So they don’t have to eat so much roughage.

mollwollfumble said:

So they don’t have to eat so much roughage.

*shakes head very slowly.

I believe the Apollo astronauts were put on a “low residue diet” for the duration of the mission and the week or so before.

Diarrhea is an abnormal condition that involves major fluid loss. So your astronauts would be drinking much more water than people without diarrhea, apart from anything else.

Bubblecar said:

Diarrhea is an abnormal condition that involves major fluid loss. So your astronauts would be drinking much more water than people without diarrhea, apart from anything else.

I could have said that but I chose to roll my eyes instead.

sarahs mum said:

Bubblecar said:

Diarrhea is an abnormal condition that involves major fluid loss. So your astronauts would be drinking much more water than people without diarrhea, apart from anything else.

I could have said that but I chose to roll my eyes instead.

:)

Bubblecar said:

sarahs mum said:

Bubblecar said:

Diarrhea is an abnormal condition that involves major fluid loss. So your astronauts would be drinking much more water than people without diarrhea, apart from anything else.

I could have said that but I chose to roll my eyes instead.

:)

Also metamucil is kinder than diarrhea. It doesn’t take up much room or much weight as a cabbage.

sarahs mum said:

Bubblecar said:

sarahs mum said:

I could have said that but I chose to roll my eyes instead.

:)

Also metamucil is kinder than diarrhea. It doesn’t take up much room or much weight as a cabbage.

There’s a lot of roughage (and protein) in fairly compact foods like dried peas.

That would be a no.

dv said:

That would be a no.

:)

OK, a “no” it is.

I was thinking about how the time on an American aircraft carrier between resupply is limited by the amount of food it can carry. Not by fuel.

Then there is the problem of carrying large amounts of food on a long mission such as that to Mars. Water can be recycled, or recovered from burnt fuel. In Apollo, their water was recovered from a fuel cell.

Also there the the problem of poos floating around the capsule in zero gravity, because there’s no reason it should do anything else, a jet of liquid would be easier to capture and expel.

On the Gemini mission, “Each crewmember was supplied with 0.58 kilograms of dehydrated food per day.” The shortest interplanetary mission, Mars Direct, would be 910 days. That’s half a ton of food per astronaut, when weight is critical. And that’s the shortest.

IIRC, the Apollo Astronauts had massive constipation issues after returning to Earth, but that’s fairly easy to overcome.

This link is interesting. It’s informative (eg. pictures of what the Russians ate on their early space missions) but condensed into a form suitable for high school teachers. https://www.nasa.gov/pdf/143163main_Space.Food.and.Nutrition.pdf

Forget any ideas about fully sustainable biospheres in space.

Gemini, put two astronauts side-by-side in a spacecraft, testing out the crucial maneuvers that would bring the Apollo spaceflyers to the moon. To show that humans could survive in space for two weeks, Jim Lovell and Frank Borman spent 14 days flying in Gemini 7, the longest manned mission at the time.

“They had no toilet in there,” Roberts said. “What they had was basically a plastic bag every time they had to do a No. 2.”

Space toilets didn’t become much more sophisticated by the time the first Apollo missions launched. Astronauts like Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong had fecal collection bags that stuck to their bottoms with adhesive when they had to go. And microgravity could make things messy.

“There’s a problem of separation,” Roberts said. “Whatever comes out of you doesn’t know it’s supposed to come away from you.” Each fecal collection bag came with a “finger cot” to allow the astronauts to manually move things along. Then they had to knead a germicide into their waste so that gas-expelling bacteria wouldn’t flourish inside the sealed bag and cause it to explode.

The entire ordeal often took 45 minutes to an hour to complete in the Apollo spacecraft, Roberts said. To minimize their bowel movements, astronauts had a high-protein, low-residue diet — think steak and eggs and other foods that are don’t make a lot of waste after they are absorbed by the body.

—

Shit ‘ey

I wonder how the gravity of the moon and Mars would affect bowel habits and the disposal of, could you use a normalish toilet

mollwollfumble said:

Also there the the problem of poos floating around the capsule in zero gravity, because there’s no reason it should do anything else, a jet of liquid would be easier to capture and expel.

Have you had diarrhea??
It’s not easy to capture, though it certainly is too easy to expel.

Lary said:

mollwollfumble said:

Also there the the problem of poos floating around the capsule in zero gravity, because there’s no reason it should do anything else, a jet of liquid would be easier to capture and expel.

Have you had diarrhea??
It’s not easy to capture, though it certainly is too easy to expel.

Thanks for keeping this thread alive.

I’m just starting to read Jim Irwin’s account of Apollo 15. “To rule the night”.

Heaps of parts of that book are worth quoting here. Both because of the humour aspects, and because of the very large number of potentially fatal problems. Often at the same time.

For instance, Apollo 15 landed on extremely uneven ground. So while Dave was saying “fundamental truth to our nature. Man must explore”, Jim was thinking “I’m going to fall on my ass in front of all those millions of television viewers”.

And the most useful tool in Apollo 15’s toolbox – duct tape. Used for everything from capturing hundreds of glass shards from a broken meter in the LEM, capturing loose food and loose screws, to repairing the damage to Jim’s spacesuit antenna.

But back to the topic. The Apollo 15 astronauts were on a low solids diet for three days prior to the flight. But still had to void as often as on ground, and do number ones more often, every hour or so. They hated doing number twos, starting with climbing down in the equipment bay and sticking the edges of a plastic bag around the relevant hole. There was no way to clean up properly, so they really really stank very quickly. The highlight of the day was opening the packet containing Jim’s scented soap.

mollwollfumble said:

Lary said:

mollwollfumble said:

Also there the the problem of poos floating around the capsule in zero gravity, because there’s no reason it should do anything else, a jet of liquid would be easier to capture and expel.

Have you had diarrhea??
It’s not easy to capture, though it certainly is too easy to expel.

Thanks for keeping this thread alive.

I’m just starting to read Jim Irwin’s account of Apollo 15. “To rule the night”.

Heaps of parts of that book are worth quoting here. Both because of the humour aspects, and because of the very large number of potentially fatal problems. Often at the same time.

For instance, Apollo 15 landed on extremely uneven ground. So while Dave was saying “fundamental truth to our nature. Man must explore”, Jim was thinking “I’m going to fall on my ass in front of all those millions of television viewers”.

And the most useful tool in Apollo 15’s toolbox – duct tape. Used for everything from capturing hundreds of glass shards from a broken meter in the LEM, capturing loose food and loose screws, to repairing the damage to Jim’s spacesuit antenna.

But back to the topic. The Apollo 15 astronauts were on a low solids diet for three days prior to the flight. But still had to void as often as on ground, and do number ones more often, every hour or so. They hated doing number twos, starting with climbing down in the equipment bay and sticking the edges of a plastic bag around the relevant hole. There was no way to clean up properly, so they really really stank very quickly. The highlight of the day was opening the packet containing Jim’s scented soap.

Space travel in reality seems messy and uncomfortable far cry for most space travel in movies, until we create artificial gravity its not going to get much better I imagine

• Space travel in reality seems messy and uncomfortable far cry for most space travel in movies, until we create artificial gravity its not going to get much better I imagine

Deep space travellers will need to voluntarily submit to having a colostomy bag attached…

Cymek said:

mollwollfumble said:

Lary said:

Have you had diarrhea??
It’s not easy to capture, though it certainly is too easy to expel.

Thanks for keeping this thread alive.

I’m just starting to read Jim Irwin’s account of Apollo 15. “To rule the night”.

Heaps of parts of that book are worth quoting here. Both because of the humour aspects, and because of the very large number of potentially fatal problems. Often at the same time.

For instance, Apollo 15 landed on extremely uneven ground. So while Dave was saying “fundamental truth to our nature. Man must explore”, Jim was thinking “I’m going to fall on my ass in front of all those millions of television viewers”.

And the most useful tool in Apollo 15’s toolbox – duct tape. Used for everything from capturing hundreds of glass shards from a broken meter in the LEM, capturing loose food and loose screws, to repairing the damage to Jim’s spacesuit antenna.

But back to the topic. The Apollo 15 astronauts were on a low solids diet for three days prior to the flight. But still had to void as often as on ground, and do number ones more often, every hour or so. They hated doing number twos, starting with climbing down in the equipment bay and sticking the edges of a plastic bag around the relevant hole. There was no way to clean up properly, so they really really stank very quickly. The highlight of the day was opening the packet containing Jim’s scented soap.

Space travel in reality seems messy and uncomfortable far cry for most space travel in movies, until we create artificial gravity its not going to get much better I imagine

I think they had some kind of vacuum operated toilet system on the shuttle. Seemed to work much betterer.

furious said:

• Space travel in reality seems messy and uncomfortable far cry for most space travel in movies, until we create artificial gravity its not going to get much better I imagine

Deep space travellers will need to voluntarily submit to having a colostomy bag attached…

Pretty much I think and all the others problems they are finding aren’t easily solved or perhaps you get paid danger money as compensation for possible increases in illness and disease

Cymek said:

furious said:

• Space travel in reality seems messy and uncomfortable far cry for most space travel in movies, until we create artificial gravity its not going to get much better I imagine

Deep space travellers will need to voluntarily submit to having a colostomy bag attached…

Pretty much I think and all the others problems they are finding aren’t easily solved or perhaps you get paid danger money as compensation for possible increases in illness and disease

Colostomy bag. I wish I’d thought of that.

> I think they had some kind of vacuum operated toilet system on the shuttle. Seemed to work much betterer.

Mary Roach in “Packing for Mars” tried out a vacuum operated toilet system.

One problems the Apollos had was voided urine freezing around the spacecraft. It was pretty, beautiful in fact, but it mucked up stellar navigation very badly.