How Do You Go to the Bathroom In Space?

by William R. Pogue

  My supreme delight, however, was shattered by comments from Ed from the inside of the Skylab. He was making comments about problems, half talking to himself and half expressing exasperation with the control system of Skylab. I could tell from his comments that the large gyroscopes were acting up. One of the three had failed while Ed and I were out on a previous space walk and we were having trouble making the two remaining gyros handle the load. Ed was busily engaged with special computer procedures to keep the Skylab from going out of control. He had been so busy that he was only half-aware of my comments regarding the exquisite view from the end of the telescope mount. Suddenly, his scientific mind put it all together and he yelled at me to get back to my “hole” (work station). Just as suddenly, I also realized the problem and I was very embarrassed because I was the cause of it. The air that circulated through my space suit flowed out through an exhaust port on a unit in front of the suit. The escaping air had the same effect as a small rocket engine and was tending to roll the entire eighty-ton space station. I returned quickly to my work station to eliminate the problem and felt a bit undignified about the whole situation. One minute I was on the top of the world and the next I felt as meek as a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

  In the meantime, Jerry was having trouble reaching far enough to work on the telescope, so I moved down to help him. I ended up holding him by his legs and shoving him head-first into an area where he could reach the telescope and complete his work.

  By the time we finished our work we had been out on the space walk for seven hours. It was my last space walk and certainly had been one of the most interesting sightseeing experiences of my life.

  105. What does the Earth look like?

  Astronauts in Earth orbit were 100–750 miles above the Earth, and although they could see the Earth’s curvature on the horizon, the Earth looked similar to the view seen from high-altitude aircraft. Of course, the area in sight was much greater and features appeared smaller because of the distance. Although the oceans are uniformly blue, the land surfaces differ quite a lot in color, texture, and relief; both are often covered by large tracts of clouds. Cleared range lands and cultivated agricultural regions are among the most prominent man-made features visible from Earth orbit. In particular, the slight differences in color, soil texture, stage of growth, and use of fertilizers make the boundaries between fields quite apparent. Airfields with concrete runways, large reservoirs in arid regions, and lights at night are also easy to see. Major mountain ranges have a ribbed and ridged appearance and high peaks are snow-covered. Deserts and arid regions are prominent, distinctive, often very colorful, and usually cloud-free. They also have individual coloration and surface patterns that make them easy to distinguish. Tropical rain forests of equatorial regions are huge expanses of monotonous, mottled dark green; late in the day they are frequently covered with enormous thunderstorms that extend for hundreds of miles.

  The view has an air of fantasy about it, and you grope for words to describe what you see. My personal reaction was one of feeling humble, awed, and privileged to be witness to such a scene.

  106. What color is the Earth? What colors do you see?

  The colors on land vary. Mountains in non-desert regions are usually a nondescript dark brown or charcoal; high peaks and slopes are often snow-covered. Some appear coal black, like the Black Hills of South Dakota and the interior ranges of northwestern China. Some desert mountains are reddish brown. Forests are dark, almost black, except in the equatorial rain forests of Brazil and Africa, where they appear a mottled dark green. Field crops and range lands are also dark green but lighter than the forests. New growth of field crops and grasses are a brighter green than maturing crops. The only bright green vegetation I saw was on small tropical islands.

  Coral reefs and shallows were a beautiful shade of blue-green. Many lakes are light blue or blue-green from algae growth. The Great Salt Lake in Utah is crossed by a rail line causeway which divides it into two separate bodies of water, one red and one green. The color difference is caused by different algae and marine organisms which have adapted to different conditions present in the separated lake. Although the ocean, in general, is dark blue, ocean currents may appear green from marine organisms that are carried by the current. Occasionally large patches of red—Red Tides—appear within the green. When this happens, it creates beautiful swirl patterns of green and red in the solid blue mass of the ocean. The Falkland Current off the coast of Argentina is an iridescent bright pea-green.

  The sands of the Sahara and Arabian deserts have the most beautiful colors on the surface of the Earth. From space, these deserts look like a beautiful abstract sand painting. It is a pattern of mixed textures and varying shades of black, brown, tan, red, maroon, and orange. Much of the interior of Australia is a rusty brown color which is uniform over wide areas. We found Australia very easy to recognize after a week in orbit and referred to it as the “Red Continent.”

  107. Can you see the moon, stars, and planets any better? Are they any brighter?

  The moon, planets, and stars are a bit clearer and noticeably brighter, but you really can’t see them much better than from the Earth’s surface. We could see about 20% more stars than we could from the Earth’s surface.

  On my first space walk, I tried to identify constellations while I was on the night side of the Earth. At first, I was confused because I was unable to recognize familiar patterns. Although I realized I was seeing more stars than I was accustomed to seeing, it still took a few minutes before I was able to adapt to the new patterns and recognize major star groups. As you might expect, stars don’t twinkle when viewed from space as the twinkle is caused by atmospheric interference.

  108. Could you see some of the planets?

  Yes. We were able to see Venus, Mars, and Jupiter.

  109. What does a sunrise look like from space?

  A sunrise or sunset seen from Skylab occurred about sixteen times as fast as one observed from Earth due to the eastward velocity of the spacecraft. The sunrise starts as a rosy glow in the atmospheric layers on the horizon. The glow brightens and spreads outward as the red deepens and the various bands of the atmosphere brighten in white, blue, orange, and yellow. Just before the sun breaks, a bright golden-yellow blooms and shoots across the bands closest to the horizon. As the sun rises, the brilliance is dazzling and it is necessary to look away. The Earth below also changes rapidly as dawn breaks. Long shadows from hills, mountains, and clouds create eerie shading patterns for hundreds of miles. On Skylab there were sixteen sunrises and sunsets in each day’s twenty-four hour period.

  Moonrise is also intriguing. The full moon’s rise is rapid, like a sunrise. As it comes above the horizon, it appears flattened and similar to moonrise seen from Earth. However, the rising occurs so fast it looks like a bubble of air rising in water. As the moon climbs higher above the horizon, it appears to “pop” from a flattened ball into a full circle.

  110. Are you always in light (darkness)?

  When in orbit around the Earth, moon, or another planet, the spacecraft is in darkness when on the night side (the side away from the sun) and in light on the day side (the side facing the sun). On the way to the moon or another planet, or in very high orbit above the Earth, the spacecraft would always be in light. Of course, as you travel farther away from the sun, the amount of light received from it becomes less and less. If you traveled to Pluto, the planet farthest from the sun, the sun would only look like a very bright star.

  111. How hot (cold) is it in space?

  When on a space walk in orbit or on the moon, the temperature is 250°F in the sunlight and 250° below zero in the complete shade (on the night side of the Earth).

  112. A Russian cosmonaut said he went into space and didn’t see God. Did you see God in space?

  I don’t think anyone sees God in the literal sense. We have inner reactions to many evidences of God—the physical order of the universe, beauty, kindness, and love. In this respect, God
is evident everywhere and is no more visible in space than on Earth. It would be a remote and rarely accessible God if we had to go into space to see Him. The magnificence of the view of Earth and the heavens as seen from space are truly awe-inspiring—the perception of God in such a situation is a personal feeling. I did feel I was seeing, or feeling, a new aspect of God.

  113. What is a solar flare like?

  It’s seen as a sudden brightening of a small area on the surface of the sun. It is something like a violent thunderstorm on Earth, and it usually results in a sudden increase in radiation and particles that stream out from the sun. This increased emission can be a danger to space travelers in deep space—for example, astronauts on lunar missions or on the way to Mars.

  114. What would the astronauts on deep space missions do if a solar flare happened?

  Moon missions were fairly short, about eight to ten days, and the only protection for the astronauts was the spacecraft walls. In the case of a flare, they would have stayed in their command module and canceled their lunar landing, or they would have cut short their stay on the moon and returned to their command module. It provided more protection than the thinner walls of the lunar landing spacecraft. For long spaceflights, like a trip to Mars, the likelihood of being exposed to radiation is much greater, and special rooms or chambers would probably be provided to protect the crew following solar flares.

  115. What did it look like when you looked into space?

  The view of space from the sunlit side of the Earth is different from the view on the night side. On the day side of the orbit, space appears as a solid background of black. The sun, moon, and brighter stars and planets are visible, but the general impression is that space is a black emptiness. On the night side of the Earth, stars appear bright and sharp, but it seems that space is even blacker than on the day side—a vast void of outer darkness.

  The effect of the night side view of space is most dramatic when out on a space walk. I got my first unrestricted view of the entire night sky just as I had stopped working on a jammed radar antenna. Dr. Gibson and I had given up trying to use a small flashlight to continue our work in the dark. I raised the visor on my helmet cover and looked out to try to identify constellations.

  As I looked out into space, I was overwhelmed by the darkness. I felt the flesh crawl on my back and the hair rise on my neck. I was reminded of a passage in the Bible that speaks of the “horror of great darkness.” Ed and I pondered the view in silence for a few moments, and then we both made comments totally inadequate to describe the profound effect the scene had made on both of us. “Boy! That’s what I call dark.”

  116. Did you have any strange encounters?

  No, but once Ed Gibson and I thought we were. We were on a space walk and had been working over an hour, attempting to repair a piece of equipment covered by an aluminum-coated plastic blanket. The repair work took about four hours, and we could only work when we were on the day side of the Earth, where Earth shine lighted the work area. I had been tearing off pieces of the blanket that covered an electronic box in order to remove and replace it. I had just gotten the box exposed when we noticed we were entering twilight, so we stopped working to wait for sunrise. The Earth below was in total darkness, but we were still in faint twilight because of our altitude. I had begun looking into the night sky to continue a star field study, when Ed said in a rather querying tone: “Look over there; are those UFOs? There are hundreds of them.” I looked and saw a cloud of metallic purple and violet sparkling objects. The sky was black behind them and they glistened with unusual sharpness and clarity. We became rather excited as we described them to Jerry Carr on the inside of Skylab. He turned down the lights inside and looked out the window, trying to see what new and wonderful discovery we had made. We all laughed as we realized what they were. The shreds of aluminum-coated plastic I had tom off had been blown away by the exhaust air from our space suits and had created a huge cloud of tiny reflectors several hundred yards out from Skylab. In the fading twilight of space they had popped into view and created a dazzling, twinkling cloud to decorate the night sky. They were still visible in twilight several hours later, after we had finished our space walk and reentered the Skylab. It was Thanksgiving Day, and while we had our turkey that evening, we were able to look out the window and see the twinkling tinsel of our unintentional Christmas decorations.

  117. Do you believe there is other intelligent life in the universe?

  No, or I should say I’m not convinced. It seems reasonable to believe there is other intelligent life, but “believing” does not make it so. Based upon our limited understanding of the universe and life forms, there exists the distinct possibility that intelligent life exists elsewhere in our own or other galaxies. To change this possibility into fact requires for me some form of undisputed scientific evidence, not mere conjecture or statistical guesswork. At present, such evidence does not exist.

  118. What about the UFOs that accompanied our spaceships to the moon? (Astronauts have been quoted as observing mysterious objects following them on the way to the moon.)

  I think the reports of astronaut sightings were misconstrued. We often observed clouds of ice crystals that formed from water and urine dumps. I know of no unexplained well-defined material objects that accompanied our spacecraft to the moon. One such report turned out to be the third stage of the Saturn booster rocket.

  119. Have NASA computers been used to verify events in the Bible? (A report was circulated in the early 1970s claiming that NASA computers analyses had verified the Biblical account of Joshua’s commanding the sun to stand still—because of missing time in a computerized reconstruction of Earth time history.)

  No. This report is entirely false.

  120. Did the astronauts find evidence that others had been to the moon at some previous time? (There have been rumors that the astronauts found evidence of extraterrestrial life on the moon.)

  If such evidence had been found, it would have been freely and widely publicized as a major triumph of space exploration.

  121. Did we really go to the moon? I’ve heard that space exploration is all a hoax and is staged out in the desert for television transmission.

  Yes, we went to the moon. Walter Cronkite wouldn’t have lied to you.

  122. What would happen if you looked at the sun?

  Looking directly at the sun for even a moment can cause permanent injury to the eyes whether you’re on Earth or in space. Don’t ever do it. We had a gold coating on our helmet visors to protect us from ultraviolet rays from the sun. This coating also reduced glare and acted like sunglasses, but it still was not enough protection to permit looking directly at the sun. On one of my space walks, I had great difficulty attempting to photograph a comet near the sun. I was supposed to aim the camera by eye and eventually was able to sight the camera and keep the sun out of my line-of-sight by getting into a position where the disc of the sun was blocked out and shaded by one of the large solar arrays.

  123. Did you have a special instrument for looking at the Earth? the moon? planets? stars?

  We had many instruments for the scientific study of the Earth. These included cameras and instruments that sensed various types of radiation from the Earth’s surface. One of these instruments included a viewing telescope used to guide a sensing device that detected radiation from a very small area on the Earth’s surface. Small features studied by this instrument included volcano craters, unusual desert areas, lake and reservoir surfaces, forests, meadows, and coppermine waste piles. We used this instrument to look at the moon, but only for evaluating the instrument itself. I used two instruments to make navigational sightings on the moon, stars, and the Earth’s horizon, but they weren’t for viewing as such. They were designed to see if a person could take manual readings accurately enough to determine spacecraft position and altitude in reference to the Earth.

  124. Did you miss sex?

  Yes, the thought did occur to me from time to time.

  125. Cou
ld you have sex in weightlessness?

  Love will find a way.

  126. Could you smoke in space?

  It probably would be possible to smoke, but it would be dangerous because of the fire hazard and undesirable because of the air pollution. I don’t smoke, but some astronauts do. Most of them quit smoking several weeks before they went into space. I know of no difficulty the smokers had while they were in space. After return, virtually all resumed smoking.

  127. If you could smoke in space, what would happen to the smoke and the ashes from a cigarette?

  The smoke would contaminate the air temporarily, but would be eventually removed by charcoal air filters. The ashes could possibly drift around and get in the eyes or be inhaled and cause irritation. It isn’t the most pleasant habit to accommodate in space. Smoke (or warm air) rises on Earth because it weighs less than colder air—in space everything is weightless, so there is no force to cause the circulation we normally observe around a candleflame or bonfire. If there were no air circulation from fans, the smoke would hover in a cloud around the smoker—a just and appropriate situation.