While the Artemis II mission, and for purposes of this post I am operating under the assumption that they really went around the moon, is so far looking pretty successful for what it did (basically replicating what we did over 50 years ago), one area has not been as successful:
The toilets
Artemis II toilet fails again, forcing backup waste bags as odor spreads
In just a few short days of flight, the toilets have malfunctioned at least two and perhaps three times. In space no one can hear you poop….but they can smell it.
The Orion spacecraft’s toilet system has failed for the second time since the Artemis II crew launched toward the Moon, forcing astronauts to switch to backup waste collection bags while an odor spread through the cabin’s bathroom area. The repeat malfunction, which struck during the crew’s midcourse transit ahead of a planned lunar flyby, has turned a basic hygiene system into one of the mission’s most persistent headaches. For a flight designed to prove that humans can safely travel beyond low Earth orbit for the first time in more than half a century, the inability to keep a toilet running raises pointed questions about hardware readiness for longer missions to come.
Is it a coincidence that the most stunning and brave diverse crew ever is having problems with the potty? Sounds like a job for the The Wolowitz Zero-Gravity Waste Disposal System!
I don’t in any way assume that it is the fault of Captain Victor Glover despite his obsession with blaming Whitey for black failure (To Go Where No 2G Has Gone Before!). On paper Glover has a reasonably adequate background for an astronaut on this mission.
However I do suspect that the push at NASA to get more women and racial minorities into the ranks at all levels is at least a partial culprit in both the current crapper conundrum as well as the multiple delays involved in getting the Artemis missions in space. When the space race was under way, the U.S. had the best and brightest they could find working on the massive undertaking including a literal Nazi in Wernher von Braun, one of the key figures in getting us into space and to the moon.
In our more enlightened age your identity (race/ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation) is considered to be a valid and necessary qualification even for technical positions like those at NASA. Am I saying that NASA employs people who are less qualified than others because they check off a certain “oppressed” or “underrepresented” group and that furthermore that lowering standards in this way leads to clogged shitters in space?
Yes. Yes I am.
If we are to ever go to Mars it won’t be the result of a “diverse” NASA. A broken shitter is a problem on a short jaunt around the moon but on a trip to Mars? It could be fatal.
The nation that set her sights on landing on the moon was a serious nation and the men that got us there were the polar opposite of “diverse”.
The hype on this flyby is unbelievable. “Farthest man has ever gone.” Lol.
Yeah, I’d say this is the most over hyped basic bullshit since the COVID shots. I’m also sick of hearing people say we went back to the moon. Uh, no sugartits, we did no such thing, we did a flyby. At best. Kind of like when I drive the circumferential interstate around the city, so I can avoid all the bad neighborhoods where 2G’s do 2G shit. At least there’s no 2G’s on the moon, yet. It’s also pretty ridiculous how much this is being celebrated after (how many) years of delays and repeated failures to get a launch off. It almost feels like a consolation prize.
I too have drastically cut back in my readings on politics, FedGov, etc. for my sanity. I’m catching up on fiction of many genres.
Since this thread began with the Artemis II launch [possibly brought to you by a sound stage somewhere in Houston, TX] may I recommend the novel, “Artemis,” by Andy Weir.
Andy brought us “The Martian” and has a gift in making science interesting & relevant. “Artemis” has the science, plus an irreverent heroine who mouths off for shits & grins. Double entendres abound.
Try it! It beats trying to find an actual fact about this Iran/Israeli/fustercluck!
From what I understand from reading reports on this flight, the astronauts on this mission didn’t have to do any piloting of the Orion capsule for their moon flyby since their flight controls were automated.
They did/are doing a bit of manual “flying” in the return leg, but it is a 95% passenger cruise.
I was trying to explain to some Amish last night that this is considered a big deal but it is something we first did when I was a baby and haven’t been able to replicate since. It didn’t make any sense to them and that says a lot…
Backup baggies. Someone expected this.
Most expensive space tourism evah. Including vacation pictures and a bunch of ludicrous “firsts”.
the hoe clogged it up with you know what
That and the refusal to put their hair up so it isn’t floating in a giant halo around their heads
NASA has never been able to make the toilets work right. One of the reasons is how complicated they are. When defecating, the feces drop onto a spinning disk which is supposed to sling them against the inner liner, where they adhere and are freeze dried by exposure to the cold and vacuum of space. NASA wants to retain the residue to evaluate astronaut health, and other things.
You read that right, the $#!t hits the fan every time an astronaut takes a dump! They’ve been trying to get this to work for over 50 years. That’s why there was an easily accessible crow bar to unclog it. Your tax $$ at work.
Between Netanyahu and Trump’s war and diversity in space, I’ve found almost nothing worth reading in days. B-O-R-I-N-G!!! And meanwhile the youtubers are screaming it’s the end of the world as we know it, and we’re all going to starve (no phosphate fertilizer!) and no one is buying all the over priced and heavily electronic new cars. Ho hum. I’ve been reading cheap and crappy fiction and fantasy instead – much more entertaining.
I’m mostly listening to music, and spending time at my test match repairing a few odds and ends. I’ve really gotten burned out on the day to day discourse online lately. Still posting a bit here and there, but putting in minimal effort.
* test BENCH. FFS, the random shit autocorrect inserts defies all comprehension.
One can only take in so much news and politics in today’s clown world.
I am rereading older fiction, new stuff is mostly just crap
Hey! Those “Official NASA BWCBs” (Back-up Waste Collection Bags) will come in handy by adding to the mountains of poop that will now be needed in place of the lack of phosphate fertilizers.
Of course, if dropping a deuce in public contributed to the propagation of lush fields of green leafy veggies, India would be the world’s greatest net exporter of agricultural products. ‘Cause, they all dump there–four times a day, every day. “Hey, Pajeet! Wanna eat? Then drop a dump at your feet!”
Though, Pajeets–being Pajeets–will take the short cut and simply eat the poop raw. Why wait months to turn it into cabbages?
This won’t be “Catch and Release,” this will be “Release and Catch.”
The memes will be writing themselves tonight!
Looking forward to Jeets…..In…..Spaaace! Since they can’t seem to avoid being hit by trains, space flight should be a breeze
Now what would be really funny is, if they played fart sounds constantly in behind the mission control conversations with the capsule.
Heh, that reminds me of something from way back. Before internet (early 90’s) there was this televangelist name Robert Tilton. Typical flim flam artist always on TV begging for money. He would make some rather strained facial expressions during his beg-a-thons. Anyway, someone compiled about 20-30 mins of the best of this footage and overdubbed random flatulence sounds (that were selected to match his expression) and distributed videotapes of it. My one older cousin somehow got a copy, which we watched once at a family get together. I believe all present were in tears from laughing so hard, by the time the tape ran out.
Ok, I should’ve checked before I posted that last comment. YouTube has clips of this video available, if you want some good old fashioned sophomoric entertainment. Because of course they do. Just search for “Robert Tilton farting”. The Lord works in mysterious ways.
Pastor Gas! I love it! There are many so-called televangelists flatulating on JooTube and I’ve watched them many repeatedly.
When I was still in corporate America there was a girl we worked with, very sweet and um…..nicely endowed…but not very smart so one of my buddies put a little fart noise maker behind her monitor and would set it off randomly. She finally called the IT help desk, we could all hear her, and the laughter gave us away.
Yeah, this is a fail. But if that’s the worst of it? I’d take that ride.
It really was a ride, my understanding is that very little “piloting” went on and it was mostly them being passengers while mission control steered the vessel
Why didn’t they just use the same toilet that they used for the successful moon landings? Why reinvent toilet?
They forgot how. Just like all the other technology they “lost” from the original moon missions, which is why this entire spectacle has been an exercise in reinventing the wheel. All the Nazi rocket scientists are dead, and even if they weren’t, NASA would no longer employ them in clown world.
It’s maybe worse. I’ve been told three black women handled all the orbital calculations that made the moon landings (and returns) possible. Maybe they retired.
Or maybe they were just hidden.
Figures.
Perfect. You have no idea how much I was hoping someone would take the setup and run with it.
You can always count on me, BRD.
They didn’t have a toilet for the Apollo missions. They had bags to shit into. I think the astronauts called them “ass-hats.” The first US spacecraft to have a toilet was the shuttle.
Kinda sad they had toilets figured out on the shuttle only to screw it up on the Orion capsule.
Let me get this straight, an space vehicle filled with the latest life sustaining technology to ensure human survival to an trip around the Moon and back to Earth, radiation shielding, atmosphere scrubbers, telemetry, etc…and the terlet fails?!! Then for good measure an perfect Nutella product placement. If pinheads can’t see they are participating in an real life version of the Truman Show they deserve all that is coming to them.
Get this. Toilets are a space age thing. Most of the world doesn’t have them and I think they’ve just been invented so it’ll take sometime to perfect them.
I am sure the eventual Mars missions are going to be great
This series of events, the onset of WWIII, a so-called historic space mission, domestic unrest, and political turmoil…..anyone remember the movie 2010: The Year We Make Contact?
More like “2026: the year we have one touching cloth”. Partly because we had to hold it, since the toilet was broken. But mostly because anyone who’s lived to see the events of this year is gonna shit.
Anyone notice the pattern of government built latrines not working? First we had the toilets out of commission on the Ford, and now the toilet on the rocket got jacked up. They just can’t get shit right.
Ha! That is a very logical argument on why India will never have a manned space program.
I can see a cheaply built spacecraf full of pajeets radioing Mission Control, “Bangalore, we have a problem”.
No! Think this through. The Pajeets-On-The-Moon launch will entail 100% solid & liquid recycling.
It seems that curry can make even shit palatable; just look at Indyyyyyyyaaaaa!
100% human waste recycling saves huge weight concerns in both food and water.
Those Indians! SO clever!
[Note to self: skip the chocolate pudding dessert option in Google HQ’s cafeteria!]
Pajeets will never make it to the moon (without riding the coattails of White men) because:
1. They cannot write code for shit, and therefore will never be able to produce a decent guidance system.
2. They obviously cannot hope to pilot the ship manually either; have you seen them drive?
use pajeet truckdrivers- they’re all gonna hit something sooner or later
I can only imagine my crestfallen face if you told me in 1st grade that we wouldn’t get anywhere near the moon again until I was in my 50s and that the crapper kept breaking in a week long fly by
Google the “Portland Loo,” a “single” use (well…..DUH) toilet built at $96,000 per unit. All of them are now useless, broken, covered in urine, feces and…….other…..liquid substances, so repellent that any self-respecting housefly would not land on them for fear of contracting a disease.
Trust government to find the most expensive non-solution to the problem of public hygiene/sanitation, then order the “fix” by the fuck-ton (someone’s B-I-L is making a killing here).
Our gov’t at work–fucking we, the taxpayers wherever and whenever they can. Meaning, daily.
They should have used prison toilets and sinks. Prison mirrors too. They are made for the kind of psychos who live there.
Think how long we jettisoned the booster rockets into the ocean before Space X finally figured out how to land them.