Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff production of I Heart Radio. Hey
Speaker 1: brain Stuff, Lauren Vogel bam Here. The first thing people
Speaker 1: usually want to know is how astronauts use the toilet
Speaker 1: in space, but really showering is just as hard, if
Speaker 1: not harder. I think about your own shower and the
Speaker 1: two things that make it so nice plenty of hot
Speaker 1: water and gravity. Water is even more of a valuable
Speaker 1: commodity in space as it is on Earth, and without
Speaker 1: Earth's gravity pulling the water down from the showerhead, along
Speaker 1: your soapy self and down the drain, there's just water
Speaker 1: and SuDS going everywhere. The gravity on the International Space
Speaker 1: Station is about of the gravity on Earth's surface, but
Speaker 1: because it's an orbit, the station is in a continual
Speaker 1: state of free fall, meaning that astronauts experience a continual
Speaker 1: state of weightlessness, also called micro gravity. So engineers have
Speaker 1: had to get clever to keep astronauts clean in At
Speaker 1: the earliest days of NASA, astronauts on the Gemini and
Speaker 1: Apollo missions had very few options. They could take a
Speaker 1: sponge bath with a towel, soap and water, but water
Speaker 1: was very limited in those tiny capsules. These guys also
Speaker 1: didn't really change their clothes. When astronauts returned to the
Speaker 1: Earth in the nineteen sixties, they were ripe. When the
Speaker 1: space station sky Lab was an orbit, it had a
Speaker 1: shower of sorts. Astronauts stepped inside a collapse tube and
Speaker 1: strapped their feet in at the bottom, then pulled the
Speaker 1: tube up around them and clipped it in at the top.
Speaker 1: The top and bottom hardly matter when you're in microgravity.
Speaker 1: Did smear liquid soap all over themselves and then rinse
Speaker 1: it off with a mere twelve cups or two point
Speaker 1: eight liters of pressurized water coming through a hose and
Speaker 1: shower head inside the tube. They then had to dry
Speaker 1: off with a towel and suction up every single water
Speaker 1: droplet so that it wouldn't get into the equipment didn't
Speaker 1: short something out. From start to finish, the process took
Speaker 1: two hours, so a lot of astronauts skipped it again.
Speaker 1: They tended to be a bit ripe on their return,
Speaker 1: but they did have more clothing to change into. During
Speaker 1: the Space Shuttle era, astronauts used the sponge bath system
Speaker 1: just like the Gemini and Apollo cruise did, but the
Speaker 1: International Space Station that orbits Earth today has improved the
Speaker 1: shower situation. All water is supplied in small pouches, and
Speaker 1: any that gets on their skin just kind of sticks
Speaker 1: and blobs. So to clean up, astronauts use rinsless soap
Speaker 1: and rinsless shampoo plus a little water from a pouch.
Speaker 1: They can work in the soap and water with a
Speaker 1: towel and also use the towel to help remove the soap, water,
Speaker 1: and any grime that they pull away. Any moisture that's
Speaker 1: left behind is captured by the Environmental Control and Life
Speaker 1: Support System and recycled, and we mean any moisture. The
Speaker 1: i s S system reclaims every drop of water from
Speaker 1: showering to breathing to peeing, then cleans it and reuses it.
Speaker 1: While we're talking about space hygiene, astronauts, Samantha Christopher Retti
Speaker 1: shared some secrets about microgravity toothbrushing with CBS News. You've
Speaker 1: still got your toothbrush and toothpaste, so you can scrub
Speaker 1: your teeth. But then what do you do with a
Speaker 1: mouthful of minty foam and no sync for spitting. A
Speaker 1: lot of astronauts just swallow the toothpaste, but Christopher Retti
Speaker 1: chose to spit it into a towel. She said, It's
Speaker 1: not the most elegant thing, but you do what you
Speaker 1: have to do. Today's episode was written by Christen hall
Speaker 1: Geisler and produced by Tyler Klang. For more on this
Speaker 1: and lots of other fresh topics, visit how stuff works
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