Apollo 10: "Here's another goddam turd"

Or, A Crappy Day On The Apollo 10 Mission

So here’s something nobody tells you about the brave Apollo 10 astronauts: They apparently spent some time chasing loose shit around their space craft. This PDF of the radio transcript is apparently unedited; it is 506 pages long and has to be one of the few official products of NASA to contain the exact string “goddam turd”:

The Distractions In Space Tumblr has more somewhat similar to this. Some of it doesn’t involve free-floating feces! (Imagine that!)

This is what I learned from Mary Roach’s Packing for Mars - How much of space exploration s about poop containment. An amazing book, by the way.

Ron Howard’s next film?

I’d like to know how exactly the turds, shall we say, got loose.

If you think about it, this kind of problem was probably inevitable in zero g with no toilet. You try to hit the bag but it seems like there are bound to be mishaps.

I think the ISS has one or more toilets that use a vacuum to prevent this kind of thing but putting such a thing in an Apollo command module or a LEM would probably be out of the question.

Oh gravity (or lack thereof), thou art a heartless bitch.

One little push for man, one giant turd for mankind.

When I was in college I visited NASA with a guy who was on a lot of the recovery teams for Mercury and Gemini. He said that when they opened up the hatch of one of the long term Gemini missions it smelled like, well like shit. Really, really intense shit.

BTW, when I visited the bathroom of the visitors area of the Huntsville, AL NASA facility had an exhibit about the waste system of spacesuits. The world’s most interesting bathroom, with the possible exception of the one at the Madonna Inn.

Wow. We can put a man on the Moon, but we can’t contain a gravity-defying turd.

That should be NASA’s new motto.

I was curious as to when zip-loc type bags were developed. Mid 50’s, I think.

I agree. I’m remembering a description of a toilet that used air currents to help the excreta head down a tube to a holding tank. Unfortunately, the air made a vortex in the tank. Some to most of what was excreted would eventually touch the sides of the tank and freeze in place. Anything that kept riding the vortex had the possibility of coming back up the tube when it was opened, in the manner of a ping pong ball in a lottery machine. So a past success could turn into a failure later.

And don’t ask about the dreaded ‘decapitation’.

That’s just awesome!

’ Houston, we have a movement ’

:smiley:

And…

Why can’t men read instructions??

That’s what happens when they let Wolowitz design the toilets.

Apparently they didn’t think much of the moon maps they were supplied with, either!
P296:
05 00 01 51 CMP Boy, this is sure a crummy map.

P301:
5 O0 14 32 LMP This is the worst map I ever saw in my life.

P437:
05 14 13 12 CMP Shit, this freaking map is worthless!

P438:
05 l4 17 1 CMP This map is sh - crappy!

:slight_smile: