During a press conference Saturday, NASA engineer John Honeycutt, chairman of the Mission Management Team, asked about public fascination with the Orion toilet.
He said he understood the interest. “I think it’s kind of human nature to fixate on the toilet,” Honeycutt added. It’s not a mission risk, but if astronauts are actually camping in space, the current setup makes the whole situation a little more difficult. “I know we’re in good shape, but I really want it to be in the best shape it can be,” he said.
It should be noted that space toilets are difficult. Earth has plenty of water and gravity to aid the toileting process. In space, it’s more difficult. Apollo astronauts just used bags. The spaceship’s toilet broke down from time to time. There are four toilets on the International Space Station, which has more volume to work with and lots of recycled water, so it’s less of an issue.
Space toilets should finally work
This is not a trivial matter.
You can get rid of “grossness” when using the bathroom during trips to the moon. Getting to Mars, which requires months in space, is a different matter. If the toilet breaks on the way to Mars, the probability of the crew dying is non-zero. So it’s great to be able to test these systems now on Orion. That’s really the purpose of this test flight, to make sure the life support systems for the crew are working, identify problems and implement future fixes.
By and large, the Artemis II mission is going great. Debbie Cort, deputy manager of NASA’s Orion program, said Saturday that the spacecraft is “doing exceptionally well” and that the vehicle’s overall performance has “pleasantly surprised” engineers working on the program.
In fact, everything is going so well that most of the attention is focused on frozen urine. And given all the things that can go wrong on a perilous deep space journey like this, a small problem like this seems like a big win.
