Last April, the Ax-1 mission made history by becoming the first private spaceflight to the International Space Station. For this, a capsule was used. Crew Dragon, of SpaceX, and veteran Miguel López-Alegria was selected as commander. A few months after completing the trip, the veteran Spanish-American astronaut took to his Twitter account to talk about his experience and left a startling statement.
“The best and worst of Ax-1? Best: Listening to my teammates see Earth for the first time; worst: bathroom. No surprises, it’s always the bathroom“He published. A curious comment did not go unnoticed, especially from a person who has his own experience.
After all, let’s not forget that Miguel López-Alegria holds the record for most spacewalks by a NASA astronaut with 10. And he’s the second most spacewalker in history, behind only Russian Anatoly Solovyov (16). ). He flew into space on the space shuttle, Soyuz, and the SpaceX Crew Dragon, so this is also the right word to talk about an eschatological experience in space.
The worst thing about space travel is the toilet, even on modern ships like the Crew Dragon.
You don’t have to be an astronaut to understand discomfort from going to the toilet during a space flightor while on board the International Space Station. Uncomfortable spacesuits and microgravity don’t make the experience as enjoyable as possible.
But in the case of SpaceX, engineers struggled to get the Crew Dragon toilet to work properly. In fact, Elon Musk’s company had to redesign his pod’s toilet after discovering a problem with the Inspiration4 mission.
As was known at the time, the tube that sent the urine into the container broke during a space flight. This caused a leak on a fan that circulated it under the floor of the ship. The astronauts did not notice the problem at the time, but the American company soon discovered it in its other capsules.
The problem wasn’t with the urine itself, but with the mechanism in the bathroom that mixed it with a disinfectant called potassium monopersulfate. SpaceX’s concern was that will corrode Crew Dragon components in case of prolonged and unintended exposure.
We don’t know if what Miguel López-Alegria exposed is related to some extraordinary event during his last space flight. The truth is that, despite training and experience, for sure nothing can prepare you to comfortably go to the toilet in such a situation. Even if you’re on board a modern spacecraft, whether it’s the now-defunct space shuttle or SpaceX’s Crew Dragon.
Source: Hiper Textual
