Space Plumbers

I like how one of the things that the space shuttle Discovery is carrying on its current mission to the International Space Station is a bunch of parts to fix the broken toilet on board that orbiting laboratory. It makes me happy that it’s not all glory and scientific prowess in outer space; they’ve also got to figure out a way to take care of the astronauts’ bodily fluids—although it’s not clear to me why they don’t just all wear those Depends diapers like that love-crazed astronaut did last year when she drove across Texas or wherever it was to confront her boyfriend’s girlfriend, or whomever it was.

(Details, you’ll note, are not my strong suit; that’s what the internetz are for; and look: all you have to do is google “astronaut in diapers” and the Fox News story comes right up.)

My friend, Richard Leider, always used to say that every job has some kind of “latrine work,” and this Shuttle mission illustrates that quite nicely. (I’ve been doing my own latrine work this weekend, grading my way through three whole classes of student papers; suffice it to say, doing so has cut way into my beer-drinking and sports-watching time, although I did manage to squeeze in watching the Pens fall hard at the hands of the Red Wings in game four of the Stanley Cup.)

Julie Payette, a Canadian astronaut on the space station is widely reported as saying that the hygiene cabinet—the toilet—is perhaps one of the most important systems on any spacecraft. “We’re humans,” she said. “We generate waste. We need a way to dispose of it.” Now if that’s not a quote to rival “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind,” I don’t know what is.

Less well known is what she had to say to her fellow cosmonauts whenever they availed themselves of the hygiene cabinet: “If it’s yellow, it’s mellow, if it’s brown, secure the friggin’ airlock!”