Space Toilet

I am sure that you all have wondered, at least once in your life, how do astronauts go to the toilet up in space. In fact, it is one of the most frequently asked questions of NASA engineers!

Using the washroom is pretty easy down here on Earth Ð'- after all, we are blessed with the presence of gravity, which pulls our solid and liquid wastes dawn, away from us. But when there is no gravity, as it is up in space, body wastes just tend to float around.

Let's face it, when you're in a situation of zero gravity, where everything floats, the one thing you definitely don't want floating, is human waste.

Since there is no gravity to either hold a toilet bowl full of water in place or pull human wastes down, designing a toilet for zero-gravity was not an easy task.

Since 1950, scientists are trying to develop an easy solution to this problem. Before the invention of modern micro-gravity facility, they have been using couple of different simpler methods to satisfy this human need such as diapers and plastic bags with double-sided sticky tape that was stuck onto the buttocks. These primitive methods, however, proved unreliable, because of the problems that occurred when using them (wastes were still escaping and floating around the space ship, because zero gravity was not taken into account ).

The current Space Shuttle toilet is called the Waste Collection System. This is a toilet, that instead of with water, flushes with air. It sits in one tiny room ( only 75 cm wide ) in the middle of the crew compartment. A belt , that attaches the astronauts to the toilet, keeps them from floating off. The urinal is unisex Ð'- it works for both men and women. The system is basically a funnel attached to a flexible hose and wastes are sucked by flowing air. The toilet seat holds the users in the right position and makes it comfortable for them.

The hose of the seat is