yego.me
💡 Stop wasting time. Read Youtube instead of watch. Download Chrome Extension

How Do Bathrooms Work in Space? | StarTalk


2m read
·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]

More Articles

View All
Awesome Atmosphere SCIENCE!
Vsauce, are you leaning back right now? Of course, you’re not. But you will be soon, because a new episode of Vsauce Leanback has just been released, and to start it, click the link at the top of this video’s description. This week’s topic is really fun.…
Safari Live - Day 210 | National Geographic
This program features live coverage of an African safari and may include animal kills and carcasses. Viewer discretion is advised. Hello everyone, whoever you are in the world, and a very warm welcome to our sunset Safari Drive all the way from Masai Mar…
Continuity and change in American society, 1754-1800 | AP US History | Khan Academy
In 1819, American author Washington Irving published a short story about a man named Rip Van Winkle. In the story, Rip lived in a sleepy village in the Catskill Mountains of New York, where he spent his days hanging around the local tavern, the King Georg…
Worked example: Derivatives of sin(x) and cos(x) | Derivative rules | AP Calculus AB | Khan Academy
What we want to do is find the derivative of this G of X. At first, it could look intimidating. We have a s of X here, we have a cosine of X, we have this crazy expression here, we have a pi over cube root of x. We’re squaring the whole thing, and at firs…
Ray Dalio’s Warning: America is Headed Towards an Economic “Crisis”
We in a debt crisis, or are we headed for one? Um, we are at the… in my opinion, we are at the beginning of a billionaire investor Ray Dalio is warning about a $34 trillion debt-fueled tsunami that is about to strike the US economy. With each passing seco…
Putting a Species on the Map | Explorers Fest
[Applause] Thank you. Last time I was here in DC, I had the chance to be on stage. You know what I did? I came flying just like that. Many people have been asking me, do you still fly? The answer is yes, I fly every day, and I enjoy it. And the hope today…