Sheeeiiitttt In Space!
While the Artemis II mission, and for purposes of this post I am operating under the assumption that they really went around the moon, is so far looking pretty successful for what it did (basically replicating what we did over 50 years ago), one area has not been as successful:
The toilets
Artemis II toilet fails again, forcing backup waste bags as odor spreads
In just a few short days of flight, the toilets have malfunctioned at least two and perhaps three times. In space no one can hear you poop….but they can smell it.
The Orion spacecraft’s toilet system has failed for the second time since the Artemis II crew launched toward the Moon, forcing astronauts to switch to backup waste collection bags while an odor spread through the cabin’s bathroom area. The repeat malfunction, which struck during the crew’s midcourse transit ahead of a planned lunar flyby, has turned a basic hygiene system into one of the mission’s most persistent headaches. For a flight designed to prove that humans can safely travel beyond low Earth orbit for the first time in more than half a century, the inability to keep a toilet running raises pointed questions about hardware readiness for longer missions to come.
Is it a coincidence that the most stunning and brave diverse crew ever is having problems with the potty? Sounds like a job for the The Wolowitz Zero-Gravity Waste Disposal System!
I don’t in any way assume that it is the fault of Captain Victor Glover despite his obsession with blaming Whitey for black failure (To Go Where No 2G Has Gone Before!). On paper Glover has a reasonably adequate background for an astronaut on this mission.
However I do suspect that the push at NASA to get more women and racial minorities into the ranks at all levels is at least a partial culprit in both the current crapper conundrum as well as the multiple delays involved in getting the Artemis missions in space. When the space race was under way, the U.S. had the best and brightest they could find working on the massive undertaking including a literal Nazi in Wernher von Braun, one of the key figures in getting us into space and to the moon.
In our more enlightened age your identity (race/ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation) is considered to be a valid and necessary qualification even for technical positions like those at NASA. Am I saying that NASA employs people who are less qualified than others because they check off a certain “oppressed” or “underrepresented” group and that furthermore that lowering standards in this way leads to clogged shitters in space?
Yes. Yes I am.
If we are to ever go to Mars it won’t be the result of a “diverse” NASA. A broken shitter is a problem on a short jaunt around the moon but on a trip to Mars? It could be fatal.
The nation that set her sights on landing on the moon was a serious nation and the men that got us there were the polar opposite of “diverse”.
I recently watched the video of the Columbia crew in re-entry prior to breakup. The Indian woman, Kalpana Chawla, gabbled constantly and distractingly about trivia right up to the last second, and I wished someone had told her to STFU for cockpit hygiene, just like in an airliner. I couldn't imagine what it would've been like to spend a week or two in orbit with her.
Diversity, as always, is not a strength, it's a source of weakness, division and failure. Teams of heterosexual white men are optimal, and anything else, women, pajeets, gays, whatever, is suboptimal.
Werner Von Braun was a genius, recognized as such by both Germany and the US, and surrounded himself with crack engineers...The US space program was going nowhere until they brought his team in...Von Braun was on a first name basis with several Presidents...When he died and Carter cancelled the whole program, and deported his best engineers, the US was finished in space.....