Hopefully, you'll do what you need to do and then you'll clean up. then it goes on to the rest of the day, but in space it is different. The flights I had in space were in the space show and on the space shuttle we had a bathroom, it was called WCS, the waste containment system. I think that was mainly because if he had a problem, you didn't want to call Houston, we have a problem, we messed up the toilet, he didn't have a lot of privacy, but he had something, he had a privacy curtain and the WCS had a pee hose to you. to pee and a toilet more or less so you can poop and we want to use the word poop, what do you want to poop?

Okay, we're not going to offend, so he circled a planet here. Okay, pee on the space shuttle. It was pretty quick and easy, the holes came with an accessory that you put in, which was a funnel, so everyone had their own. We didn't share funnels and it was in a little compartment and you would open the compartment and there would be the seven funnels and you would take the appropriate one and connect it to the urine collection hose and then turn off the system. What it does is create a small air flow to carry the liquid through the hose and into the tank and when that tank reached a level where it was full, we threw urine into space, it crystallized and more or less disappeared into the vacuum. of space, so it was okay to throw urine there if the sun was shining, who was shining through the thrown urine and the beauty was like a rainbow effect and that was a cool thing and when you were done you turned off the system, you removed the funnel , you cleaned it and placed it.

Back in its proper space, then you cleaned up a bit. The quickest way to do it was just a wet wipe. We had hand sanitizer. You could use a little bit of that because you don't want to spread any germs or anything like that. To be very cautious, after you gain a little experience, you can do other things like pee face down. This was a challenge given to me by a more experienced

astronaut

who said it is possible to urinate upside down. You should try it and you can just flip. I need to be a little more careful, you don't want to do that on the first day, you know you don't really want a hot dog, but it's possible to pee upside down, which is great.

I've done it too, people on the space station are a little different than what we had on the space shuttle, you still pee in a hose, but unlike these individual funnels, it's a big yellow one-size-fits-all funnel, but in the space station Recycles urine along with recycling sweat and condensation, all that water is collected and then cleaned, treated and reused, so as my friend Don Pettit says, today's coffee is tomorrow's coffee , defecating in space was very complicated because I don't really want to spoil this, this is our orbital latrine right here. I will show it to you, but you will see that it is quite small, so you must have a very good aim.

The key to this is as explained to us and I agree. there is the alignment next to our real shuttle bathroom in the simulator, we had a practice bathroom that was not for pooping, it was made to practice the alignment, this is actually one of NASA's deepest darkest secrets, we are going over here and this camera is pointed at you when you sat on this you had a television call circuit right here so you could see on the camera whether or not you were lined up with the target area you sat there like going on maybe like you think you're in a regular in a regular bathroom here and then you check that you're alive like whoa-ho, I go, we're close to where I want to be in this and when you line up perfectly, the idea was to try to memorize what that body position It was so in the front of this thing there was like a little platform to put your feet under, it's okay while you're sitting on this thing, but you can still, but you can still get out of the back and that's not good, so in To hold you down, but on the toilet seat we had these two little arms that would press you against the seat, actually to help me get the right position.

As I raised my arms like that, like I was riding a helicopter, I thought about Peter Fonda in a movie called Easy Rider which wasn't a good alignment for me, after you took care of business we had a couple of things to keep in mind . We had a mirror that they would train us to then take. There was velcro on the wall that we would take over. this mirror and then we put it behind us so that when we came out of the toilet we would see if anything was following us, if you know what I mean, that's fine, and if there was something following you, you would sit down and do what you think necessary to make sure that What I was following you from the seat stayed where I'm supposed to do.

Shake a little bit if you need to and then if things get out of hand, we have disinfectant wipes just to make sure we clean up here, number one. things can go all over the place if you don't aim correctly, the poop stayed in the toilet, we landed with all our poop and then the toilet was repaired once we got to the ground and sometimes people had botched the procedure. and so you broke the toilet and that's really bad if you break the toilet and you can't poop in the toilet on a space shuttle, the backup to that was what we called Apollo bags that had adhesive that you stuck to your butt, that's the way.

They pooped on Apollo they didn't have a regular toilet to use and that looked extremely disgusting so we didn't want to get into Apollo's bags and that was enough to scare you, you would make sure to do the procedure correctly. on earth cleanliness is very important what most of us do is take a shower every day brushing our teeth is very important brushing our teeth brushing our hair we need to shave but in space it is a little different water is a particularly resource on the space station and so we want to conserve what we have and a big shower would use that big amount of water so we really can't afford to do that so what we did in space and what the

astronaut

still does in space is you take more of a sponge bath where you have a washcloth that you put a little bit of water in and then you can put a little bit of soap on it and then soap yourself up.

This is our body wash, so there's soap inside here. We would fill it alone. like a drink bag like a valve on the top and we can squeeze out the liquid soap after adding water to it and then you would hang all those things to dry the ventilation system the air circulation will allow it to dry in the space the space is a problem, so the wipes we used were too tight on the space station, now they have ones that look almost like a hockey puck with the NASA fall in there, laundry is kind of cool, but you want to pack them as tight as possible . as you can and the towels we have these big fluffy towels that you can get on earth, that's what happens in space, they are generally thinner towels but quite absorbent, so they work very well, the use of water is very important for our life, to have clean water many places do not have a proper source of clean water, so we have this problem in space where we need to have water for living, drinking, hygiene and preparing food because many of our foods are dehydrated, so which adds a little. of water for them and so we have done a good job of learning how to recycle water effectively and be able to clean the urine and the water that we use for different things so that it is usable again and that is the type of technology that can be very useful and in parts of the world where getting clean water is a problem washing our hair usually requires a lot of water on earth but in space we use leave-in shampoo the Heron is there it has velcro if you wanted to put it down you could stick it to the wall and it has a piece of Kapton tape on top so it doesn't drip.

Kapton tape is a space approved tape, so what I did was add a little water to a cloth and then rinse with shampoo. and then make a good lather and then again take a towel and just dry my hair with the tile and it worked really well because you didn't have to rinse your hair that way you usually used your own washcloth and towel which was a bit of an item personal, yes, I shave like I shave on earth, I use shaving cream and a razor in the sink and that requires running water. You can do it in the space and they have a special shaving cream that you can use.

They call it star. edge and you can also use a razor, but then you have to do something with the cream and whiskers that come off. What I opted for was an electric shaver and the whiskers were contained in the unit itself and then you cleaned it. If you were to do it very carefully with a vacuum cleaner, we usually get a haircut pretty close to the time we fly into space on the space station, you'll be there for six months, so you have to worry about a haircut and So to go back to having an electric clipper that is connected directly to a vacuum cleaner so that as you create hair, it gets sucked right into the vacuum cleaner, things like dead skin cutting off your fingernails or toenails, you need to do those things close to the vent so it gets trapped in the vent and then you can clean it out.

This was a toothbrush that I took with me to space. NASA might provide you with the standard government toothbrush, but if you provide them with their own, they'll pack it up for you and fly it up and you could use it in space if you had a favorite toothbrush, so I saw this as an opportunity to do something fun, so I went out and bought this astronaut toothbrush to have in space and then NASA turned it into a space toothbrush by putting a piece of velcro in space you brush your teeth the same way you pretty much used a toothbrush. teeth and toothpaste and then you rinse your mouth, but then the question is what do you do with that stuff and there are two options you can be a spitter or a swallower, if you are a spitter, I felt like it was a little more complicated because you have to , you know, twist on a washcloth and deal with it, so what I do is just swallow the toothpaste space, sounds glamorous, right?

I wear contact lenses and I even go on space walks with my contact lenses, some guys didn't want to do that, but I always feel warm. I figured as long as it wasn't messing with my eyes I'd be fine, although there was a concern with The docks say we had clean hands when we put the contacts in so he had wipes and I guess you can use them on Earth too if you're worried . I didn't lose a contact in space. I felt very lucky to be caught doing laundry. on earth it is quite simple so we have machines that help us but in space it is different because we don't have much water in space it is difficult to wash clothes on the space shuttle we had a different shirt every day and we had a different pair of clothes inside every day and we had pants and shorts that we would wear for a few days, so we didn't do laundry, we just packed those things up once we put the shirt on and put them in some kind of clothing bin, but it was like a bag big and then those things would be returned to Earth and cleaned and returned to us clean on the space station, they sort of depend on the supply ships to bring them the new clothes, the dirty clothes will be packed up and put on a ship of supplies and it has been emptied of supplies and now it becomes a dumpster and those things will be burned under the entrance.

However, sometimes it smells bad in space. What you smell in the cabin space is usually each other when we land on the shuttle afterwards. This situation for a few weeks, the people opening the hatch would sniff this out and usually be the reaction, the more experienced recovery technicians would know in advance and be prepared for you to go into your space suit to walk in space. it becomes your individual spaceship, it doesn't come with its own bathroom, the rule was that on spacewalk days the two people going out on the spacewalk have first choice on the bathroom, you want it to take care of that as best as you can before you go out and then put your diaper on so it's astronaut proof a nice person who packs our things writes on the front on the diapers so we don't put them on inside out and then we put ourelegant refreshing garment and then we begin to dress with the rest of the space.

You know once you're locked in there you no longer have access to the bathroom, so if you're going to go, you're going to do it in the diaper and you're really discouraged from pooping in that thing because I really don't want those things getting loose in there and the diapers. They should work, but why take the risk when we were launching the space shuttle? We were also going to put on a diaper and when we got dressed, that's how you wanted it. use the bathroom in the crew quarters and then you put on the space suit with a diaper and go out to the launch pad now on the launch pad there is a bathroom, we call it the last bathroom on earth because you use it and then go into space, the last thing you do before you fly or go into a simulator where you're going to be stuck is go to the bathroom, it's part of the checklist, we have thermal screening so you're trying to stay cool while you're doing a spacewalk so no.

You will sweat profusely, but you will still move and sweat a little. One thing you learn in aviation as you go to different altitudes, things will expand, namely your stomach. I remember who was a Navy guy who was training us on this and he said your social graces go out the window when you're inside the plane, you know you might have some extra gas, so he said don't worry. so why don't I don't want my stomach to hurt, so the same thing happens in your spacesuit, but if you breathe into your spacesuit, you'll be the only one smelling it and you won't smell it, I think for future hygiene.

Of course, it will be important in space, it was a short-term problem. You know, you could hold all the poop for a couple of weeks on the space station. Now they have a better plan because you will be there for longer periods of time, but still. Proximity to Earth gives you some advantages. You can restock clothes. You can refill water. You can resupply a lot of the things you need because we are in low Earth orbit once we start moving further away from the planet. It's going to be harder to do that and replenishing isn't going to be as easy as it is now, so I think we're going to need a way to do laundry when we move away from our planet and we're going to need a way to do it that doesn't require a lot of water. and we can also contain a lot of bacteria germs that we try to go to the very healthy space, you have a quarantine period in advance so that you don't have to we have almost every imaginable medication available as far as hygiene, but eventually, as we get further away and Plus, that can be a bigger problem, in addition to containing some of the contaminating bacteria, if you are very far from Earth.

You'll have to figure that out on your own, so I think dealing with germs and cleaning and restocking will be a bigger issue as we move forward, where you'll have to carry all your toothpaste with you or find a way to make it. or something like that, so we have to think about these issues as you go.