Want to know how you’d die in outer space?

You’d be unconscious in 15 seconds, and would die a few minutes later from lack of oxygen. You’d also be radiated and frozen, but that would happen later, so you wouldn't notice it much. Cuz, you'd be dead.

I know this because I read the NPR article, “Boil, BurnOr Explode? How You Die In Space?” Ooh, and here’s a fun video about it!

IMPORTANT SCIENCE NEWS

Did you know that astronauts drink their own recycled urine? They have to! Where else are they going to get water?

Anyway, the International Space Station (ISS) is going to get a new coffee-maker. And its nickname is the ISSpresso.

But since the coffee maker's water will come from recycled urine, I think they should call it the PISSpresso.

BOOM Urine joke!

And hey, if a British astronaut collects the pee for another pot of coffee, he’d be "taking the piss”! (That’s British slang for “teasing/fooling someone.”) 

Space Barf and the Garn Scale

Jake Garn-top right.

Did you know that astronauts can suffer from “spaceadaptation sickness”? It affects 50% of astronauts to varying degrees. 

The nauseous and barfy signs of space sickness are ranked on the “Garn scale.” It’s named after Jake Garn, who flew aboard the Space Shuttle in 1985 and apparently experienced the maximum level of space barfing ever known to humankind.

And FYI, one "Garn" is the highest level of space barf-ery!

Ad Astra, Victor Glover!

Victor Glover is a former Navy pilot who just became an astronaut. As part of his application process, he was asked to write a poem about the experience of becoming an astronaut. Here’s what he came up with:

“Eyes fixed gazing off into space
My mind in awe of the human race
This is all dizzying to me
Because I gave so much blood and pee
Happy to be here (by the) colonoscopy place.”

Victor Glover, we salute you! (Story via.)

In outer space, your feet will make you scream!

Right now, your skin cells are dying and falling off of you. But because of gravity, you don’t even notice (most of the time!). But astronauts living in zero gravity don’t get this luxury!

As Megan Garber writes:

In space, however, there is no gravity to pull the dead cells (technically: the detritus) away. Which means that the detritus, left to its own devices, simply floats. Which, given the fact that multiple astronauts live on the Space Station at the same time, and the fact that even highly trained space travelers might get skeeved out by floating clouds of dead skin, is less than ideal.

So as the astronaut says: "This cloud, this explosion of skin particles -- detritus -- floats out. And you're in this weightless environment, and the particles have nowhere to go but out."

Ever wonder how Russians pee in outer space? You're in luck!

Want to know what it's like to barf in outer space?

A Kick in the Astronaut!

Discover magazine has a posting that shares news of a scientific study of astronaut farts. But what kills me is that they posted a photo of an unnamed astronaut to go along with it.

Uncool! Why did this guy get picked? Sure, he looks like he might enjoy his meat loaf. And yes, now that I think about it, he does look like he's crop-dusting. But still!

Make a wish on burning astronaut underwear!

I’m guessing you already knew there was an International Space Station circling the Earth. It’s been up in orbit for over ten years, and it’s pretty awesome except for ONE thing:

NO LAUNDRY.

Because astronauts can’t wash their clothes, and because it costs so much money to launch clothes into space, astronauts usually wear their underwear for three or four days. 

After that, they’d put the dirty grundies into a dirty-underwear space capsule (really). Once full, this capsule would be ejected from the ISS, and would descend to Earth, where it would burn up in the atmosphere.

So it’s possible that at some point you’ve wished upon a shooting star that was actually burning astronaut underwear.

Oops, almost forgot to tell you: After all that time of wearing dirty underwear, the astronauts finally got a laundry machine. Yes! 

Photos from NASA and evosia.

"Welcome home, Comrade!"

"Well, THAT'S not good."

In 1967, a Russian named Vladimir Komarov dropped in from outer space and crash-landed into Earth. The above photo shows what was left of him afterwards.

Komarov was a Russian astronaut (or “cosmonaut”). And as his spaceship fell, U.S. listeners could hear him "cursing the people who had put him inside a botched spaceship."

The complete story from Robert Krulwich is fascinating and quite sad. Check it out over at NPR.

Photo by RIA Novosti/Photo Researchers Inc.

Pee is pretty! (Spaceships made of poop? Not so much.)

I just read a great article about space poop and pee by Steve Mirsky. In it, astronaut James A. Lovell said living in a space capsule is like living in an airtight Porta-Potty, because you can’t open a window to get ventilation!

So astronaut farts have long lives! But astronaut pee is not such a big problem. To get rid of it, astronauts can do a “urine dump.” That’s what they call pumping pee into the freezing blackness of outer space.

Author Mary Roach writes, “These flash-frozen droplets, illuminated, would look like this silvery snowstorm. I think three different astronauts mentioned how beautiful the urine dump was.”

But if the astronauts were going for a REALLY long trip, they wouldn’t dump their pee. They’d need it for drinking! Recycling and drinking pee already happens on the International Space Station. Just filter the salt and nasty tastes out of the pee and drink it…again and again and again!

Being in outer space exposes people to radiation. So astronauts need radiation shields, and it turns out that food (and poop!) can do that job! Mary Roach says that as a spaceship flies to Mars, astronaut food could line the inside of the space module.

As the astronauts bust grumpies, they would save their poop. These logs would be put into a device that bakes the poop into tiles. And for the trip back from Mars, you’d line the interior of the spaceship with the poop tiles!

Or as Roach put it, “So you’d fly to Mars in a can of food, and then you’d fly home in a can of poop.”

ADDITION: Astronaut poop has another cool use! Look at this: “First UN Satellite Hopes to Turn Astronaut Poop Into Power Supply”

Article from Scientific American,
top photo by Sam Howzit,
license plate by Eddie-S.

Fart-Propelled Astronauts?

"Whoa!"

Imagine this: You're in a space ship orbiting the Earth. Then you hear the astronaut beside you pass some gas.

Dude— It stinks!

And it's going to keep on stinking FOREVER! Or at least until you get back to Earth. I mean, you can't open up a window for some fresh air...unless you want to get sucked into outer space.

Not only that, but farting in a space ship could be dangerous. Many farts have methane in them, and methane is flammable!

"Touching Snoopy's nose
will keep my methane low."

That's why the U.S. government once employed a full-time "flatus researcher." Since flatus is a fancy word for farts, that means this scientist was a fart expert. And this expert discovered that about half of all people don't have any methane in their bombs. That's right, they could eat a big bowl of beans and not have any dangerous gas!

So Murphy suggested to NASA that only astronauts with safe farts should be allowed to go into outer space. NASA didn't listen, though. Instead, it just stopped sending beans and cabbage as food for them.

Now imagine this: You're still in orbit. And you're weightless and floating in zero-gravity. There's a large amount of gas in your butt. What if you force it out? Could you be propelled by your own fart across the space ship? To find out, read or listen to Robert Krulwich's fine report on the matter at NPR.

Top sketch by Robert Krulwich,
Snoopy picture from NASA,

2001 picture from IMDB.

How do you go to the bathroom in outer space?

Behold...the Space Potty!

The first challenge facing an astronaut is that the hole of the Space Potty toilet seat is four inches. This is MUCH smaller than the 16-inch opening you're used to. That means you can't just bust your grumpies...you have to AIM your grumpies!

Ah, but what if you're not sure if your poop chute is sitting OVER that four-inch hole? That's why they put a camera in the toilet! You turn on the TV monitor in front of the toilet to see what's on...and what's on is your butt!

As a toilet training expert says, "Alignment is important." But here's the thing...if you're going to poop in outer space, getting aligned is only the FIRST step. There are 28 other things you have to do before you take a dump!

Since you're in zero-gravity, you have to strap yourself down before taking any backdoor action. Also, you're almost certainly going to pee when you poop, so you need a separate hose for that!

Want to learn more? Of course you do! So go to this link for the full training video on going to the bathroom in outer space. (Or check out an article on the topic here.)

Painting by Scott Listfield.

Alien Poop from Outer Space!

Going poop in outer space isn’t easy…there’s no gravity!

And in Mary Roach’s cool book, Packing for Mars, I learned a new, gross term that has to do with this. It’s called “fecal popcorning.” (The word fecal relates to feces, or poop!) The astronauts used the term fecal popcorning to describe the sound that their poop made as it bounced off the walls of the space-toilet. It sounded like the popcorn in an air-pop machine!

Two other things I’ve learned: Space researchers needed to do a lot of experiments with vomit for times when the astronauts would blow chunks in outer space. To do this they didn’t use actual vomit, but they needed a vomit-like substance. So they used Progresso vegetable soup.

Oh, and during the Apollo 10 space mission in 1969, an alien snuck aboard the module! How else to explain what happened when astronaut Thomas Stafford saw a chunk of poop float by in the weightless cabin.

“Who did it?” Stafford asked.

“I didn't do it,” answered astronaut John Young. “It ain't one of mine.”

“I don't think it's one of mine,” said astronaut Eugene Cernan.

Ah, but if NONE of the astronauts pooped the poop, there’s only ONE explanation for who did it!

Alien photo from here.

Houston, We Have a Gas Problem

An author named Mary Roach has a new book out called Packing for Mars. In it, she talks about NASA and our attempts to get to Mars. And Roach ALSO writes about a lot of gross stuff! For instance, if humans are to survive on long space flight to Mars, they have to recycle ALL liquids…including urine. And after pee is purified, Mary Roach says it tastes pretty good! “I will tell you sincerely and without exaggeration that the best part of lunch today at the NASA Ames cafeteria is the urine.”

One of the worst parts of space travel is how the space capsule goes from smelling like a gym locker to a toilet pretty fast. The astronauts could barely stand it!
For example, when Apollo 16 went to the moon in 1972, you would think the astronauts would have been psyched. But sitting in the lunar module looking out at infinity, astronaut John Young despaired, “I got the farts again. I got ’em again. I don’t know what the hell gives them to me.”

And everyone else despaired too, because there was no way to turn a fan on and get those farts out of the lunar module!

Ooh, one more gross thing: Normally when you drink a carbonated drink, you burp out the gassy bubbles. But in zero-gravity, the bubbles DON’T rise to the top of your stomach...but they still want to get out of your tummy! That meant that when astronauts drank carbonated drinks like Coke, they would burp and blow chunks at the same time.