New ‘trouser airlock’ could help astronauts poo in space

Space poo is a very real and very serious problem – one stretching back over decades, as transcripts of the Apollo missions reveal.

But NASA might just have found a solution – a ‘trouser airlock’, which would allow astronauts to jettison packages of poo via a little airlock in their space suits.

The idea came from a NASA competition to find solutions which would allow astronauts to remain in their suits for up to 144 hours if they had to abandon ship.

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More than 5,000 ideas were – ahem – floated – but the winner was family doctor Thatcher Cardon, who based his idea on his own experiences of ‘minimally invasive’ surgery.

The airlock allows small inflatable items – like a bedpan type device – to pass into the suit, then expand, and be removed, along with a payload of space poo.

Cardon said, ‘I thought about what I know regarding less invasive surgeries like laparoscopy or arthroscopy or even endovascular techniques they use in cardiology — they can do some amazing things in very small openings.

‘I mean, they can even replace heart valves now through catheters in an artery. So it should be able to handle a little bit of poop!’

NASA currently uses nappies for astronauts suits – and the toilet facilities on previous missions have been primitive, to say the least.

Launching two months before the Apollo 11 moon landings, the three-man Apollo 10 crew orbited the moon in a “dry run” for the mission that would make Neil Armstrong a household name.

The three astronauts on board – Thomas Stafford, Eugene Cernan and John Young – faced some rather unpleasant hazards in space in May 1969, as the 500-page transcript of their mission records.

“Give me a napkin, quick,” commander Stafford says. “There’s a turd floating through the air.”

“I didn’t do it,” command module pilot Young says. “It ain’t one of mine.”