"Pat Flannery" wrote in message
dakotatelephone...


Jeff Findley wrote:
When you've got to go, you've got to go. At least there *is* a toilet.
US manned spacecraft didn't get a toilet until the space Shuttle. I'm
sure there was nothing like flying an Apollo lunar mission without a
toilet. But still, that's a small price to pay for a trip to the moon,
right?


There's some info on the current Soyuz toilet he
http://depletedcranium.com/?p=625
It's minimalist to put it mildly.
You can see the original design with the folding table he
http://history.nasa.gov/diagrams/astp/bp227.htm
(I assume the folding table is shown partly cut-away to reveal what's
under it.)
Surprisingly, there's even a little folding bunk in the orbital module on
this, the one used for Apollo-Soyuz.

At least the Soyuz toilet provides suction to get feces to settle into the
collection bag.

The NASA adhesive bags used on Gemini and Apollo had no suction. Reportedly
there was trouble getting the excrement to fully release and "drop" into the
bag. From what I remember, there was a place in the bag designed to fit
your finger (like a glove for a single digit) to help with this procedure.
Needless to say, this wasn't an easy task in microgravity.

Jeff
--
"Many things that were acceptable in 1958 are no longer acceptable today.
My own standards have changed too." -- Freeman Dyson