How Do Bathrooms Work in Space? | StarTalk

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·Nov 11, 2024

We're talking about life aboard the International Space Station featuring my interview with a guy who was there for nearly a year, Scott Kelly. I had to ask Scott the question that we all want to know the answer to: how do bathrooms work in space?

Check it out.

"The zero-g toilets, they worked okay for you?"

"Very complicated toilet, and it works pretty well."

"Why should it be complicated?"

"Uh, you know, you got to separate the air from the urine before it's sent to a tank that the whole toilet system..."

"Oh, the system that... and some of the urine?"

"And you know, usually when I talk about the toilet, I'm also talking about the water processor recovery system that turns our urine into drinking water. So it's a pretty sophisticated thing."

"Yeah, just emotionally that just sounds nasty."

"Yeah, yeah, like I drank my pee for a whole year."

"Right, right. Does he actually drink everyone's pee?"

"Exactly, all mixed together."

"What happens to all that? It's not the H2O from the urine. What happens to that?"

"It's put into a container and then we eventually, when that tank fills, we put them into smaller tanks, send them down to the Russian segment. They put them in the Progress, their resupply ship, and eventually that burns up in the atmosphere. Then that tank will eventually come back with urine in it. We put an entire system; we turn it into water eventually."

Brian Wit: "So what burns up in the atmosphere?"

"The whole Progress, a whole spaceship."

"Okay, so that spaceship is designed... it's your garbage disposal system?"

"Exactly. Didn't know that, and that is a critical resource. The ability to get garbage off of a spaceship is something that is not simple."

"So, what are you doing? It made me thirsty." [Laughter] [Music]

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