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.