In Space, No-one Can Hear Your Laundry
Should astronauts continue to wear clothes and how will this impact future space missions?
Regular readers might have gathered I often precede my fiction with a smattering of commentary, peppered with dubious facts. If you want to read the latter later then feel free to jump down to the made-up stuff now.
JR
I take my writing research very seriously. Last night I read a large chunk of what the first men to stand on the moon said during their journey. Amongst all the technical chit-chat, they heard news from back home, joked about eating habits, displayed a surprising amount of geological knowledge, and proved to be eloquent observers of our closest satellite. They also spent an inordinate amount of effort trying to establish where exactly they'd landed so they could rendezvous with their orbiting colleague and return home safely.
Three things they didn't discuss during their eight days of encapsulation were personal hygiene, use of a normal toilet and laundry. Because those things couldn’t happen. There was no room, time or inclination to care about such matters. Staying alive and completing their mission was the absolute priority, both for them and myriad ground support teams.
Humans are notoriously fragile, stitched together from squishy containers of watery liquid, from subcellular components to sloshing chambers and deliberately leaky tubes. We could literally die from a thousand paper cuts.
We also dispose of litres of fluid every day, ridding ourselves of metabolic and toxic waste. Expiration, perspiration, urination, defaecation and menstruation occur with often disruptive regularity.
Every second of every day around the globe, modern human society pretends to be disconnected from its biological roots. That these things don’t happen.
But they do, even in space. Yet one surprising thing doesn’t happen upstairs:
I know. This can only mean... consequences.
“It's been a long day, and your clothes show it. After you change into something more comfortable (and clean), you realize the clothes you just took off could really use a good wash. Unfortunately, there's no washing machine within 250 miles. That's just a typical day of life onboard the International Space Station (ISS). While the Space Station does offer more amenities than did earlier spacecraft, such as the best free gym off the planet, one of the many things it still does not have is a way to wash clothes. So, what do you do with your dirty underwear when you're orbiting the Earth aboard a spacecraft with no washing machine?”
Yet, team dynamics will be essential to future missions to the Red Planet. There’s the much discussed question: should future Mars missions have all-female crews? I’ve done the sums which others have pretended to ignore: it’s going to take 700 pairs of underwear for such a crew ‘to be comfortable with one’s body’. Quite the burden for any non-compostable yet eco-sustainable rocket-powered solution.
“A hot topic of debate has been who will get to represent humanity on the Red Planet. At the center of that discourse is the 70-year-old argument that an all-female crew would make the most sense both biologically and psychologically, and not just as a matter of diversity and representation. Numerous analyses indicate an all-female crews would consume fewer resources than an all-male crew, making long-distance travel to Mars more efficient. However, many experts say this argument is no longer relevant and that a diverse crew would ultimately perform better.”
To obviate an eternity of gender-laden discussions, I’m going to chuck another ethical spanner in the works: it's obvious that future generations of space travellers will need to be genetically modified in order to endure the physical and mental rigours of long-term interplanetary travel. Even the humble (but pointless) appendix is a potentially lethal piece of anatomy. But should this step be performed on such adventurers even before they’re born? Should individual pre-determinism be built into humanity's future trajectory towards the stars? Do we even need cis-humans, with all their long-suffering biological and mental inner spaces, in order to explore the infinite richness of outer space?
I think you now deserve some unflashy associated fiction, written in a much lighter vein…
A Very Light Lunch
“Why do we iron clothes anyway? Who decided it was necessary to flatten woven plant fibres with a lump of hot metal?”
Pete was pushing out another of his pet peeves onto his captive lunchtime audience. Dull didn’t begin to describe it. Fortunately, today’s EVA was scheduled to begin in thirty minutes. Enough time to eat, even if too long to ignore him.
“Is that why you became an astronaut, Pete?” said Sue. “So you could float around this smelly can in a crumpled jumpsuit.”
“A five-day-old crumpled jumpsuit,” added Michelle, pinching her nose theatrically as she sucked on a straw embedded in a sachet of nutritious soya paste.
“I’m only indulging my natural urge to conserve precious resources. Don’t worry, I’m not anticipating either of you will adopt the same habit,” said Pete.
“No way, José,” replied Sue. “End of the day and my knick-knacks are ready for the trash. Those babies need to burn.”
“Yep,” agreed Michelle. “Some itches shouldn’t be scratched.”
“Painting a wonderful image, ladies. Lucky I don’t get space-sick, eh? Now, please be reassured I’ve sanitised thoroughly before this meal, on account of a little surprise. Or, hopefully, several of them.”
Michelle’s eyebrows rose as her cheeks turned concave from extracting her final drops of gloop.
“This better not be another of your show and tell sessions,” said Sue, with a knowing look to Michelle. Ground control had halted last week’s proceedings as Pete tried to tease frog spawn from an experimental pondwater globe.
“Well, it’s more of a show and eat,” enthused Pete. “Give me a sec and I’ll demonstrate.” Before they could protest, he grabbed a handhold to twist his torso and pushed off hubwards.
Michelle waited until he was out of earshot before pleading, “Please tell him, Sue. My nose almost shunted into his backside yesterday in the lab tunnel. The fumes were eye-watering. Why can’t he change his underwear like the rest of us? I don’t want the news to read: ‘misguided astronaut fails to escape poisonous gas cloud’.
“I hear you, ‘Chell. I’ve hinted to him several times. But there’s no operating procedure to wave in his face. The manual only says ‘replenishment and disposal is at each crew member’s discretion, with due consideration in balancing personal hygiene with inventory levels’.”
“What about considering my olfactory nerve? I can’t believe they—”
“Shh. He’s back…”
Pete reappeared through the interlock with a wide Cheshire-cat smile. “Better than I expected!” he said.
“What is?” said Michelle.
“My little crop of organic tastiness. Might be enough to treat both of you.”
“So it’s something we can eat, Pete?” asked Sue.
“Yes, yes. Something that’s never been eaten fresh up here.”
“And it’s definitely edible?” asked Michelle.
“Well, as my temporary guinea pigs, one of you is about to find out.” Pete held up a small, bright red sphere between his thumb and forefinger and took aim first at Michelle and then Sue. “So, who’s going to open wide?”
“Is it… Is it a fruit? asked Michelle.
“Well, I’d say vegetable, but—”
“Don’t be pedantic, Pete,” Sue chided. “All I can see is a very tiny tomato.”
“But you’ll still try it, won’t you?”, he asked, looking like a kid who’d baked his first cookies.
“Alright, go on then.” Ignoring Michelle’s protests, Sue opened her mouth and shut her eyes. Pete aimed at her face like an amateur darts player and released the tomato. Still subject to Newtonian physics, it slowly rotated during its short passage; its green sepal a polar cap; its pedicle a visible axis; to improbably dock between Sue’s expectant lips.
“Bulls-eye!” exclaimed the dart-thrower. “Go on. Take a bite, Sue. Tell me what you think.”
Sue’s lips formed an ‘O’ and the spherical morsel succumbed to her oral vacuum. She chewed slowly, Pete hovering like an anxious father-to-be. “Mmm, not bad. Not bad at all, Pete,” she said, her expression turning from brow-furrowed critic to satisfied consumer.
Pete beamed in self-congratulation. “See, told you it would be a treat.” He pivoted towards Michelle, who was staring uncertainly at Sue. “Right, your turn, Michelle. Let me get—”
“Exactly what did you grow them in, Pete?” asked Michelle.
“Ah, informed consent – always the medic, eh? Well, see if you can science this: you. More precisely: both of you.”
“I… I don’t understand. We’re people, not soil.”
“True, true. But every day, regular as clockwork, you offer up an item to the compost gods.”
Michelle gasped. “No. Not our waste tank. Pete, how could—?”
Pete looked aghast. “What? No! Yuk. I’m not some deranged sanitation engineer.”
“What then? I’m not that regular. What are you using?”
“Isn’t it obvious? All that bloody underwear you both keep discarding. I mean, what a waste! It’s the perfect substrate when mulched down. Marvellous for—”
A strange noise from his first test subject interrupted further revelations.
“Sue, are you OK?” asked Michelle. “You look a bit peaky.”
Sue didn’t reply. Instead, her hand tried to plug her mouth, even as her shoulders heaved and cheeks swelled.
“Sue! Keep swallowing, for goodness sake,” exclaimed Pete. “I spent ages growing that.”
“Per interulus, ad astra.”
Too late. The first space-fed tomato made a rapid, unscheduled and post-masticated exit from the unwilling manure-maker. On a soya-stream comet of vomit, the macerated fruit-cum-vegetable splashed-down onto the second guinea-pig’s face. The impact triggered a reflexive chain reaction, their cheeks also swelling until a sachet-fed bloom of green, brown and yellow burst forth beneath bulging eyes. With unerring accuracy this collateral comet headed for the messroom’s exit.
“Carpe vomitus.”
At the epicentre of this churning vortex of gastric chaos, Pete had already swung into action with highly-trained professionalism. He knew delicate electronics must be defended from digestive acids at all costs. Ripping off his clothing, ignoring the ‘more humus than hummus’ stink, he fashioned a makeshift colander from the festering garments and expedited the capture of the nutritious ejecta.
Transitioning from knicker-pincher to puke-catcher, he was determined no derogatory pleas would end his experimental cultivation; that the fruit of his colleagues’ loins would continue to avoid wasteful orbital declination and achieve horticultural sublimation. Enforced nakedness should never get in the way of science. His weekly contribution would just have to be two days premature.
Around him, the sounds of retching grew louder as his two human guinea pigs blindly grappled for purchase on each others tumbling torsos, globular satellites of organic detritus continuing to orbit their stained, heaving bodies.
Then the alarm sounded.
“Station, this is Houston. What in Pete’s sake is going on up there?”