August 19, 2021 • 41 mins
We pick up with the space suits designed for the Apollo program. We learn what the Apollo astronauts had to do in order to go to the bathroom in space. Warning: it isn't pretty.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Jonathan Strickland. I'm ad executive producer with I Heart Radio,
and I love all things tech and I've promised you
that I would have another follow up to our space
(00:26):
Suits episode which published on Monday, and this is it.
So on Monday's episode, we looked at the early history
of space suits, from the era of flight suits before
the Space Race to the suits worn by cosmonauts and
astronauts up to the beginning of the Apollo program. And
(00:47):
I want to mention a couple of things before we continue.
One is that the Soviets stopped using flight suits for
a while in their so used capsules when they were
first doing those, they decided to allow cosmonauts more freedom
of movement and so they weren't wearing pressure suits and
(01:09):
uh and and your rescue suits for a couple of missions.
They did have a suit that was a more advanced
version of the Burri Cutt suit that was used for
the first Soviet e v A, which was only used
up between two se Us missions where the two capsules
docked with each other, and the that cosmonauts were able
(01:32):
to meet one another when when they launched two missions
in close succession. Beyond that, they went without pressure suits
until there was a tragic accident in which there was
a depressurization, a rapid depressurization incident that resulted in the
death of all three cosmonauts aboard a mission. That then
(01:55):
prompted the USSR to have a new requirement or the
Soviets to wear a pressure suit on the way up,
and that became the so called cosmos are so called
k and that basic suit has been in use ever since.
So it's a pressure suit that's meant to be worn
(02:18):
inside a space craft, particularly during critical elements like if
you are taking off or landing, not necessarily, uh, in
just the normal operations. Once you're out in space, you
can get out of the suit. But yeah, that's still
to this day the suits that are being used by
(02:40):
Russia no longer the Soviet Union. Obviously. Another thing I
wanted to mention is that while the space suit evolved
from the flight suit, I don't mean to suggest that
flight suits stopped evolving in that process. They definitely kept
evolving over time. So we had separate branches of evolution
here and the flight suits of today are incredibly sophisticated
(03:03):
and in some ways similar to space suits, but not identical.
And I also mentioned a couple of materials in that
previous episode, like no max, but I didn't really go
into detail about what that is. So no Max is
a proprietary material that the company DuPont developed in the
nineteen sixties, and it is similar in many ways to nylon,
(03:25):
but it's a little more rigid, and most importantly, it
is fire and heat resistant, so it's been used in
uniforms and outfits meant for all sorts of folks who
work in dangerous environments and situations, like race car drivers, firefighters,
and astronauts. No Mix is a polymer which is a
type of long chain molecule where you have the same
(03:47):
repeated units chained together over and over and over again.
But it's a special kind of polymer. It's called an
aromatic polyamide polymer. And you might think that means this
fabric must smell nice, but it's not that kind of aromatic.
In chemistry, aromatic means that the molecules in the chain
(04:08):
connect as a series of rings, rather than as a
straight line of atoms that are chained together, and the
word polyamide means that these strings of molecules connect together
to form chains. Of these chains and the molecular structure
of no mix makes it a fairly tough material. In fact, kevlar,
which was also developed by DuPont, is a type of
(04:30):
aromatic polyomide, although it is in many ways very different
from nomex, but it shares some of the same molecular
structural components. So no Max has some interesting properties. One
is that no MAX will burn if it is exposed
to a heat source and you know there's oxygen and
all that kind of stuff. If the triangle is there,
(04:53):
no MAX will burn. But if it is removed from
the heat source, then no Max will just stop burning.
Thus it is is flame resistant, is not flame proof,
but is flame resistant. Also, it doesn't conduct heat very well,
so a suit of nomas can serve as a layer
of protection against heat. All right, So let's get back
to our story. So, as I mentioned in our last
(05:15):
episode on this situation on the subject, I should say,
the space suits developed for the Gemini or Geminy project
were intended to serve as a sort of stop gap
for the early part of the Apollo program. There were
planned missions that would test various elements of the Apollo
spacecraft and the launch vehicles and space suits and all
(05:37):
that kind of stuff, and some of the early ones
would not involve going beyond orbit or exiting the capsule. So,
in other words, the Apollo program, while the goal was
to get to the Moon, it's not like we were
supposed to be aiming straight for the Moon right at
the get go. It was all in stages so that
we could learn more, use what we learned to build
(06:00):
upon that, and then continue from there. So the A
one C space suit, which was based off the Gemin
E or Gemini G three C model suit, was to
serve for this first block of Apollo missions, also known
as Block one. Now, I think I might have said
that was based off the G four C suit in
(06:21):
Monday's episode, and if I did, that's totally a mistake
on my part. That's on me. The G four C
suit was the Gemini suit that was designed for astronauts
to go on spacewalks on extra vehicular activities or e
v A s. The G three C suit had fewer
layers of the G four and was slightly more maneuverable
(06:42):
as a result of that, and it was only intended
to be used inside of spacecraft. It wasn't rated to
be used outside, So the A one C was similar
in design to that G three C. The original first
mission had the designation of A S two O four
and it was supposed to see Gus Grissom, who had
(07:04):
actually played a really big part in the development of
space suits, and Ed White and Roger B. Chaffee test
the Apollo capsule in Earth orbit in a mission that
was planned to last up to two weeks. But tragically,
during a launch simulation test, there was this intense fire
that erupted inside the capsule and all three astronauts were
(07:27):
strapped in in the capsule, and so they all three
died as a result of this. The A one C
suit was made out of nylon, which kind of lacked
the heat and flame resistance that you would find with
no MAX and it appeared as though the astronauts had
attempted to follow emergency procedures to open the hatch of
the capsule to escape, but they were not able to
(07:50):
do so. The intensity of the fire kept the rescue
crew at bay for several crucial minutes uh and this
was exacerbated by a fear that that fire could put
intentionally lead to an explosion, perhaps even involving the launch
vehicle in addition to the capsule itself. So this was
a terrible tragedy. In the wake of that loss, NASA
(08:12):
canceled the rest of what was supposed to be the
Block one crude missions, as in the missions with cruise
in them. And as they crude, I do mean c
R E W E D, not crude as in c
R U D E. The A one C suit would
never see use in outer space, and from that tragedy,
NASA saw the need to make sure that the future
(08:34):
space suits provided better protection against heat and fire. The
second block of Apollo missions would need suits designed for
extra vehicular activity, because again the goal was to go
to the Moon and to get out and walk around.
So these suits would consist I mean, it really depends
on how you look at it, but two main components.
(08:55):
But honestly, that's you could You could argue that the
space suit was two components, or you could argue it
was lots of them. But you had the pressure suit
assembly or the p S A, and you had the
Portable Life Support System or p l s S, which
is also known as the backpack because it was worn
(09:15):
that way. Collectively, this entire get up was called the
extra vehicular Mobility Unit or EMU. But we can break
this down even further, So let's get to talking about
these different components. What made them up all these different layers,
because there's a lot to go through. First, you had
(09:35):
the underwear. Now, as one source put it, it was
quote heavy duty space boxer briefs end quote that we're
also and I quote highly absorbent, and they had a
urine collection component to them, which I will get to
a bit later, because, oh boy, when you think about
(09:56):
the people who pioneered space travel and you realize some
of the stuff they had to go through, you really
get a different kind of appreciation for some of their
let's let's call it sacrifices, you know, as far as
comfort and sanitation go. Next came an LCG or liquid
(10:17):
cooling garment. So this undergarment suit was made out of
nylon and it used water in clear plastic tubing to
cool the astronauts. So imagine a suit that has this
this tubing. It's kind of like a water cooled PC
in a way. You have this what the system of
tubes that transports water all over the body of the
(10:39):
astronaut in order to carry heat away from the astronauts.
So the air conditioned suits of the Mercury and Gemini
eras really failed to keep astronauts at a comfortable temperature.
It became clear that astronauts were putting forth a lot
more effort in their activities in space and generating a
(11:00):
lot more heat. And then the fact that these suits
were so good at insulating meant that heat would get
trapped in there as well as the heat of just
the various electrical components inside the suit that was adding
to it, and air conditioning just wasn't cutting it. So
the new system would circulate water through these tubes under
the suit to carry body heat away so that the
astronauts didn't get too hot and sweaty. Obviously, sweating was
(11:23):
a problem too, because if you're wearing a helmet, that
sweat can start making the helmet fog up, and then
you've also got water vapor issues. So this was all necessary.
Stuff Connected to the LCG was a bio belt which
was made out of a material called cotton duck. It's
it's kind of like canvas, like heavy canvas. It feels
(11:46):
kind of like that. And the belt included pockets in
which the various sensors and tools that were used to
monitor astronaut health were located. Uh These included signal processors
to handle stuff like an e c G signal or
an electro cardiograph signal, and cables connecting the sensors to
(12:06):
the equipment in the belt had to be snapped on
to the LCG underneath with other sensors making direct contact
with the astronauts. And next came a pressure suit called
the Integrated Thermal micro Meteoroid Garment or i t m G,
which was made up of three major layers. The innermost
(12:27):
layer was made of a lightweight nylon and it included
vents um. The middle layer was neo preen coated nylon,
which was designed to keep pressure on the astronaut to
help them manage the forces of acceleration without blacking out,
and was you know, kind of an air tight sort
of layer. The outermost layer was a tougher layer of
(12:48):
nylon designed to restrain the pressurized layers so that they
didn't balloon out and restrict movement too much. Remember, there's
no pressure out in space, so if you have a
lot of inter a pressure in your system, it's naturally
going to expand in an environmental low pressure. So this
was meant to curtail that a little bit. The I
(13:09):
T MG also had integrated boots, so it's kind of
like footy pajamas, but for space. Then there were interwoven
layers of MILAR and dacron that went on top of this.
So milar is a type of polyester film also known
as biaxually oriented polyethylene tariff fyllite. And I feel like
(13:31):
Daffy Duck trying to say all that, and I know
I butchered it. The this material has some really useful properties.
It's got a really high melting point, it's got really
good tensile strength, and it is an electrical insulator. Those
are all very useful, and it can also serve as
an effective thermal reflector, meaning it can reflect heat as
(13:52):
well as other types of radiation. Dacron is a type
of polyester fabric also made by the Dupot company, which
in fact also made milar. And it's a material that
doesn't retain moisture, which also makes it resistant to stuff
like mold and mildew. And it's often used in upholstery
for furniture for those reasons, so you could very well
(14:14):
have stuff in your home right now that's made of
the same material that was part of space suits. Next
came a couple of layers of a material called Capton
K A P T O N, and once again the
DuPont company was responsible for the development of Captain, which
is a polymide film that can remain stable across a
very wide range of temperatures, including the extreme temperatures that
(14:36):
astronauts might experience on a spacewalk. NASA would also use
Captain and layers in various spacecraft over the years for
that very same reason. Then, the outermost layers had coatings
of taflon on them, and they were made not by DuPont,
by a company called kim Mores, which was a company
that spun off from DuPont Golli. But this was to
(15:01):
protect the suit and obviously the astronauts inside the suits
from scrapes, and it was also capable of was standing
incredible temperatures and was given the name Beta cloth. A
lot of stuff on space suits would be made up
of Beta cloth because of how resistant it was too
high temperatures I've got more to say, in fact, a
(15:22):
lot more to say about the Apollo suits. But first
let's take a quick break. Okay. I gave a quick
rundown on the general layers of the space suit. But
the entrance to this thing, if you needed to get
(15:42):
into one, was through the back of the suit, and
there was this heavy duty zipper that that sealed it
all up. And so you would on Earth have people
helping you get into this thing, because it's pretty intricate.
You would have to make a lot of connections between
the LCG suit, remember that's the one with all the
(16:04):
little water tubes in it, to connect directly to this
other suit that you wore on top of it. So
it's not just like throwing an extra layer on, right,
It's not like putting a jacket on top of a sweater,
only it would be more like if your sweater had
to connect directly to your jacket so that you can
get oxygen and water and that kind of stuff. So
(16:26):
very complicated, and to get in you needed to kind
of enter with your shoulders and hips kind of aligned
together and entered it more or less the same way.
So you would have this this space suit essentially unfolded
as you were getting in and moving your arms into
the sleeves and your legs into the legs and feet
(16:49):
of the suit, because remember the suit itself does have
its own integrated boots. It was tricky to do even
with help, and obviously once you got out into space,
it was going to be much trickier. Once inside the suit,
the astronaut would need to connect the various elements between
the LCG, the bio belt, and the I t MG
(17:11):
that outer suit, and that sounds like it was probably
a really tricky process to me. Then the astronaut would
use a long essentially a ribbon attached to the zipper
and pull the zipper up and around. Uh So the
zipper would go from the back of the neck all
the way down and around the bottom of the crotch,
(17:31):
So to zip up, you would have to grab this
this ribbon and kind of stretch your arms and everything
in order to be able to pull that zipper up
and around. You could. Obviously if you had help that
would change things dramatically, but if you were doing it
by yourself, it was a heck of a thing. And
once in the suit, the astronaut would then put on
the communications carrier assembly a k a. The snoopy cap.
(17:54):
This was a head covering that included the communications equipment
like the microphone and headphones that the astronaut would need
in order to communicate with the rest of their crew
as well as those on mission control back on Earth.
And this would plug into the main suit as well,
so you would have this head covering that connected directly
(18:15):
to the rest of the suit. Then you had a
pair of gloves that interlocked with the arms of the suit,
and there are actually two different sets of gloves. One
set was used inside the spacecraft and had hands made
of rubber, but for e V A missions, if you
were to go out on say a lunar walk or
(18:36):
a spacewalk, you would wear a totally different set of
gloves that had silicone fingertips. And then the rest of
the gloves were made of a fabric that was a
type of stainless steel called chrome are. And the gloves
also extended to cover the locking mechanism at the wrists
for the the e v A version, because they wanted
(18:57):
to make sure that the metal in that that locking
mechanism was kept insulated in case otherwise when exposed to
space it might heat up or cool down too quickly
and become brittle or potentially cause harm to the astronaut directly,
but you know, inside the suit. Finally, you had a
(19:18):
pressure helmet to put on, so you already have the
head covering, but then you had to put a helmet
on on top of that. This was made of polycarbonate
and in the Apollo days it was essentially like a
clear bubble style helmet. When going out on the Moon,
the astronauts had to add in an element called the
Lunar extra Vehicular Visor Assembly or l e v A LEVA,
(19:41):
which included a sun visor and components that would protect
the neck locking mechanism from temperatures, kind of the way
that the gloves had to protect the wrist locking areas.
The helmet had the same sort of thing for e
v a's and there were also extra lunar boots that
we need to put on on top up of your suits,
integrated boots as well, so over shoes really, so you
(20:04):
had your specific gauntlets or gloves that you had to
put on, your specific overshoes you had to add to
your suit, and you had this special helmet assembly that
you had to add on before you would leave the
lunar module in the case of a lunar landing. And
I mentioned the all the connectors on the suit. The
(20:24):
front of the suit actually had six different connectors that
would attach to different life support systems. And you might wonder, well,
why do you have you know, so many, like why
are there six? Like you would think, oh, you really
just need maybe three or four, right, Like you would
need one for oxygen intake, you would need one to
(20:46):
take carbon dioxide away. You would need one to help
circulate the water, maybe two to to circulate the water.
So now we're up to what four? Well, then maybe
you need one more for electricity, possibly right if you
didn't have like an onboard battery. But you actually had
more than that on this suit. And the reason was
(21:07):
that the portable life support system that I'll talk about
a bit later in this episode, Uh, it would only
work in the vacuum of space. So when you put
it on before you went out onto the moon, you're
on the lunar module. Yeah, you've got your your suited up,
you've got your your p l SS on your back.
It would not provide life support until you depressurized the
(21:31):
lunar module and then we're ready to go out on
the Moon. So in order for you to continue to
have life support, you would have a connection directly to
the lunar module that would provide life support to you,
and you would also have connections to the p L
S S at the same time. Only the lunar module
would act as your life support. Once it was depressurized
(21:52):
and you were ready to go out, then you could
switch over to the p L S S and you
could disconnect the connectors to your suit that we're connecting
you to the lunar module. So it was, you know,
just an important element that was necessary in order to
have this seamless transition of life support from one source
to another on Earth. Before connecting up to the spacecraft,
(22:15):
the astronauts would actually carry with them a portable ventilator
unit connected to their suits, kind of like carrying around
your your own personal air conditioner in a way. This
provided some oxygen and cooling capabilities, but once they were
getting into the Apollo capsule, they would disconnect from these
portable handheld units and then connect to the the Apollo
(22:38):
capsule itself to provide life support. These suits were really big,
they were really bulky. They were super heavy. I mean,
depending on what variation you're looking at. Like the light
one before you had all the extra stuff on, was
weighing in and around sixty two pounds. That was just
for the version that you would wear inside the capsule
(22:59):
without any extra stuff on it. If you were to
take an E V A, you'd be looking at weights
going up to seventy six pounds. If you're going all
the way out to the Moon with all the additional units,
all the additional components, you're looking at around a hundred
eighty pounds of suit you're wearing. However, keep in mind
you're in space. So when you're in space space like
(23:21):
floating in orbit or whatever, you're in micro gravity, so
you're not really floating, you're falling, but you're in micro gravity,
so you don't have to deal with weight so much.
You have to deal with mass, but weight is not
so much of an issue. And then, of course on
the Moon gravity is one sixth that of Earth's, so
while you'd be wearing a very bulky suit, it would
(23:42):
not feel super heavy to you. Speaking of the Moon,
Neil Armstrong's suit had the designation A seven L and
the serial number zero five six and according to the Smithsonian,
the estimated cost for his suit was one hundred thousand
dollars at the time. That was a lot of money
back then. If we were to adjust it for inflation,
(24:02):
that would mean that the suit was more than half
a million dollars to put together, which is a pretty
expensive suit, you know. I mean, I've looked at some
suits that are fairly expensive and said no way, but
they were not in a half million dollar range. I
can tell you that. Also, according to the Smithsonian, the
space suits were handbuilt. They were stitched by hand with
(24:23):
careful precision, as even the tiniest error could result in catastrophe. Obviously,
you need these suits to be strong, resilient. They need
to be able to keep pressure. They needed to not
allow oxygen to just escape the suit, so it was
critically important that all these elements were put together with
(24:45):
the utmost precision. Now, these suits were the most sophisticated
space suits to date. And on the front part of
the torso, like I said, there were those six connectors
that related to the life support. There was a water
connector and electrical connector, and then you had the four
gas connectors for oxygen, which, as I mentioned, were doubled
(25:07):
up so that you could go from the Lunar Module
Life Support system to the p l s S system. Uh.
It also had lots of pockets, like I like to
think that the first aster not to try one of
these on yelled. It has pockets, because there were pockets
for like everything, very specific pockets, like there was a
(25:27):
specific pocket for pencils and pen lights, and a specific
pocket for scissors, and there even was a pocket for sunglasses.
It had a pressure relief valve on the left arm
of the suit and a pressure gauge on the right arm.
Fancy stuff. But that's the lowdown on the Apollo suits.
(25:48):
And now we need to talk about something else, a
delicate subject, one that ended up being critically important. Uh.
And then it's about when you have to go to
the bathroom. See, the Gemini missions were in part a
stepping stone towards the Apollo missions that would take astronauts
(26:10):
to the Moon, and those trips have to last a
good long time. The Gemini missions, like the longest one,
lasted almost two weeks, sooner or later, you gotta go
to the bathroom. But when you're wearing a space suit
like the ones I've described, and you're in a tight capsule,
doesn't have a lot of space, and it can take
(26:31):
a lot of time to get in and out of
that space suit. And also this capsule, by the way,
does not have a toilet. How do you go to
the bathroom? The answer, as it turns out, ain't pretty folks.
So I'd say prepare yourselves. But I'm not sure anything's
gonna prepare you for what's to come. So let's let's
(26:54):
take a step back before we get into it. Because
way back when Alan Shepherd was getting ready to go
into space to become the first American in space, not
the first person, your Garin had done it already for
the Soviet Union a month earlier, but when he was
ready to go into space and be the first American
in space, and a Mercury space capsule, and remember Mercury
(27:16):
was just before Jim and I, which again was before Apollo.
He was sitting there on his back inside the capsule
on top of the launch vehicle on the launch pad
when he really had to go pee. Now, this mission
was only supposed to last fifteen minutes from launch to touchdown,
which meant that everyone at NASA figured there'd be no
(27:38):
need to worry about this kind of thing, because it's
fifteen minutes. You can hold it for fifteen minutes. But
Shepard had been strapped into his suit and been in
the Mercury capsule for several hours while waiting for these
various delays to clear up, where you know, the launch
had been set back a couple of hours, and making
(28:00):
matters worse, he had had four cups of coffee the
morning of his launch, so naturally, as those delays began
to pile up, he began to feel the call of nature,
and the call was urgent. He had to pee. Well,
there was no getting out of the suit because as
tiny as the Apollo capsule was, which carried three astronauts
(28:23):
in it at a time, the Mercury, which was a
single astronaut capsule, was particularly tiny. Essentially, it was you know,
a chair surrounded by electronic components in very tight quarters.
There was no getting out of the capsule, at least
not without scrapping the whole mission. So he just you know,
(28:45):
decided he had to go with the flow as and
he needed to pee in his suit. Actually, he actually
had to request permission to do this because no one
had really thought about this yet, and they weren't into
really sure that this was going to be safe to do.
I mean, you're talking about a suit that also has
(29:07):
components that attached to life support. There's a lot of
electronic equipment there. So this was a new and urgent problem.
And reportedly an engineer named Gordon Cooper was on the
receiving end of this request, which will become important later.
And this is the sort of stuff in history books
that you tend to not discover. They tend to leave
(29:28):
this part out. But he got permission to see two matters,
and he wet himself before his flight because he had
no other option. And keep in mind he was seated
with his you know, his back is is to the ground, right,
because you're seated in a where you're you're facing straight up,
(29:50):
So it all just kind of pooled behind him. Yeah.
Not pleasant. Well, when we come back, we'll talk a
little bit about how NASA decided to try and tackle
this potentially crappy problem. But first let's take a quick break.
(30:15):
So what was NASA's solution to this problem after Shepherd's
historic and damp flight. Well, they created a urine collection device.
So the astronauts at that time we're all male. So
the idea was just kind of secure a condom style
(30:38):
containment bag, you know, around the downstairs mix up area.
And John Glenn on his mission, generated more than two
pints of p in four hours. Impressive. But wait, there's more.
For the final Mercury mission, astronaut Gordon Cooper was to
(31:00):
be in orbit for more than twenty four hours, and
so NASA designed a system that included the in suit
urine collection bag that was in turn going to eventually
be incorporated into the heavy duty space boxer briefs that
I talked about before. And extending from this bag was
(31:20):
a plastic tube that ended in a quick connector. Ah.
There was a fly on the suit, like a zipper
fly on the front of the suit, so Cooper could
unzip a suit, pull out this tube with a connector
on the end of it, then attach a line with
the other half of the connector to it. This line
(31:43):
also had a pump attached to it. Cooper could activate
that pump by hand, and then he would pump the
p out of the in suit bag through this line
to a collection bag, and then he was supposed to
put the collection bag under his seat. Because NASA was
really interested in learning more about that p and that
(32:05):
was the first space toilet sort of. It was called
the Mercury Atlas nine or m A nine ur nation
system glamorous right, And you might remember earlier in this
episode I said that Gordon Cooper was the person who
was actually on the other end of the communications channel
when Al Shepherd had to request permission to pe in
(32:28):
his suit for that first Mercury mission. Well, on Cooper's flight,
Shepherd was the guy who was on the other end
of the communications channel, and he actually played a little
bit of a prank on on Cooper. Shepherd went to
the capsule before Cooper was to board it and put
a little toilet plunger in the seat of the capsule
(32:51):
with the tags attached that said removed before flight. Just
kind of a fun story of astronauts rasing each other.
But the GYM and I project proved that even more
thought was going to have to be put forward to this,
because the longest of the Gemini missions was to last
two weeks in space. While NASA tried putting astronauts on
(33:14):
a diet that would hopefully produce the least amount of
solid waste, well, sometimes the best laid plans just freaking
go aglay, don't they. Well, the hope was that by
using these foods with a very low fiber content, they
would just you know, avoid the need for the astronauts
to have that type of evacuation. They could pee into
(33:35):
the bags, but hopefully they would not need to poop.
But um, that would not be the case. Now, they
did have a slightly more sophisticated urine collection device which,
on casual glance, because I looked at a picture, this
thing kind of was like a cross between a lightsaber
and a set of bagpipes. And I know that sounds confusing,
but just imagine a device that at one end has
(33:58):
a condom fits over the astronaut operating equipment. Keeping in
mind that again at this point in history, all the
astronauts were mail and then through a series of valves,
the there was a connection to a collections bag to
pick up all the p and the astronauts were meant
to store these bags of p under their seats or
(34:19):
actually to use them to vent them out into space.
You would actually connect the bag to a connector on
the spacecraft, open up a channel, and the urine would
vent into space and would instantly crystallize upon exiting the capsule.
There's actually video footage of this where you can see
(34:41):
the formation of the crystals as the p is being
vented out into space, so that that footage exists if
you want to check it out anyway. For the Gemini
or Gemini seven mission, the astronauts were to be in
space for nearly two weeks at gem level and Frank
Boorman where the astronauts on board Historic Flight Unfortunately, despite
(35:02):
the low fiber diet, Level felt the need to go
pooh when they were still several days left in the mission,
and so he went, like, there wasn't really any real
option to do anything else, so he pooped his suit,
and that experience taught NASA that something else was going
to need to be done for Apollo, because those missions
(35:24):
were also going to be very long to get out
to the Moon and come back. But if you think
that that something was to include a toilet on the
Apollo capsule, well you're wrong because it was way too
late in the game to figure that out. So instead
there need to be some sort of equipment the astronauts
could have to deal with the issue, and an actual
(35:45):
process for them to follow and well, there wasn't enough
space in the capsule to carry something really sophisticated. And
now we come to the poop in a bag part
of our podcast. Yeah, so the poop collection equipment consisted
of a bag with some adhesive around the rim of
the opening, so you were essentially taping the bag to
(36:09):
your backside and creating a seal. Otherwise, well you're gonna
have poop fly all over the place in microgravity, and
spoiler alert, that actually did happen. Kind of a crappy
flight experience, if you ask me. Anyway, According to what
I've read, the procedure for doing this involved the astronaut
who needed to go to the bathroom moving to one
(36:30):
side of the capsule, the other two being as far
away as they possibly could be from the third that
was not particularly far in the Apollo capsule. Then the
astronaut who needed to go would have to get out
of a suit like all of his suits, stripping down naked, which,
as I'm sure you've gathered, requires a pretty good amount
(36:52):
of work. Then he would need to adhere the defecation
collection system or you know, the poop bag, to his posterior.
The bag also included a flap of plastic and you
would put your fingers into this flap of plastic was
kind of like you know, like a like a plastic
glove for a couple of fingers. Because okay, so there's
(37:14):
no gravity in space, or rather micro gravity. It's like
you're constantly falling. So the effect to us is that
we're floating weightless. Right. Gravity is typically what causes the
separation of poop from you know us when we poop.
Gravity is helps us out in that matter, and that
(37:34):
meant there needed to be something there so that the
astronaut could you know, effectively using gloved fingers make that
separation happen manually. Yeah, I know, this is gross. And
once done, the astronaut would need to use a special
anti microbial tablet that would be inserted into this bag
(37:55):
and broken up so that, uh, the the tablet would
kill off the microbes in there. And you had to
mix this like by squishing this bag of poo and
microbial tablets are inta microbial tablets because otherwise the microbes
in the poo might generate various gases and that could
eventually cause bags to over inflate and potentially rupture, which
(38:18):
is super gross and dangerous because otherwise microbials in the
poop could start to generate various gases that could cause
the bags to inflate over time, potentially to the point
where they would rupture, which is a pretty big eu.
So the tablets were meant to prevent that from happening
by killing off the bacterium. And once all that was
(38:40):
done and the bag was sealed and stowed away, the
astronaut could go back through the process of getting back
into their their flight suit. The whole process could take
upwards of an hour, and the astronauts hated doing it
for obvious reasons, and they would frequently hold off for
as long as they possibly could before having to give
into the column nature. And yeah, there were incidents of
(39:03):
rogue poo in capsules. I mean Apollo nine was one
such mission. Their actual communication logs, no pun intended that
talk about a floating turd in the capsule, because sometimes
being a hero gets pretty darn gross. After Apollo, a
lot of work would go into creating, you know, other
systems to make it easier to go to the bathroom
(39:25):
in space, or at least a little less unpleasant, if
not actually easier. But we're not going to go into
all of those because really the only reason I wanted
to cover it here was because it was coinciding with
the evolution of the space suit, and the two played
apart with one another. So let's get back to Apollo
(39:45):
and cover up a couple of little brief things. The
whole purpose of the Apollo missions was again to get
astronauts to the Moon, and that would mean that any
astronaut taking a moonwalk would need to have their own
life support system connected to their suit and on board
the capsule. It wouldn't be a problem, and the spacecraft
provided all life support, but now on the Moon the
job would fall to the p l s S, or
(40:08):
the portable life support system. That is where we will
pick up in our next episode to talk about the
p l s S. We'll talk about the further evolution
of the space suit, including how it then evolved into
the type that was used aboard the Space Shuttle and
the kind that's used on the International Space Station. We
(40:28):
will also talk about the proposals that have been in
various forms of production since then, and about the the
the proposed design of the future space suit, the one
that unfortunately means that the Artemis program is going to
be delayed by at least a year, but we'll get
(40:50):
into that into the next episode. If you have suggestions
for topics I should cover in future episodes of tech Stuff,
reach out to me and let me know what those are.
The best way to do that is on our Twitter account.
That's text Stuff. Hsw over on Twitter and I'll talk
to you again, really s. Text Stuff is an I
(41:13):
Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio,
visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Jonathan Strickland. I'm ad executive producer with I Heart Radio,
and I love all things tech and I've promised you
that I would have another follow up to our space
(00:26):
Suits episode which published on Monday, and this is it.
So on Monday's episode, we looked at the early history
of space suits, from the era of flight suits before
the Space Race to the suits worn by cosmonauts and
astronauts up to the beginning of the Apollo program. And
(00:47):
I want to mention a couple of things before we continue.
One is that the Soviets stopped using flight suits for
a while in their so used capsules when they were
first doing those, they decided to allow cosmonauts more freedom
of movement and so they weren't wearing pressure suits and
(01:09):
uh and and your rescue suits for a couple of missions.
They did have a suit that was a more advanced
version of the Burri Cutt suit that was used for
the first Soviet e v A, which was only used
up between two se Us missions where the two capsules
docked with each other, and the that cosmonauts were able
(01:32):
to meet one another when when they launched two missions
in close succession. Beyond that, they went without pressure suits
until there was a tragic accident in which there was
a depressurization, a rapid depressurization incident that resulted in the
death of all three cosmonauts aboard a mission. That then
(01:55):
prompted the USSR to have a new requirement or the
Soviets to wear a pressure suit on the way up,
and that became the so called cosmos are so called
k and that basic suit has been in use ever since.
So it's a pressure suit that's meant to be worn
(02:18):
inside a space craft, particularly during critical elements like if
you are taking off or landing, not necessarily, uh, in
just the normal operations. Once you're out in space, you
can get out of the suit. But yeah, that's still
to this day the suits that are being used by
(02:40):
Russia no longer the Soviet Union. Obviously. Another thing I
wanted to mention is that while the space suit evolved
from the flight suit, I don't mean to suggest that
flight suits stopped evolving in that process. They definitely kept
evolving over time. So we had separate branches of evolution
here and the flight suits of today are incredibly sophisticated
(03:03):
and in some ways similar to space suits, but not identical.
And I also mentioned a couple of materials in that
previous episode, like no max, but I didn't really go
into detail about what that is. So no Max is
a proprietary material that the company DuPont developed in the
nineteen sixties, and it is similar in many ways to nylon,
(03:25):
but it's a little more rigid, and most importantly, it
is fire and heat resistant, so it's been used in
uniforms and outfits meant for all sorts of folks who
work in dangerous environments and situations, like race car drivers, firefighters,
and astronauts. No Mix is a polymer which is a
type of long chain molecule where you have the same
(03:47):
repeated units chained together over and over and over again.
But it's a special kind of polymer. It's called an
aromatic polyamide polymer. And you might think that means this
fabric must smell nice, but it's not that kind of aromatic.
In chemistry, aromatic means that the molecules in the chain
(04:08):
connect as a series of rings, rather than as a
straight line of atoms that are chained together, and the
word polyamide means that these strings of molecules connect together
to form chains. Of these chains and the molecular structure
of no mix makes it a fairly tough material. In fact, kevlar,
which was also developed by DuPont, is a type of
(04:30):
aromatic polyomide, although it is in many ways very different
from nomex, but it shares some of the same molecular
structural components. So no Max has some interesting properties. One
is that no MAX will burn if it is exposed
to a heat source and you know there's oxygen and
all that kind of stuff. If the triangle is there,
(04:53):
no MAX will burn. But if it is removed from
the heat source, then no Max will just stop burning.
Thus it is is flame resistant, is not flame proof,
but is flame resistant. Also, it doesn't conduct heat very well,
so a suit of nomas can serve as a layer
of protection against heat. All right, So let's get back
to our story. So, as I mentioned in our last
(05:15):
episode on this situation on the subject, I should say,
the space suits developed for the Gemini or Geminy project
were intended to serve as a sort of stop gap
for the early part of the Apollo program. There were
planned missions that would test various elements of the Apollo
spacecraft and the launch vehicles and space suits and all
(05:37):
that kind of stuff, and some of the early ones
would not involve going beyond orbit or exiting the capsule. So,
in other words, the Apollo program, while the goal was
to get to the Moon, it's not like we were
supposed to be aiming straight for the Moon right at
the get go. It was all in stages so that
we could learn more, use what we learned to build
(06:00):
upon that, and then continue from there. So the A
one C space suit, which was based off the Gemin
E or Gemini G three C model suit, was to
serve for this first block of Apollo missions, also known
as Block one. Now, I think I might have said
that was based off the G four C suit in
(06:21):
Monday's episode, and if I did, that's totally a mistake
on my part. That's on me. The G four C
suit was the Gemini suit that was designed for astronauts
to go on spacewalks on extra vehicular activities or e
v A s. The G three C suit had fewer
layers of the G four and was slightly more maneuverable
(06:42):
as a result of that, and it was only intended
to be used inside of spacecraft. It wasn't rated to
be used outside, So the A one C was similar
in design to that G three C. The original first
mission had the designation of A S two O four
and it was supposed to see Gus Grissom, who had
(07:04):
actually played a really big part in the development of
space suits, and Ed White and Roger B. Chaffee test
the Apollo capsule in Earth orbit in a mission that
was planned to last up to two weeks. But tragically,
during a launch simulation test, there was this intense fire
that erupted inside the capsule and all three astronauts were
(07:27):
strapped in in the capsule, and so they all three
died as a result of this. The A one C
suit was made out of nylon, which kind of lacked
the heat and flame resistance that you would find with
no MAX and it appeared as though the astronauts had
attempted to follow emergency procedures to open the hatch of
the capsule to escape, but they were not able to
(07:50):
do so. The intensity of the fire kept the rescue
crew at bay for several crucial minutes uh and this
was exacerbated by a fear that that fire could put
intentionally lead to an explosion, perhaps even involving the launch
vehicle in addition to the capsule itself. So this was
a terrible tragedy. In the wake of that loss, NASA
(08:12):
canceled the rest of what was supposed to be the
Block one crude missions, as in the missions with cruise
in them. And as they crude, I do mean c
R E W E D, not crude as in c
R U D E. The A one C suit would
never see use in outer space, and from that tragedy,
NASA saw the need to make sure that the future
(08:34):
space suits provided better protection against heat and fire. The
second block of Apollo missions would need suits designed for
extra vehicular activity, because again the goal was to go
to the Moon and to get out and walk around.
So these suits would consist I mean, it really depends
on how you look at it, but two main components.
(08:55):
But honestly, that's you could You could argue that the
space suit was two components, or you could argue it
was lots of them. But you had the pressure suit
assembly or the p S A, and you had the
Portable Life Support System or p l s S, which
is also known as the backpack because it was worn
(09:15):
that way. Collectively, this entire get up was called the
extra vehicular Mobility Unit or EMU. But we can break
this down even further, So let's get to talking about
these different components. What made them up all these different layers,
because there's a lot to go through. First, you had
(09:35):
the underwear. Now, as one source put it, it was
quote heavy duty space boxer briefs end quote that we're
also and I quote highly absorbent, and they had a
urine collection component to them, which I will get to
a bit later, because, oh boy, when you think about
(09:56):
the people who pioneered space travel and you realize some
of the stuff they had to go through, you really
get a different kind of appreciation for some of their
let's let's call it sacrifices, you know, as far as
comfort and sanitation go. Next came an LCG or liquid
(10:17):
cooling garment. So this undergarment suit was made out of
nylon and it used water in clear plastic tubing to
cool the astronauts. So imagine a suit that has this
this tubing. It's kind of like a water cooled PC
in a way. You have this what the system of
tubes that transports water all over the body of the
(10:39):
astronaut in order to carry heat away from the astronauts.
So the air conditioned suits of the Mercury and Gemini
eras really failed to keep astronauts at a comfortable temperature.
It became clear that astronauts were putting forth a lot
more effort in their activities in space and generating a
(11:00):
lot more heat. And then the fact that these suits
were so good at insulating meant that heat would get
trapped in there as well as the heat of just
the various electrical components inside the suit that was adding
to it, and air conditioning just wasn't cutting it. So
the new system would circulate water through these tubes under
the suit to carry body heat away so that the
astronauts didn't get too hot and sweaty. Obviously, sweating was
(11:23):
a problem too, because if you're wearing a helmet, that
sweat can start making the helmet fog up, and then
you've also got water vapor issues. So this was all necessary.
Stuff Connected to the LCG was a bio belt which
was made out of a material called cotton duck. It's
it's kind of like canvas, like heavy canvas. It feels
(11:46):
kind of like that. And the belt included pockets in
which the various sensors and tools that were used to
monitor astronaut health were located. Uh These included signal processors
to handle stuff like an e c G signal or
an electro cardiograph signal, and cables connecting the sensors to
(12:06):
the equipment in the belt had to be snapped on
to the LCG underneath with other sensors making direct contact
with the astronauts. And next came a pressure suit called
the Integrated Thermal micro Meteoroid Garment or i t m G,
which was made up of three major layers. The innermost
(12:27):
layer was made of a lightweight nylon and it included
vents um. The middle layer was neo preen coated nylon,
which was designed to keep pressure on the astronaut to
help them manage the forces of acceleration without blacking out,
and was you know, kind of an air tight sort
of layer. The outermost layer was a tougher layer of
(12:48):
nylon designed to restrain the pressurized layers so that they
didn't balloon out and restrict movement too much. Remember, there's
no pressure out in space, so if you have a
lot of inter a pressure in your system, it's naturally
going to expand in an environmental low pressure. So this
was meant to curtail that a little bit. The I
(13:09):
T MG also had integrated boots, so it's kind of
like footy pajamas, but for space. Then there were interwoven
layers of MILAR and dacron that went on top of this.
So milar is a type of polyester film also known
as biaxually oriented polyethylene tariff fyllite. And I feel like
(13:31):
Daffy Duck trying to say all that, and I know
I butchered it. The this material has some really useful properties.
It's got a really high melting point, it's got really
good tensile strength, and it is an electrical insulator. Those
are all very useful, and it can also serve as
an effective thermal reflector, meaning it can reflect heat as
(13:52):
well as other types of radiation. Dacron is a type
of polyester fabric also made by the Dupot company, which
in fact also made milar. And it's a material that
doesn't retain moisture, which also makes it resistant to stuff
like mold and mildew. And it's often used in upholstery
for furniture for those reasons, so you could very well
(14:14):
have stuff in your home right now that's made of
the same material that was part of space suits. Next
came a couple of layers of a material called Capton
K A P T O N, and once again the
DuPont company was responsible for the development of Captain, which
is a polymide film that can remain stable across a
very wide range of temperatures, including the extreme temperatures that
(14:36):
astronauts might experience on a spacewalk. NASA would also use
Captain and layers in various spacecraft over the years for
that very same reason. Then, the outermost layers had coatings
of taflon on them, and they were made not by DuPont,
by a company called kim Mores, which was a company
that spun off from DuPont Golli. But this was to
(15:01):
protect the suit and obviously the astronauts inside the suits
from scrapes, and it was also capable of was standing
incredible temperatures and was given the name Beta cloth. A
lot of stuff on space suits would be made up
of Beta cloth because of how resistant it was too
high temperatures I've got more to say, in fact, a
(15:22):
lot more to say about the Apollo suits. But first
let's take a quick break. Okay. I gave a quick
rundown on the general layers of the space suit. But
the entrance to this thing, if you needed to get
(15:42):
into one, was through the back of the suit, and
there was this heavy duty zipper that that sealed it
all up. And so you would on Earth have people
helping you get into this thing, because it's pretty intricate.
You would have to make a lot of connections between
the LCG suit, remember that's the one with all the
(16:04):
little water tubes in it, to connect directly to this
other suit that you wore on top of it. So
it's not just like throwing an extra layer on, right,
It's not like putting a jacket on top of a sweater,
only it would be more like if your sweater had
to connect directly to your jacket so that you can
get oxygen and water and that kind of stuff. So
(16:26):
very complicated, and to get in you needed to kind
of enter with your shoulders and hips kind of aligned
together and entered it more or less the same way.
So you would have this this space suit essentially unfolded
as you were getting in and moving your arms into
the sleeves and your legs into the legs and feet
(16:49):
of the suit, because remember the suit itself does have
its own integrated boots. It was tricky to do even
with help, and obviously once you got out into space,
it was going to be much trickier. Once inside the suit,
the astronaut would need to connect the various elements between
the LCG, the bio belt, and the I t MG
(17:11):
that outer suit, and that sounds like it was probably
a really tricky process to me. Then the astronaut would
use a long essentially a ribbon attached to the zipper
and pull the zipper up and around. Uh So the
zipper would go from the back of the neck all
the way down and around the bottom of the crotch,
(17:31):
So to zip up, you would have to grab this
this ribbon and kind of stretch your arms and everything
in order to be able to pull that zipper up
and around. You could. Obviously if you had help that
would change things dramatically, but if you were doing it
by yourself, it was a heck of a thing. And
once in the suit, the astronaut would then put on
the communications carrier assembly a k a. The snoopy cap.
(17:54):
This was a head covering that included the communications equipment
like the microphone and headphones that the astronaut would need
in order to communicate with the rest of their crew
as well as those on mission control back on Earth.
And this would plug into the main suit as well,
so you would have this head covering that connected directly
(18:15):
to the rest of the suit. Then you had a
pair of gloves that interlocked with the arms of the suit,
and there are actually two different sets of gloves. One
set was used inside the spacecraft and had hands made
of rubber, but for e V A missions, if you
were to go out on say a lunar walk or
(18:36):
a spacewalk, you would wear a totally different set of
gloves that had silicone fingertips. And then the rest of
the gloves were made of a fabric that was a
type of stainless steel called chrome are. And the gloves
also extended to cover the locking mechanism at the wrists
for the the e v A version, because they wanted
(18:57):
to make sure that the metal in that that locking
mechanism was kept insulated in case otherwise when exposed to
space it might heat up or cool down too quickly
and become brittle or potentially cause harm to the astronaut directly,
but you know, inside the suit. Finally, you had a
(19:18):
pressure helmet to put on, so you already have the
head covering, but then you had to put a helmet
on on top of that. This was made of polycarbonate
and in the Apollo days it was essentially like a
clear bubble style helmet. When going out on the Moon,
the astronauts had to add in an element called the
Lunar extra Vehicular Visor Assembly or l e v A LEVA,
(19:41):
which included a sun visor and components that would protect
the neck locking mechanism from temperatures, kind of the way
that the gloves had to protect the wrist locking areas.
The helmet had the same sort of thing for e
v a's and there were also extra lunar boots that
we need to put on on top up of your suits,
integrated boots as well, so over shoes really, so you
(20:04):
had your specific gauntlets or gloves that you had to
put on, your specific overshoes you had to add to
your suit, and you had this special helmet assembly that
you had to add on before you would leave the
lunar module in the case of a lunar landing. And
I mentioned the all the connectors on the suit. The
(20:24):
front of the suit actually had six different connectors that
would attach to different life support systems. And you might wonder, well,
why do you have you know, so many, like why
are there six? Like you would think, oh, you really
just need maybe three or four, right, Like you would
need one for oxygen intake, you would need one to
(20:46):
take carbon dioxide away. You would need one to help
circulate the water, maybe two to to circulate the water.
So now we're up to what four? Well, then maybe
you need one more for electricity, possibly right if you
didn't have like an onboard battery. But you actually had
more than that on this suit. And the reason was
(21:07):
that the portable life support system that I'll talk about
a bit later in this episode, Uh, it would only
work in the vacuum of space. So when you put
it on before you went out onto the moon, you're
on the lunar module. Yeah, you've got your your suited up,
you've got your your p l SS on your back.
It would not provide life support until you depressurized the
(21:31):
lunar module and then we're ready to go out on
the Moon. So in order for you to continue to
have life support, you would have a connection directly to
the lunar module that would provide life support to you,
and you would also have connections to the p L
S S at the same time. Only the lunar module
would act as your life support. Once it was depressurized
(21:52):
and you were ready to go out, then you could
switch over to the p L S S and you
could disconnect the connectors to your suit that we're connecting
you to the lunar module. So it was, you know,
just an important element that was necessary in order to
have this seamless transition of life support from one source
to another on Earth. Before connecting up to the spacecraft,
(22:15):
the astronauts would actually carry with them a portable ventilator
unit connected to their suits, kind of like carrying around
your your own personal air conditioner in a way. This
provided some oxygen and cooling capabilities, but once they were
getting into the Apollo capsule, they would disconnect from these
portable handheld units and then connect to the the Apollo
(22:38):
capsule itself to provide life support. These suits were really big,
they were really bulky. They were super heavy. I mean,
depending on what variation you're looking at. Like the light
one before you had all the extra stuff on, was
weighing in and around sixty two pounds. That was just
for the version that you would wear inside the capsule
(22:59):
without any extra stuff on it. If you were to
take an E V A, you'd be looking at weights
going up to seventy six pounds. If you're going all
the way out to the Moon with all the additional units,
all the additional components, you're looking at around a hundred
eighty pounds of suit you're wearing. However, keep in mind
you're in space. So when you're in space space like
(23:21):
floating in orbit or whatever, you're in micro gravity, so
you're not really floating, you're falling, but you're in micro gravity,
so you don't have to deal with weight so much.
You have to deal with mass, but weight is not
so much of an issue. And then, of course on
the Moon gravity is one sixth that of Earth's, so
while you'd be wearing a very bulky suit, it would
(23:42):
not feel super heavy to you. Speaking of the Moon,
Neil Armstrong's suit had the designation A seven L and
the serial number zero five six and according to the Smithsonian,
the estimated cost for his suit was one hundred thousand
dollars at the time. That was a lot of money
back then. If we were to adjust it for inflation,
(24:02):
that would mean that the suit was more than half
a million dollars to put together, which is a pretty
expensive suit, you know. I mean, I've looked at some
suits that are fairly expensive and said no way, but
they were not in a half million dollar range. I
can tell you that. Also, according to the Smithsonian, the
space suits were handbuilt. They were stitched by hand with
(24:23):
careful precision, as even the tiniest error could result in catastrophe. Obviously,
you need these suits to be strong, resilient. They need
to be able to keep pressure. They needed to not
allow oxygen to just escape the suit, so it was
critically important that all these elements were put together with
(24:45):
the utmost precision. Now, these suits were the most sophisticated
space suits to date. And on the front part of
the torso, like I said, there were those six connectors
that related to the life support. There was a water
connector and electrical connector, and then you had the four
gas connectors for oxygen, which, as I mentioned, were doubled
(25:07):
up so that you could go from the Lunar Module
Life Support system to the p l s S system. Uh.
It also had lots of pockets, like I like to
think that the first aster not to try one of
these on yelled. It has pockets, because there were pockets
for like everything, very specific pockets, like there was a
(25:27):
specific pocket for pencils and pen lights, and a specific
pocket for scissors, and there even was a pocket for sunglasses.
It had a pressure relief valve on the left arm
of the suit and a pressure gauge on the right arm.
Fancy stuff. But that's the lowdown on the Apollo suits.
(25:48):
And now we need to talk about something else, a
delicate subject, one that ended up being critically important. Uh.
And then it's about when you have to go to
the bathroom. See, the Gemini missions were in part a
stepping stone towards the Apollo missions that would take astronauts
(26:10):
to the Moon, and those trips have to last a
good long time. The Gemini missions, like the longest one,
lasted almost two weeks, sooner or later, you gotta go
to the bathroom. But when you're wearing a space suit
like the ones I've described, and you're in a tight capsule,
doesn't have a lot of space, and it can take
(26:31):
a lot of time to get in and out of
that space suit. And also this capsule, by the way,
does not have a toilet. How do you go to
the bathroom? The answer, as it turns out, ain't pretty folks.
So I'd say prepare yourselves. But I'm not sure anything's
gonna prepare you for what's to come. So let's let's
(26:54):
take a step back before we get into it. Because
way back when Alan Shepherd was getting ready to go
into space to become the first American in space, not
the first person, your Garin had done it already for
the Soviet Union a month earlier, but when he was
ready to go into space and be the first American
in space, and a Mercury space capsule, and remember Mercury
(27:16):
was just before Jim and I, which again was before Apollo.
He was sitting there on his back inside the capsule
on top of the launch vehicle on the launch pad
when he really had to go pee. Now, this mission
was only supposed to last fifteen minutes from launch to touchdown,
which meant that everyone at NASA figured there'd be no
(27:38):
need to worry about this kind of thing, because it's
fifteen minutes. You can hold it for fifteen minutes. But
Shepard had been strapped into his suit and been in
the Mercury capsule for several hours while waiting for these
various delays to clear up, where you know, the launch
had been set back a couple of hours, and making
(28:00):
matters worse, he had had four cups of coffee the
morning of his launch, so naturally, as those delays began
to pile up, he began to feel the call of nature,
and the call was urgent. He had to pee. Well,
there was no getting out of the suit because as
tiny as the Apollo capsule was, which carried three astronauts
(28:23):
in it at a time, the Mercury, which was a
single astronaut capsule, was particularly tiny. Essentially, it was you know,
a chair surrounded by electronic components in very tight quarters.
There was no getting out of the capsule, at least
not without scrapping the whole mission. So he just you know,
(28:45):
decided he had to go with the flow as and
he needed to pee in his suit. Actually, he actually
had to request permission to do this because no one
had really thought about this yet, and they weren't into
really sure that this was going to be safe to do.
I mean, you're talking about a suit that also has
(29:07):
components that attached to life support. There's a lot of
electronic equipment there. So this was a new and urgent problem.
And reportedly an engineer named Gordon Cooper was on the
receiving end of this request, which will become important later.
And this is the sort of stuff in history books
that you tend to not discover. They tend to leave
(29:28):
this part out. But he got permission to see two matters,
and he wet himself before his flight because he had
no other option. And keep in mind he was seated
with his you know, his back is is to the ground, right,
because you're seated in a where you're you're facing straight up,
(29:50):
So it all just kind of pooled behind him. Yeah.
Not pleasant. Well, when we come back, we'll talk a
little bit about how NASA decided to try and tackle
this potentially crappy problem. But first let's take a quick break.
(30:15):
So what was NASA's solution to this problem after Shepherd's
historic and damp flight. Well, they created a urine collection device.
So the astronauts at that time we're all male. So
the idea was just kind of secure a condom style
(30:38):
containment bag, you know, around the downstairs mix up area.
And John Glenn on his mission, generated more than two
pints of p in four hours. Impressive. But wait, there's more.
For the final Mercury mission, astronaut Gordon Cooper was to
(31:00):
be in orbit for more than twenty four hours, and
so NASA designed a system that included the in suit
urine collection bag that was in turn going to eventually
be incorporated into the heavy duty space boxer briefs that
I talked about before. And extending from this bag was
(31:20):
a plastic tube that ended in a quick connector. Ah.
There was a fly on the suit, like a zipper
fly on the front of the suit, so Cooper could
unzip a suit, pull out this tube with a connector
on the end of it, then attach a line with
the other half of the connector to it. This line
(31:43):
also had a pump attached to it. Cooper could activate
that pump by hand, and then he would pump the
p out of the in suit bag through this line
to a collection bag, and then he was supposed to
put the collection bag under his seat. Because NASA was
really interested in learning more about that p and that
(32:05):
was the first space toilet sort of. It was called
the Mercury Atlas nine or m A nine ur nation
system glamorous right, And you might remember earlier in this
episode I said that Gordon Cooper was the person who
was actually on the other end of the communications channel
when Al Shepherd had to request permission to pe in
(32:28):
his suit for that first Mercury mission. Well, on Cooper's flight,
Shepherd was the guy who was on the other end
of the communications channel, and he actually played a little
bit of a prank on on Cooper. Shepherd went to
the capsule before Cooper was to board it and put
a little toilet plunger in the seat of the capsule
(32:51):
with the tags attached that said removed before flight. Just
kind of a fun story of astronauts rasing each other.
But the GYM and I project proved that even more
thought was going to have to be put forward to this,
because the longest of the Gemini missions was to last
two weeks in space. While NASA tried putting astronauts on
(33:14):
a diet that would hopefully produce the least amount of
solid waste, well, sometimes the best laid plans just freaking
go aglay, don't they. Well, the hope was that by
using these foods with a very low fiber content, they
would just you know, avoid the need for the astronauts
to have that type of evacuation. They could pee into
(33:35):
the bags, but hopefully they would not need to poop.
But um, that would not be the case. Now, they
did have a slightly more sophisticated urine collection device which,
on casual glance, because I looked at a picture, this
thing kind of was like a cross between a lightsaber
and a set of bagpipes. And I know that sounds confusing,
but just imagine a device that at one end has
(33:58):
a condom fits over the astronaut operating equipment. Keeping in
mind that again at this point in history, all the
astronauts were mail and then through a series of valves,
the there was a connection to a collections bag to
pick up all the p and the astronauts were meant
to store these bags of p under their seats or
(34:19):
actually to use them to vent them out into space.
You would actually connect the bag to a connector on
the spacecraft, open up a channel, and the urine would
vent into space and would instantly crystallize upon exiting the capsule.
There's actually video footage of this where you can see
(34:41):
the formation of the crystals as the p is being
vented out into space, so that that footage exists if
you want to check it out anyway. For the Gemini
or Gemini seven mission, the astronauts were to be in
space for nearly two weeks at gem level and Frank
Boorman where the astronauts on board Historic Flight Unfortunately, despite
(35:02):
the low fiber diet, Level felt the need to go
pooh when they were still several days left in the mission,
and so he went, like, there wasn't really any real
option to do anything else, so he pooped his suit,
and that experience taught NASA that something else was going
to need to be done for Apollo, because those missions
(35:24):
were also going to be very long to get out
to the Moon and come back. But if you think
that that something was to include a toilet on the
Apollo capsule, well you're wrong because it was way too
late in the game to figure that out. So instead
there need to be some sort of equipment the astronauts
could have to deal with the issue, and an actual
(35:45):
process for them to follow and well, there wasn't enough
space in the capsule to carry something really sophisticated. And
now we come to the poop in a bag part
of our podcast. Yeah, so the poop collection equipment consisted
of a bag with some adhesive around the rim of
the opening, so you were essentially taping the bag to
(36:09):
your backside and creating a seal. Otherwise, well you're gonna
have poop fly all over the place in microgravity, and
spoiler alert, that actually did happen. Kind of a crappy
flight experience, if you ask me. Anyway, According to what
I've read, the procedure for doing this involved the astronaut
who needed to go to the bathroom moving to one
(36:30):
side of the capsule, the other two being as far
away as they possibly could be from the third that
was not particularly far in the Apollo capsule. Then the
astronaut who needed to go would have to get out
of a suit like all of his suits, stripping down naked, which,
as I'm sure you've gathered, requires a pretty good amount
(36:52):
of work. Then he would need to adhere the defecation
collection system or you know, the poop bag, to his posterior.
The bag also included a flap of plastic and you
would put your fingers into this flap of plastic was
kind of like you know, like a like a plastic
glove for a couple of fingers. Because okay, so there's
(37:14):
no gravity in space, or rather micro gravity. It's like
you're constantly falling. So the effect to us is that
we're floating weightless. Right. Gravity is typically what causes the
separation of poop from you know us when we poop.
Gravity is helps us out in that matter, and that
(37:34):
meant there needed to be something there so that the
astronaut could you know, effectively using gloved fingers make that
separation happen manually. Yeah, I know, this is gross. And
once done, the astronaut would need to use a special
anti microbial tablet that would be inserted into this bag
(37:55):
and broken up so that, uh, the the tablet would
kill off the microbes in there. And you had to
mix this like by squishing this bag of poo and
microbial tablets are inta microbial tablets because otherwise the microbes
in the poo might generate various gases and that could
eventually cause bags to over inflate and potentially rupture, which
(38:18):
is super gross and dangerous because otherwise microbials in the
poop could start to generate various gases that could cause
the bags to inflate over time, potentially to the point
where they would rupture, which is a pretty big eu.
So the tablets were meant to prevent that from happening
by killing off the bacterium. And once all that was
(38:40):
done and the bag was sealed and stowed away, the
astronaut could go back through the process of getting back
into their their flight suit. The whole process could take
upwards of an hour, and the astronauts hated doing it
for obvious reasons, and they would frequently hold off for
as long as they possibly could before having to give
into the column nature. And yeah, there were incidents of
(39:03):
rogue poo in capsules. I mean Apollo nine was one
such mission. Their actual communication logs, no pun intended that
talk about a floating turd in the capsule, because sometimes
being a hero gets pretty darn gross. After Apollo, a
lot of work would go into creating, you know, other
systems to make it easier to go to the bathroom
(39:25):
in space, or at least a little less unpleasant, if
not actually easier. But we're not going to go into
all of those because really the only reason I wanted
to cover it here was because it was coinciding with
the evolution of the space suit, and the two played
apart with one another. So let's get back to Apollo
(39:45):
and cover up a couple of little brief things. The
whole purpose of the Apollo missions was again to get
astronauts to the Moon, and that would mean that any
astronaut taking a moonwalk would need to have their own
life support system connected to their suit and on board
the capsule. It wouldn't be a problem, and the spacecraft
provided all life support, but now on the Moon the
job would fall to the p l s S, or
(40:08):
the portable life support system. That is where we will
pick up in our next episode to talk about the
p l s S. We'll talk about the further evolution
of the space suit, including how it then evolved into
the type that was used aboard the Space Shuttle and
the kind that's used on the International Space Station. We
(40:28):
will also talk about the proposals that have been in
various forms of production since then, and about the the
the proposed design of the future space suit, the one
that unfortunately means that the Artemis program is going to
be delayed by at least a year, but we'll get
(40:50):
into that into the next episode. If you have suggestions
for topics I should cover in future episodes of tech Stuff,
reach out to me and let me know what those are.
The best way to do that is on our Twitter account.
That's text Stuff. Hsw over on Twitter and I'll talk
to you again, really s. Text Stuff is an I
(41:13):
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TechStuff News
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Karah Preiss
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