🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <erd.05oy@kumiss.cmhnet.org> erd@kumiss.cmhnet.org (Ethan Dicks) writes:
>... the Skylab toilet was just a large outhouse in orbit.  The system
>was a very low tech, based on the astronauts filling up plastic bags and
>chucking them into the waste storage area.

Sorry, not correct:  the biomedical investigators wanted those bags,
complete with contents.  They weren't thrown out.

Besides, this misses the point.  *All* of these systems are basically
just aimed at collecting the wastes into a convenient form, which goes
into a holding area pending disposal (on the ground) or medical study.
The significance of the Skylab toilet was that it got solid wastes into
convenient bags quickly and reliably.  That is *not* easy, and it was
the big problem with the earlier stick-on-baggie scheme.

>The toilet on the shuttle was supposed to be a major breakthrough in
>orbital waste management.  The collected human byproducts were supposed
>to be dessicated in the vacuum of LEO and (devoid of significant volume)
>discharged into orbit.

Sorry, not correct.  The old shuttle toilet stores the solid wastes until
landing, when it is removed and cleaned out.  Urine is separated to be
dealt with differently (dumped, I think); this is what has been done by
all such systems, including the Skylab one.

The motive for the new design was that the old one, apart from being
noisy and unreliable, simply had a limited storage capacity.  The new
one basically goes back to the get-it-into-a-bag scheme, with the bags
dealt with (by storing them until landing) separately.
-- 
"God willing... we shall return."       | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
       -Gene Cernan, the Moon, Dec 1972 |  henry@zoo.toronto.edu  utzoo!henry