NASA needs you to complete the Space Poop Challenge and help your astronauts go where they have not gone before.
“- Give me a napkin, quickly! shouts Apollo 10 commander Tom Stafford. “There is a turd floating in the air.”
“This is not mine,” answered the pilot of the module team, John Young.
- And not mine, - confirmed the pilot of the lunar module, Jean Cernan.
- It definitely doesn't look like mine. Drop her away. God Almighty! “Stafford said and all three laughed.”
This is not a scenario of a space comedy, but a real transcript of a conversation between the NASA crew of 1969 about escaped feces while they were in zero gravity on their way to the Moon. It is also one of the earliest historical references to the fact that the main bodily function represents a huge and potentially dangerous challenge in outer space.
The orbital restroom of the International Space Station is located in light-years from the problem with the waste that the Apollo-10 crew encountered. But when NASA sends astronauts to research the solar system (think how many days they can get stuck in their spacesuits), how will our space pilot maintain such distances? It turns out that the US space agency is not quite sure that the astronaut will cope with such a delicate situation. Therefore, they offer a reward of $ 30,000 to someone who develops a special system that solves this problem.
“The National Aeronautics and Space Administration of the United States (NASA) is looking for proposals to address the fecal, urine and menstrual control systems, which will be involved in the crew’s traveling outfits with a continuous duration of up to 144 hours,” NASA writes. “Such a system would be useful in case of unforeseen circumstances or tasks with a long execution time.”
It turns out that NASA is looking for a super high-tech diaper that astronauts can wear when they are away from the station’s closest toilets for up to 6 days.
“In the end, when he presses you, there’s nothing to do. And sometimes you have to be emptied in a complete vacuum, ”they cheerfully explain on the HeroX website, which offers the award. But, as they say in the “Space Poop Challenge” - the problem is not at all joyful. If on the Earth to go to the toilet - it's easier than ever, then in space there are difficulties. First of all, it concerns hygiene. The space station uses a directional air flow through a special device to solve the problem, which sucks all waste from the astronauts' body (and from the station air) and compresses them in a vacuum to kill pathogenic microorganisms.
But miniaturization of a system that could perform the same functions and at the same time free the hands of cosmonauts could significantly simplify the matter. In addition, the system must complete the task in 5 minutes.
Although a lot of time has passed since the Apollo problem, going to the toilet is still a difficult problem to solve. And before we send astronauts beyond the limits of near-Earth orbit, we still have a lot of questions about the toilet. Therefore, do not ignore the NASA award. Perhaps you know the solution?
