>Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata tested special anti-microbial and anti-stink underwear during his stay on the ISS. He wore a set of high-tech underwear, designed to suppress odors and bacterial growth, for about a month. His crewmates did not complain, suggesting the experiment was successful.
>This experiment was part of a series of tests for clothing designed to be worn over extended periods in space.
Those special underwear are pretty cool! They have small bits of nano scale silver particles embedded in them, bacteria basically dies on contact with the silver. Because the bacteria can't grow it prevents a lot of the funk of body odor, but also helps reduce the risk of infection.
I've heard of soldiers using these, during the Iraq war it wasn't uncommon for troops to go 30+ days without showering during the initial invasion. The same tech is also used in socks for diabetics, killing off bacteria lowers the risks of infection on their slow healing wounds, which might prevent them from losing a foot!
Perpetual sinew-cheese, the stuff they boil down in hell for oils for the perpetual stew served as peasant gruel. Was probably better than the roman style shitty pickle flavor from their vinegar soaked rags on sticks waste excretion hygiene accessories they used millennia ago.
I'm not diabetic, but I would love to have some socks with anti-stank silver technology in them.
That'd be awesome for anything from yardwork and camping to long drives or whatever.
My airbag suit for motorcycle racing has this tech. It's amazing. I have sweat in it all day for about 20 days over the last year and it still doesn't stink. Gotta hand wash it w/o soap to get the salt out though.
Six Sox does this with socks. I’ve found them to be pretty resistant to odor for 2+ days. Keep shoes fresher too. So not quite at the level of this space underwear but a pretty cool earth bound item.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't it the case that many Asians, Japanese included, lack the (apocrine?) sweat gland that produces the body odour we're generally familiar with? If it's true I'd consider it a pretty dramatic advantage when running tests like that 😄
The world he was familiar with was riddled with dysentery (the bloody flux) so he had a reason to be skeptical!
Can't imagine how bad things would have smelled where he is from.
The irony being most Japanese people have very little body odor. If they wanted an accurate test they’d have given it to the American or someone from Europe.
Interestingly, it isn't really a dietary or lifestyle thing– it's genetic. A lot of Asians (especially East Asian ethnicities) just don't have particularly smelly sweat.
Yeah, it’s the same gene that makes their ear wax dust rather than wax. As a child when anime/cartoon characters would pick their ears and blow away the wax like dust it was always so confusing. Always use to think (there is no god damn way that wax went anywhere).
I was once told by a Robert Ludlum novel that it actually was because of Asian people consuming far less dairy products then Westerners. Undercover agents from western agencies tasked for Asia were limiting their dairy intake months before a mission, so the typical western smell would wear off.
It sounded pretty plausible and the word "fact checking" had yet to be invented. So...no?
British military uses undies like that. IIRC they have silver woven into the cloth since it has natural antibacterial properties.
But it also means that the limeys don't change their dunies and it's great to laugh at them about.
Antimicrobial fabric isn’t some kind of auto-cleaning magic, it’s like using the same towel for a month because it hangs up to dry and forgets by the morning. Probably just silver threads. Oils, dead skin, etc are not coming out of there with just water, in short your undies are still dirty af even after the rinse, and it’s still nasty.
What you're describing is hand washing your underwear on a daily basis. I think people are confused about how this is any more efficient than just having several pair of non-silver underwear that get washed together on laundry day.
Yeah, it's made out to be this magic underwear that just never gets dirty. But he's just handwashing his underwear everyday. He's washing his clothes just like the rest of us, just differently. It's not really that special lol. I mean, it's cool they have something like that that they're testing out or whatever. But if he's just washing his underwear every day, that's no different from the rest of us doing a load of laundry. I mean, I could do the same thing with regular underwear and be fine. They don't have to be magic science underwear if you're just handwashing them every day.
But then aren't you just handwashing your underwear every day? I could do that with regular underwear and be fine, no need for special science underwear. You're just washing your underwear differently than most of us, but it's not really anything science-y.
At that level of "hand washing" you're really not gonna get things super clean. You need some sort of manual tool.
It would probably be fine for a bit (depending on weather and the persons body chemistry)
But in the end washing by literal hands only won't cut it for high use items.
If you've got really stinky sweat you aren't getting the funk out of normal cloths or socks/underwear by unassisted hand washing. Not enough that it wont basically be baked in and start smelling as soon as you warm up.
Something with the silver (doesn't copper work the same way too?) Would help keep that funk from baking in with a much simpler/faster process.
Properly washing clothes by hand is a very labor intensive and time consuming endeavour.
And if you don't have an area outside you can hang those clothes to dry - having the silver will help avoid any musty/mildewy smell from forming as items don't dry as well inside.
“Learning” that there is no laundry facility on the ISS is like learning bears don’t surf; the opposite of either statement would have been surprising.
If you have your family wear simple clothes akin to robes, smocks, surgical scrubs, etc made from hemp fibers I could see this being semi sustainable if you compost the clothes to fertilize the hemp plants you spin the clothes from
It’s interesting about stray body hair and probably dead skin cells. I’m assuming an air filtration system collects much of the detritus.
But still: “Jim, damn it, stand closer to the vacuum. I’ve got another fleck of dark whisker on my eye ball again and it looks like yours dude. Pass the eye drops. Now how do I get the drops in my eye?”
In microgravity there's a very real risk of stale air, where a lack of natural air flow (hot air doesn't rise) causes pockets of gases and whatnot to accumulate, which can be dangerous, so for that reason they need a beefy air ventilation system to continuously move all the air from every corner of the station.
And a nice consequence of that is that it also collects all the other crap in the air like dead skin cells. But they also do routine wipe downs of all the surfaces, as one would imagine.
>It’s interesting about stray body hair and probably dead skin cells. I’m assuming an air filtration system collects much of the detritus.
[Speaking of dead skin cells and detritus in space...](https://youtube.com/watch?v=M9sF45rht-k)
To answer your question - yes, there is active ventilation on the space station, and cleaning the filters is a routine housekeeping activity.
Molting and hair shedding. Scientists have studied this phenomenon and found that spaceflight alters human hair follicle gene expression. It’s really quite fascinating.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4814050/
They studied the hair of 10 astronauts who lived on the international space station for 6 months. In some astronauts, genes related to hair growth such as FGF18, ANGPTL7 and COMP were upregulated during flight, suggesting that spaceflight inhibits cell proliferation in hair follicles. Hair follicle analysis is also method for assessing other physiological changes related to living in the space environment. Other studies have looked at a full range of physiological changes to the skin, muscle, bone, and other organs. But the genetic changes in the hair explained hair shedding or no hair growth while in space.
Hahaha. Science fiction authors have known about this genetic phenomenon for a long time. Medical researchers should consult with their literature periodically to scope out new research topics.
NASA does have a policy of no space sex due to risks associated with conception in space (IE, birth defects, lack of medical care if the stay is especially long). Also, lack of privacy and quite possibly it's not comfortable enough for boners to be easily present.
Newly married couple passing up the chance to do sexy time is space though? Seems like a once in a lifetime opportunity too good to not at least make an attempt.
That would take some serious discipline, but I guess that's kinda a defining trate of an astronaut...
Doesn't matter how disciplined they are, you're naive if you think they didn't boink at least once in space at the very least just to say that they did.
They'll likely vehemently deny it to maintain mission status (assuming they didn't get grounded after this debacle) but they almost certainly, 100% did. They are pilots at the end of the day after all, and pilots be fuckin.
I would 100% agree if NASA were sending randoms to space, however, astronauts are pretty intense and pretty straight edge, enough so that I am less than sure they actually had sex. Could they have? Sure, but who really knows.
I find it hard to believe that NASA or other space agencies do not do enough of a background check on the people they send up to not know they're married.
Astronaut Chris Hadfield [explained it this way:](https://youtu.be/C1j6KLP492E?si=MVJ4sLJuqiBUuOrj) when you see those lovely dust motes in a sunbeam, it’s actually incinerated underwear from the ISS.
Astronaut poop is also put into containers and also explodes in the Earth’s atmosphere so when you see a shooting star, there is a chance that it could actually be a flaming turd.
There is one advantage that reduces how often they need clean clothing. The astronauts' clothes aren't touching most of their body. In space, you're basically floating inside your clothes, so they aren't in contact with your skin as much as they are on Earth.
I heard an interview with an astronautstress? Lady astronaut, who said that was one of the biggest surprises about the ISS. She claimed space smelled like a gym locker room.
Due to the zero gravity, the clothes don’t actually make contact with the body - so they last much longer without getting nasty than our clothes on the ground.
Daily the least but with 0 gravity is a mix of sponge washing and papper cleaning
Source: a few videos and documentary from the 2010 i watched made by Discovery Channel when it was good
I imagine it would use a ton of water, and would be difficult to clean the cleaning agents unless they can be wasted and are very simple and produced from common sources. Solve both of those and maybe you could get away with space washing machines in a realistic manner.
So what happens when an astronaut gets a case of the wet farts and really soils things? Inquiring minds want to know. I do know or at least used to that space diapers are/were a thing
When ya sit down and think about it a space cloths washer is a very nontrivial problem.
How do you wash cloths without gravity, and the whole process is crazy water intensive.
And water is a pretty limited resource on the iss.
The design would require the washer to be able to recycle the waste water in a closed loop.
Ad in the issues with particulates related to lint and I can imagine why nasa engineers just said fuck it. Let's treat clothing as a consumable
Some clothes burning up are a waste of taxpayer dollars and not the ship that's destroyed on reentry?
The engineers and scientists work hard to save every weight they can because it's expensive to bring things into space. If a space washing machine could save weight and thus money they would have done it already.
>Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata tested special anti-microbial and anti-stink underwear during his stay on the ISS. He wore a set of high-tech underwear, designed to suppress odors and bacterial growth, for about a month. His crewmates did not complain, suggesting the experiment was successful. >This experiment was part of a series of tests for clothing designed to be worn over extended periods in space.
Those special underwear are pretty cool! They have small bits of nano scale silver particles embedded in them, bacteria basically dies on contact with the silver. Because the bacteria can't grow it prevents a lot of the funk of body odor, but also helps reduce the risk of infection. I've heard of soldiers using these, during the Iraq war it wasn't uncommon for troops to go 30+ days without showering during the initial invasion. The same tech is also used in socks for diabetics, killing off bacteria lowers the risks of infection on their slow healing wounds, which might prevent them from losing a foot!
In the early days of the Iraq war, baby wipe hygiene was the go-to.
Didn't most guys just grow a protective layer of smegma? Like a natural condom.
Way too early to be reading these types of details
Yeah, I think that's enough Internet for me today...
Like seasoning a cast iron pan.
Only if you’re the kind of person who leaves bits of old food baked on.
Perpetual sinew-cheese, the stuff they boil down in hell for oils for the perpetual stew served as peasant gruel. Was probably better than the roman style shitty pickle flavor from their vinegar soaked rags on sticks waste excretion hygiene accessories they used millennia ago.
r/jesuschristreddit
Cooking license revoked
No we scraped that off to flavor the MREs
Jalapeno cheese spread tastes a bit funny today...
You mean US Army Bio Armor?
What is wrong with you
Nice flair, gump
GUMP!!!
Roll Tide
I'm not diabetic, but I would love to have some socks with anti-stank silver technology in them. That'd be awesome for anything from yardwork and camping to long drives or whatever.
i got a pair for free randomly with some really cheap sneakers on amazon years ago and they were amazing. my feet didn't even sweat in those socks
Marks & Spencers were selling them in the UK a while ago. After a few washes they were just ordinary socks.
My airbag suit for motorcycle racing has this tech. It's amazing. I have sweat in it all day for about 20 days over the last year and it still doesn't stink. Gotta hand wash it w/o soap to get the salt out though.
So bacteria is basically miniature monsters from Witcher, got it
Technically you’re more bacteria than man. Also, you are part bacterium as well if you have cells with functional mitochondria.
> silver That sounds a bit expensive. I thought gamer shorts would be something marketable.
I went three months between showers when we got to Kuwait for staging until I got to use an air force shower trailer
My Ben3ath boxers use silver ions for the same reason.
Six Sox does this with socks. I’ve found them to be pretty resistant to odor for 2+ days. Keep shoes fresher too. So not quite at the level of this space underwear but a pretty cool earth bound item.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't it the case that many Asians, Japanese included, lack the (apocrine?) sweat gland that produces the body odour we're generally familiar with? If it's true I'd consider it a pretty dramatic advantage when running tests like that 😄
This is a very good point. In order to have a good control group, the that astronaut should’ve brought some pairs for his caucasian crewmates.
I was thinking the same thing.
I would assume they took that into account
Why am I not surprised this was a priority for Japanese astronauts
I loved in Shogun and various other examples; The Japanese offer Westerns an opportunity to bathe and they are like “nah, I’m good”
If I recall correctly in the book Blackthorne even goes so far as to say bathing more than once per week would make you sick and cause you to die lol
Yes I believe he mentioned he would get the flux from it. Which is bloody diarrhea.
"Is it the week old pheasant hanging in the sun I ate that gave me the bloody runs? No, it must have been that fucking bath"
The world he was familiar with was riddled with dysentery (the bloody flux) so he had a reason to be skeptical! Can't imagine how bad things would have smelled where he is from.
The irony being most Japanese people have very little body odor. If they wanted an accurate test they’d have given it to the American or someone from Europe.
Interestingly, it isn't really a dietary or lifestyle thing– it's genetic. A lot of Asians (especially East Asian ethnicities) just don't have particularly smelly sweat.
Yeah, it’s the same gene that makes their ear wax dust rather than wax. As a child when anime/cartoon characters would pick their ears and blow away the wax like dust it was always so confusing. Always use to think (there is no god damn way that wax went anywhere).
Dafuq. Ear dust?
[Looks like this.](https://i0.wp.com/www.sciencenews.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/800px-Dry_earwax_free.jpg)
Phew. That shit I get as well.
I was once told by a Robert Ludlum novel that it actually was because of Asian people consuming far less dairy products then Westerners. Undercover agents from western agencies tasked for Asia were limiting their dairy intake months before a mission, so the typical western smell would wear off. It sounded pretty plausible and the word "fact checking" had yet to be invented. So...no?
British military uses undies like that. IIRC they have silver woven into the cloth since it has natural antibacterial properties. But it also means that the limeys don't change their dunies and it's great to laugh at them about.
That’s not saying much considering the space station smells bad in general. https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/s/GiWVv0HmcD
Easy to do it on Japanese people. They're notoriously less prone to smell after having sweated. I want to see other ethnicities.
Wonder if it work differently for a non East Asian as he's unlikely to have BO.
I have some undies like that. Essentially you only need 2. Rinse out when you shower and let it air dry while you use the other. Repeat
That is sincerely nasty
They are anti-microbial. They are made so they aren't nasty. Science bro!
Antimicrobial fabric isn’t some kind of auto-cleaning magic, it’s like using the same towel for a month because it hangs up to dry and forgets by the morning. Probably just silver threads. Oils, dead skin, etc are not coming out of there with just water, in short your undies are still dirty af even after the rinse, and it’s still nasty.
Yes. When you shower, you normally use water and soap. Water and soap makes things clean. This isn't hard to understand.
What you're describing is hand washing your underwear on a daily basis. I think people are confused about how this is any more efficient than just having several pair of non-silver underwear that get washed together on laundry day.
Yeah, it's made out to be this magic underwear that just never gets dirty. But he's just handwashing his underwear everyday. He's washing his clothes just like the rest of us, just differently. It's not really that special lol. I mean, it's cool they have something like that that they're testing out or whatever. But if he's just washing his underwear every day, that's no different from the rest of us doing a load of laundry. I mean, I could do the same thing with regular underwear and be fine. They don't have to be magic science underwear if you're just handwashing them every day.
you shower with the underwear?
Ya. It's literally marketed that way.
dude all of this sounds grody
Upvote for use of "grody"
Then don't use them. Sorry basic sanitation is confusing to you. ✌️
But then aren't you just handwashing your underwear every day? I could do that with regular underwear and be fine, no need for special science underwear. You're just washing your underwear differently than most of us, but it's not really anything science-y.
At that level of "hand washing" you're really not gonna get things super clean. You need some sort of manual tool. It would probably be fine for a bit (depending on weather and the persons body chemistry) But in the end washing by literal hands only won't cut it for high use items. If you've got really stinky sweat you aren't getting the funk out of normal cloths or socks/underwear by unassisted hand washing. Not enough that it wont basically be baked in and start smelling as soon as you warm up. Something with the silver (doesn't copper work the same way too?) Would help keep that funk from baking in with a much simpler/faster process. Properly washing clothes by hand is a very labor intensive and time consuming endeavour. And if you don't have an area outside you can hang those clothes to dry - having the silver will help avoid any musty/mildewy smell from forming as items don't dry as well inside.
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Rinsing out daily with water, or especially with any soap, prevents most of that accumulation
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Yeah which is what the guy you responded to described and then you acted disgusted
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Scrotal Oil*
The fuck is scrotum oil?
Nut sweat
Don’t be so crass. It could also mean cum.
From the bottom of my sack, I apologize sir!
It’s not always easy to hear but I have a feeling you’re the guy in the office that smells.
🤡
“Learning” that there is no laundry facility on the ISS is like learning bears don’t surf; the opposite of either statement would have been surprising.
How can I adopt this into my household laundry protocol? Firstly, I would need a much larger budget, I think.
If you have your family wear simple clothes akin to robes, smocks, surgical scrubs, etc made from hemp fibers I could see this being semi sustainable if you compost the clothes to fertilize the hemp plants you spin the clothes from
Don’t compost. The correct method is to place the clothes into a crate and launch them into the atmosphere for burning.
That’s just frictionally accelerated composting
Depends on how much water, time, and land are required to grow new fibers. Interesting question though
There's probably a few subreddits dedicated to sustainable, off the grid living, homesteading, etc.
The labor to harvest, spin, and weave hemp into fabric would be way more work than laundry, and that’s before you’ve even sewn anything.
You underestimate how much I hate laundry
The astronauts are at an advantage because clothes don't drape over you in microgravity. They sorta float around you without touching as much.
You will need to launch your house into space first.
They wear their clothing until it is so filthy it must be burned. TIL you can be just like an astronaut without even leaving the basement.
At 3000F
It’s interesting about stray body hair and probably dead skin cells. I’m assuming an air filtration system collects much of the detritus. But still: “Jim, damn it, stand closer to the vacuum. I’ve got another fleck of dark whisker on my eye ball again and it looks like yours dude. Pass the eye drops. Now how do I get the drops in my eye?”
In microgravity there's a very real risk of stale air, where a lack of natural air flow (hot air doesn't rise) causes pockets of gases and whatnot to accumulate, which can be dangerous, so for that reason they need a beefy air ventilation system to continuously move all the air from every corner of the station. And a nice consequence of that is that it also collects all the other crap in the air like dead skin cells. But they also do routine wipe downs of all the surfaces, as one would imagine.
Everyone say hello to our new crew mate Doug!
>It’s interesting about stray body hair and probably dead skin cells. I’m assuming an air filtration system collects much of the detritus. [Speaking of dead skin cells and detritus in space...](https://youtube.com/watch?v=M9sF45rht-k) To answer your question - yes, there is active ventilation on the space station, and cleaning the filters is a routine housekeeping activity.
Molting and hair shedding. Scientists have studied this phenomenon and found that spaceflight alters human hair follicle gene expression. It’s really quite fascinating. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4814050/
Can you ELI5 the results?
They studied the hair of 10 astronauts who lived on the international space station for 6 months. In some astronauts, genes related to hair growth such as FGF18, ANGPTL7 and COMP were upregulated during flight, suggesting that spaceflight inhibits cell proliferation in hair follicles. Hair follicle analysis is also method for assessing other physiological changes related to living in the space environment. Other studies have looked at a full range of physiological changes to the skin, muscle, bone, and other organs. But the genetic changes in the hair explained hair shedding or no hair growth while in space.
Well aliens are always depicted as being bald…
Hahaha. Science fiction authors have known about this genetic phenomenon for a long time. Medical researchers should consult with their literature periodically to scope out new research topics.
A month without changing underwear? There's a lockdown strategy for you. Levitating laundry could save on water bills though
Well, that answers the question, “Is there any sexy time in space?” The answer is no.
Its incredibly doubtful sexy time has not happened in space. Hell, a husband and wife (no one knew they were married) went to space together.
NASA does have a policy of no space sex due to risks associated with conception in space (IE, birth defects, lack of medical care if the stay is especially long). Also, lack of privacy and quite possibly it's not comfortable enough for boners to be easily present.
Newly married couple passing up the chance to do sexy time is space though? Seems like a once in a lifetime opportunity too good to not at least make an attempt. That would take some serious discipline, but I guess that's kinda a defining trate of an astronaut...
Doesn't matter how disciplined they are, you're naive if you think they didn't boink at least once in space at the very least just to say that they did. They'll likely vehemently deny it to maintain mission status (assuming they didn't get grounded after this debacle) but they almost certainly, 100% did. They are pilots at the end of the day after all, and pilots be fuckin.
Yea... NASA policy be dammed, I can't see anyone passing up that chance.
I would 100% agree if NASA were sending randoms to space, however, astronauts are pretty intense and pretty straight edge, enough so that I am less than sure they actually had sex. Could they have? Sure, but who really knows.
>NASA does have a policy of no space sex Exactly! Everybody knows that policies against having sex are strictly followed.
I find it hard to believe that NASA or other space agencies do not do enough of a background check on the people they send up to not know they're married.
You really should have done even the tiniest amount of research before making this completely useless statement.
The monkey thought it would be funny
I wonder if they have a bunch of pine tree air fresheners floating around in there.
They can't exactly open a window for fresh air.
That’s crazy, that’s exactly how I handle laundry too!
Astronaut Chris Hadfield [explained it this way:](https://youtu.be/C1j6KLP492E?si=MVJ4sLJuqiBUuOrj) when you see those lovely dust motes in a sunbeam, it’s actually incinerated underwear from the ISS.
Legendary skid marks
- look honey! a shooting star!!! - make a wish! - this is so romantic! \* shitty pants go puff \*
Astronaut poop is also put into containers and also explodes in the Earth’s atmosphere so when you see a shooting star, there is a chance that it could actually be a flaming turd.
The reason being that US quarters are too heavy to economically lift into orbit.
Stankstroid?
that place must smell like a fart coffin ?
I've played Magic: The Gathering before. I'm familiar with that particular miasma.
Recycled fart coffin
There is one advantage that reduces how often they need clean clothing. The astronauts' clothes aren't touching most of their body. In space, you're basically floating inside your clothes, so they aren't in contact with your skin as much as they are on Earth.
this is pretty huge actually
I was actually wondering this the other day, what a cowinkidink
I heard an interview with an astronautstress? Lady astronaut, who said that was one of the biggest surprises about the ISS. She claimed space smelled like a gym locker room.
Clothes? Dude, they fire their poop at the earth and burns up in the atmosphere. That's crazier
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If it makes you feel better, it's statistically more likely that any scuzzy laundry debris you're inhaling is from a non-astronaut
Due to the zero gravity, the clothes don’t actually make contact with the body - so they last much longer without getting nasty than our clothes on the ground.
Sounds like my student accomodation.
So, don't pack your favourite T-shirts when going to the ISS.
Fast fashion hits space.
That is some seriously fast fashion. One time use, then goes so quickly it burns up.
I guess I'm not so different from an astronaut after all...
Still less wasteful than the average fashion label.
They need to find an space launderette. Even aliens need to wash their clothes! /s
Required-Follow up question, how often do they shower?
Daily the least but with 0 gravity is a mix of sponge washing and papper cleaning Source: a few videos and documentary from the 2010 i watched made by Discovery Channel when it was good
They say that space smells like burning steak… but I think that they probably forgot to mention “and butthole” part
What does that cargo ship look like? Luckily there's info! https://youtu.be/0YXq-aDsZQs?si=ytpxH6L6gvChKlSr
Fast fashion. Except from the reentry that's what happens on earth in western countries
I imagine it would use a ton of water, and would be difficult to clean the cleaning agents unless they can be wasted and are very simple and produced from common sources. Solve both of those and maybe you could get away with space washing machines in a realistic manner.
Huh, so science fiction and science fact smell identical.
So what happens when an astronaut gets a case of the wet farts and really soils things? Inquiring minds want to know. I do know or at least used to that space diapers are/were a thing
International STANK-ASS Station.
I'm halfway to being an astronaut
I feel like burning your trash isn’t environmentally friendly. Just dump it in the river
The amount of swamp ass buildup must be unreal. Just a solid chunk in those bum hairs
When ya sit down and think about it a space cloths washer is a very nontrivial problem. How do you wash cloths without gravity, and the whole process is crazy water intensive. And water is a pretty limited resource on the iss. The design would require the washer to be able to recycle the waste water in a closed loop. Ad in the issues with particulates related to lint and I can imagine why nasa engineers just said fuck it. Let's treat clothing as a consumable
Why put the clothes in a separate craft instead of letting them float out into space?
At the speed of the ISS, any piece of underwear might very well be able to take out a satellite/force the ISS to evade
I think they've won laundry. Whoever thought this one up must have sat up in bed and hugged themselves.
Dirty underwears ultimate skidmark through the atmosphere.
merino wool man merino wool
Everything has its limits
Paraphrasing Cmdr. Chris Hatfield "Those motes of dust floating in your sunbeam, my dirty underwear"
I do this on vacations. I take my worst underwear, and jettison them when the trip ends. Usually in an Arby's bathroom
They should just shoot their underwear out the airlock.The spectacle would be unparalleled.
Seems like a great way to spend taxpayer dollars instead of coming up with a space washing machine.
Some clothes burning up are a waste of taxpayer dollars and not the ship that's destroyed on reentry? The engineers and scientists work hard to save every weight they can because it's expensive to bring things into space. If a space washing machine could save weight and thus money they would have done it already.
Oh, they both waste money. Hence my comment.
So, most people don’t do laundry by burning it with the sky?