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Comment by asdff | Hacker News Reader

Seems like a big issue is I'm guessing insistence on having this be a solo operation for cultural reasons. Seems like it would be easy with two astronauts. Have the one bend over and spread the cheeks wide with both hands, the other basically does the hand in the dog poop bag trick right as the poop is coming out and wipes them up after. No worse than what a nurse does every day for work.

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Perhaps nurses would be a better pool of astronaut candidates than test pilots.

I remember seeing a Russian space toilet when they had it set up in the powerhouse museum in Sydney. It looked like a booth with a vaguely pubic area shaped vacuum attachment designed to be unisex. I stared at it for some time trying to work out how it worked. The Apollo system seems horrendous!

IIRC from the book " packing for mars" the American man astronauts begged NASA to provide them with diapers at some point, which is what women astronauts got, because the earlier male-only system was a sort of sucking condom which was incredibly bad.

This really tells you how "bad masculinity" pervaded everything. I'm speaking of the designers here, not the astronauts. Why not a diaper also for male astronauts from the beginning? Isn't manly enough? Does it show weakness, like a toddler or an old dying man?

I think the designers just didn't think of it.

Women also started with a feminized version of the uncomfortable device and then switched to diapers, and then men followed.

It's possible there were no women on the design team but I don't think it's a case of bad masculinity.

I don't think that having or not having women in the design team is the key here. IMO it's more about how men perceive how men should be.

Honestly replacing gravity with negative air pressure might have been the ideal solution

But I know that air is also a limited resource on space so it can't be solely an "airline-like system"

(Also discarding it "outdoors" might be the best solution in the end)

Space debris would have an additional meaning.

I'd take it over chasing a floating turd around and cleaning up the mess all over the walls.

I’ve always wanted to be an astronaut, but yeah… pass.

Weird a silicon-like pants that strapped up so there was no leaks (like fisherman’s pants), that has a vacuum you attach (almost catheter style) isn’t used. Actually now that I think about it, it’s weird that astronauts aren’t using catheters 24/7!

I mean this has also been a problem for fighter pilots as well. The "piddle packs" for F-16 pilots are implicared at least one crash due to the complexity of using them.

[1] https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-03-23-me-542-st...

To be fair they're pretty easy to use as long as you don't have to fly an airplane at the same time...

[1] (NSFW lyrics!) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jd9_RffdmBA

F16 pilot on radio with airliner.

Doing barrel roll, twist and speed up - radio to airliner „see buddy can you do that?”

Airliner „wait a moment” - some time passes nothing happens - airliner „hey buddy you seen that?” - f16 „what? Nothing happened” - airliner „I went to toilet on the back, took dump, made myself a coffee and strolled back to cockpit”.

Forget about pee, I always wondered about fighter pilots in one of those long, multi-hour flights, what happens if they really need to go number 2? I suppose they self-select as people without this kind of problems, but it can happen to anyone really.

I suppose in an emergency they just shit their pants, but I wonder what the ground crew says when they touch down.

Honestly this isn't something people select for at all--by the time you've made it through that many rounds of selection you aren't going to let GI issues keep you from the finish. I've heard of some creative solutions to the problem involving safing the ejection seat and getting out of your gear, but I don't really believe any of them. If you think it's a significant risk, you basically have two options: talk to the squadron flight surgeon and get medically grounded, or wear a diaper. Almost everyone is too proud to do either of those things, so a number of pilots have call signs related to shitting themselves in flight. Yes, everyone will make fun of you after the fact--if you're a decent person, you'll at least clean out the cockpit yourself.

I suppose you could avoid eating hours before a mission, and not eat gassy foods.

I wonder if hunger can affect your focus and reflexes though.

If missing a meal causes that, I suspect we would have died out as a species long ago.

The context is piloting a fighter aircraft in a multi-hour combat mission though. I think missing meal might matter for mission critical, uh, missions.

I'm not talking doing menial work while skipping lunch.

A full gut makes you sleepy and lethargic, as the blood moves to your gut to help digest. There's a reason many societies have a siesta after lunch.

A full belly can causes problem if you get wounded.

Besides, I doubt our ancestors went on the hunt with full bellies. I go jogging, but never after a meal.

If I'm busy, I also do not notice being hungry, even if I haven't eaten in 16+ hours.

One more thing. I hitched a ride with autocross racer. While I was strapped in tight, when he'd make a hard turn my guts would slosh over to the side, which was rather painful. The fix was to bear down hard on my abdominal muscles. I expect it would be much worse with a full belly, and a fighter pilot is going to be pulling lots of g's.

Oh, believe me, I know about the need for siestas.

But surely there's a middle ground between "heavy lunch" and "skipping lunch entirely" for a multi hour combat sortie?

Many people cannot focus (especially over long periods of time) on an empty stomach.

> If I'm busy, I also do not notice being hungry, even if I haven't eaten in 16+ hours.

Combat sorties are hours of boredom where you have to keep attention just in case, followed by an explosion of frantic action. Unless you're a combat pilot I'd say your experience doesn't apply here?

I'm not a combat pilot, but my dad was. Flying over enemy territory requires constant alertness, for many hours at a stretch. You can be attacked at any time, by flak or enemy fighters, who love to catch an enemy napping.

A favorite Luftwaffe tactic was to come up from behind, catch the tailgunner unawares, and rake it with cannon fire and get an easy kill. If the tailgunner was awake, he'd fire a few rounds of tracers (while out of range) to let the 109 know he was on the bounce, and the 109 would usually back off.

His cohort suffered 80% casualties.

> Many people

are not fit to be combat pilots. The AF is very selective. (I didn't qualify, as I wear glasses.) They work hard to weed out slackers, people of low intelligence, sloppy people, unhealthy people, dishonest people, etc. They'll even reject you for a speeding ticket.

First, thanks for sharing your dad's experience! Very interesting.

I did say I thought it required constant alertness... over long periods of boredom, a bad combination. It's hours of nothing punctuated by frantic action. Worse to be keeping a watchful eye on a completely empty stomach, I'd say. Happy to be contradicted if your dad told you he flew long combat missions on an empty stomach...

I also think long combat flights with aerial refueling are longer now than in the WW2 era, right? Excluding maybe bombers, but surely bombers did have toilets, even if minimalistic?

> [many people] are not fit to be combat pilots. The AF is very selective.

I'm sure of this, but we're discussing a very specific thing. The other person who replied to my topmost comment, who also seems to be speaking from experience, assured me pilots don't select on this particular basis. In fact, this person said fighter pilots do shit themselves and earn nicknames because of it.

I'd certainly ask my dad, and if he were around he'd be 104!

I once went parachute jumping. I did not eat beforehand (and we were advised not to!).

spurous reasoning because it relies on performance being a binary thing and not a gradiant.

That's one option, although for longer missions your preparation generally needs to start the night before and I wouldn't recommend flying on an empty stomach (unless it works for you, but it makes most people more susceptible to airsickness). There isn't one consistent method that works for everyone--I think the book Sled Driver has a section where they talk about physiological preparation for SR-71 flights, and the only consistent habit the crew had was NOT eating the "traditional," low-residue steak-and-eggs breakfast.

Good news for gassy food lovers is the cabin pressure changes make everyone fart, there's no one else in the cockpit to hear or smell you, and even if there was it'd be loud and they'd be wearing an oxygen mask. Little victories.

I don't pack liquids when flying as the lowered air pressure forces the liquid out of the container. Factory sealed is ok.

in WWII they had to avoid serving gassy foods to bomber crews because at high altitudes intestinal issues could go from uncomfortable to lethal.

I didn't know that! But I do know that crews got eggs before flights. Nobody else did.

When RAF pilots went to the Soviet Union to help the Soviets, when the first frost came the pilots were horrified when the women brought out big vats of fat and ladled it out. But after flying in those cold temperatures, they realized the fat was just the thing to keep them warm!

Imodium also does wonders for slowing things down and avoiding bowel movements, provided you use it carefully and infrequently such that you don't totally mess up your normal gut functioning.

Surprised they don't just let them piss on the seat like the bike leg in triathlon

catheters are very uncomfortable

also apparently an infection risk

More like an infection certainty. Don't ask me how I know :-(

> Seems like a big issue is I'm guessing insistence on having this be a solo operation for cultural reasons.

I had to do some stool collection and it took every ounce of willpower and a N95 mask to prevent me from vomiting everywhere. And that was my poop. I think it's more than cultural, there's a strong visceral reaction.

On the other hand, I can pickup my dog's poop no problem.

Nurses are heroes.

But parents do that all the time with babies.

It is disgusting (I hated doing it) but you get somewhat used to it relatively quickly.

We seem to make a disconnect with our own children. I certainly did. But it doesn't extend to even other people's kids!

> But it doesn't extend to even other people's kids!

I think it's a question of exposure and tolerance, otherwise it'd be much harder for daycare workers, for instance.

Having an repulsion for shit is a healthy adaptation. But it seems that for some people they're much more sensitive.

Similarly, it's probably useful for a primitive person to vomit on sight of a familiar person vomiting, collective protection. Definitely a trait to find out before going to space!

The one I've never got is how so many people faint or become I'll when they see blood. Always seemed like a massive maladaptive that should create even more risk in a presumably dangerous situation. If a tiger attacks me in the night and the guy next to me faints because I'm getting eaten, we'll both end up dying.

It seems maladaptive. I faint (sometimes) at the sight of my own blood, and must look away when nurses draw it. I also get queasy when even talking about blood or reading about it. I can't think of any good reason this would be helpful; in fact keeping my cool would be advantageous.

And yes, I do have a very vivid imagination.

Rival tribe comes and kills Lug and Glug. You faint at seeing the bloodshed. They assume you died. They leave. You live and pass on your fainting genes.

Alternatively it could just be an overshoot of the behavior to recognize that you bleeding is a dangerous situation. These behaviors probably follow some gaussian distribution in their potential "effect" among the population and fainters are on a long tail of that distribution.

Take a couple proper cowpies over the waterline and you will get over that fast.

I'm thinking more like Player 2 just operates a shop vac and aims the nozzle at the appropriate area.

Though I guess if that would work, they'd just use those loud suction toilets they use on airplanes.

Shop vac tube would be gross fast and need regular maintenance. Dog poop bag is entirely disposable. Throw it behind the spacecraft and use it as propulsion.

> Seems like a big issue is I'm guessing insistence on having this be a solo operation for cultural reasons

What cultures are you aware of that do pair programming for poopies?

> Seems like a big issue is I'm guessing insistence on having this be a solo operation for cultural reasons.

Hmm... perhaps train a robot arm to do it?

Do they eat things that will 100% avoid liquid stool?

If it was liquid it would probably blow straight into the bag. In my experience there is quite a big of propulsion there. Enough to overcome gravity here on earth at least and spray dead horizontal.

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