Most of us, at some point in our lives, have wondered what it’s like to be an astronaut. Here is a talk that Chris Hadfield, a Canadian astronaut, gave at the Ontario Science Centre about one aspect of living in outer space: what to do when nature calls?
Toilets as we know them on Earth just don’t work without gravity. So, in space, they substitute rushing air, which creates a vacuum (as well as a breeze). This vacuum ensures that there’s nothing floating around in the spacecraft’s recycled air that is going to make the astronauts sick— that’s something that we can’t afford on any space mission, especially a long one.
Then what happens? Do you think that they just empty the reservoirs of human waste out into space? On the contrary— they deep freeze the waste by exposing it to outside temperatures, then send it off in its very own little unmanned spaceship back towards Earth, where it burns up in the atmosphere. Very tidy.
