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How Do You Go To The Bathroom In Space?
by William R. Pogue 178 pages Level: Popular Astronaut Pogue answers questions that range from the mundane to the sublime about what it really is like to live in space. |
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Over twenty years have passed since the last person walked on the Moon
and people are blase when seeing pictures of astronauts floating in
the space shuttle, but most of us still know very little about what it is really
like to live in space. Maybe journalists were a bit too squeamish to answer some
of the really interesting questions during the height of excitement about the
space program in the sixties.
Fortunately for us, former Astronaut William R. Pogue has given hundreds of lectures in the United States and other parts of the world about his part in the space program. During the question and answer section of his lectures, he had ample opportunity to discover what people really want to know and he has gathered the most popular questions and answers into "How Do You Go To The Bathroom In Space?" The book contains 221 questions from the mundane "How do you wash your dirty clothes?" to the whimsical "Is the Earth prettier from space?" Here is a sample: 29. How did you breathe? Was breathing any different? 48. Did you use a pen or pencil? 58. Did you have trouble swallowing? 60. What did you do with the trash? 75. How did you keep from floating around while exercising? 82. How did you shave? 98. Did you get homesick? 102. How did your crew get along together? 110. What would you do if someone got a toothache? 131. A Russian cosmonaut said he went into space and didn't see God. Did you see God in space? 145. Did you have any experiments that were done just for fun? Did you have anything like toys just to play with? 177. What does it look like when you're going up? 215. What kind of things would we want to build in space? Pogue also describes in great detail the physiological changes that the astronaut goes through. Astronauts gain an inch or two in height and even the face changes quite a bit. I won't spoil the surprise by giving the answer to the title question of the book (it's one of the lengthier answers), but apparently "slip ups" did occur and the guilty party generally would not admit to them. According to astronomy Pogue "...fecal and urine spoils can break the monotony on even the dullest days in space." |
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| Review by Ed Ehrlich | |