THE PERSONAL BIT

When humans are cooped up in a spacecraft for a week or two, they pose a potential waste and hygiene problem that has to be dealt with, just as much as guidance, propulsion or power. In the Apollo era, individual astronauts who were not on a specific flight assignment were regularly sent to do the public-relations rounds on NASA’s behalf to show the American taxpayer how their money was being spent. Mike Collins, the CMP for Apollo 11, reported that the all-time favourite question asked of the astronauts by the public was, "How do you go to the bathroom in space?” He answered the question in his autobiography by detailing the 20 steps a crewman had to accomplish to urinate during the Gemini 7 flight by Borman and Lovell.

On Apollo, a crewman had multiple ways to urinate depending on whether he was suited or not and whether he preferred to simultaneously dump the urine into space.

If he was suited, urine would be collected by a device worn under the suit which filled until the crewman had an opportunity to dump its contents overboard; a valve in the suit enabled the bag to be drained while suited. However, wearing a suit was not the norm over the span of a mission. Instead, the crew spent most of the coasting period wearing at least their constant-wear garments, and perhaps some coveralls. Urina­tion then required the use of a roll­over tube and a short hose that led to a bag. The contents of this bag could be dumped later, or be dumped even as the crewman was filling it, with a bypass valve to protect him from the direct vacuum of space. The exterior of the command module sported two nozzles, one each for the dumping of waste water or urine, both heated to prevent the formation of ice which would block the orifices. When the liquid was dumped into space, it sprayed into a gleaming cascade of ice crystals that sparkled in the

sunshine. At a press conference. Wally Schirra dubbed this starry display, the "Constellation IJrion". a play on Orion.

Whereas urine could be expelled from the spacecraft, faeces had to be kept on board and returned to Earth for analysis. Defecation was carried out into a bag whose adhesive flange allowed the crewman to attach it to his buttocks. Having finished his motion, the bag was removed and a germicidal sachet added. Once the bag was sealed, the sachet was ruptured and mixed with the contents by kneading. However, this degree of seal was considered inadequate because the bag contained air at cabin pressure and there was every chance the cabin might be depressurised. Indeed, a spacew alk out of the command module’s hatch was planned on the final three missions. Therefore the faecal bag was placed in an outer bag with double seals to ensure that the contents would, hopefully, remain there, even when the cabin was exposed to vacuum. However, the Apollo 16 crew’ had their doubts.

"Our concern was that with cabin depressurisation. the bag w’ould blow7 up." said Ken Mattingly during their debriefing.

John Young agreed. “Boy, would that have been a mess!"

This crew had placed their double-sealed faecal bags into a large black bag to keep them contained, but Mattingly wanted to get as much air out of the bag as possible. "I vented the bag to make sure that the big bag didn’t burst. That had nothing to do with the little bags. As far as 1 know-, none of them burst. I didn’t open the bag to find out either!"

"fortunately, you can’t really get an airtight seal on those faecal bags." said Charlie Duke. "That probably saved us. I’m sure they went down. We filled up that black bag.”

The truth was that this crew, and probably others, did not particularly like carrying their solid waste around with them in the command module. At least the LM crew’ had to lighten their ship by jettisoning their waste, including any faeces. Mattingly continued. "I guess the rationale for using the supplementary bag first was a holdover from the desire to be able to throw it aw’ay. which we weren’t allowed to do for other reasons, but I really think that’s what you should do.’’

"You should have been in the LM when we got rid of it." said Young.

"I just don’t think you ought to carry that stuff around, if you can avoid it. I think it’s a health problem if you ever get some of that stuff loose in there."

In fact. Apollo 16 was given some preliminary research to do in support of the upcoming Skylab programme. Duke was first to try one of these experiments. “The first time I had to go was right after w aking up on the first day. Ken broke out one of those Skylab bags, and I tried that the first time. I thought it w orked pretty good. Once you performed the task, the clean up was still as horrendous as ever."

While on his own in lunar orbit. Mattingly got the task of dealing with human bodily functions down to a fine art. When his crcwmatcs returned, he told them all about it. "Man. one of the feats of my existence the other day was, in 42 minutes. I strapped on a bag. went out of both ends, and ate lunch," he laughed, "by doing it all at one time."

"Fantastic," said Duke. "That’s a record!"

"I had this bag on the front end. a plastic bag on my rear, and a juice bag in my mouth,” laughed Mattingly. “That’s the only chance I had all day; with one backside pass.”

Mattingly’s mirth continued. ‘T used to want to be the first man to Mars. This has convinced me that, if we got to go on Apollo. I ain’t interested.”

The bags used on Apollo were the same as used on the Gemini spacecraft. Their design included a moulded finger tube. The theory was that the crewman could use it to help dislodge any faeees adhering to their skin. Young and his crew did not like it. "I still don’t see any use for that finger in the bag,” he said during their debriefing.

“That was one thing I w’as going to add.” said Duke. “You want to get that finger out of there.”

“Get the finger out of there to keep the faeces from hanging up.” affirmed Young, "which it does every lime the finger’s in the way. All that’s going to do is give you a bigger cleanup problem than you already got.”

Mattingly agreed: “I tried doing it the w’ay they suggested pulling the finger thing out first and then use it afterwards. All that does is smear. Absolutely no advantage to it. It looks to me like you could simplify the bag and remove one more potential weak spot in it by just deleting that whole [finger] thing.”

Frankly, doing a ’number two’ on Apollo was no joke. According to Duke, “Our technique w’as to abandon the [lower equipment bay] to whoever had to go. get naked, and go. Thai was about a 30- to 45-minute task.”

Apollo ll’s Buzz Aldrin had come to a similar conclusion after his flight. ”It certainly is messy and it’s distasteful for everybody involved to do it in that particular fashion.”

On the later, longer flights, the crew’s were Finding that towards the end. they were becoming more prone to bowel problems. Apollo 17‘s Jack Schmitt pointed out the dangers. ’’The best thing you can do is to work out some prevention of loose stools rather than trying to handle them. Loose stools is one of the major hygiene, sanitary and operational problems that you can have on a flight. I can’t emphasise that more. If it happened on a daily basis, you would eventually cut the efficiency of the crew’ member as much as 30 per cent. I think it’s important to try to understand why Apollo 17 was different than Apollo 16 in the delay of the problem ofloose stools till about the eleventh or twelfth day."

Faecal bags were stored in a container on the right-hand side of the cabin. In case of leakage or burst bags, there w’as a vent with which any odorous air could be expelled overboard.