Boldly Going Where No Man Has Gone Before

It’s comforting to know that when it comes to pondering the logistics of having a shit in zero gravity, Prince Phillip is just as curious as the average schoolchild.

Apparently, it's one of the most common questions asked by kids during trips to NASA, and also now, it seems, visiting dignitaries. On a recent trip to a space facility, he too wanted to know – just how do astronauts poo?

The hazards of having a dump in space are easily imaginable, as it’s not only unpleasant smells that might escape from the bathroom following a visit, (giving new meaning to the term “floater"). There’s the initial difficulty of actually staying put when you sat down - you could park yourself on the toilet, only to find, when you looked up from your newspaper, that you were in fact hovering over the bath. Upside down. Or something… Also, a traditional flush system would be unsuitable as the water would merely spray up into the air, filling the room with fragments of floating excrement. It’s a tricky problem.

Astronauts are busy people and it’s important that they’re able to concentrate on their daily business of waving to family members via satellite links and performing mid-air somersaults, without having to dodge an array of glistening logs recently crimped off by their fellow spaceman’s nipsy.

Luckily, the BBC was on-hand to provide the answer: apparently, the ‘visitor’ is strapped to a unit which provides a tight seal around the buns; a rapid flow of air is then used to whip the offending item away.

Aall liquid waste is jettisoned outside, though for some reason all solids are “compressed” and are kept on board for later disposal back on Earth. This has been the same for all missions (except, probably for those poor bastards on Apollo 13 who undoubtedly filled their spangly suits with theirs when they realised the tin-pot rocket they were in was drifting into the inky blackness of space).