More Space Suits and Pooping in Space

astronauts up to the beginning of the Apollo program. And 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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,

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 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 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

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 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 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 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 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

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 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 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. 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 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

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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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

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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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. 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

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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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

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 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 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 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, 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

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 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 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 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. 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 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 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

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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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,

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. 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 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 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

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 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 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

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 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 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 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

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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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

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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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

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

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 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 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 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.