Houston, we have a problem: ISS toilet broken

CTV ^ | July 19, 2009 | AP

[Loyalist]

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida -- The bathroom lines just got a lot longer at the linked space shuttle and space station.

One of the two toilets on the international space station malfunctioned Sunday morning. The pump separator apparently flooded. Mission Control advised the astronauts to hang an "out of service" sign on the toilet, until it can be fixed. In the meantime, the six space station residents will have to get in line to use their one good toilet. And Endeavour's seven astronauts will be restricted to the shuttle bathroom.

[Loyalist]

This is what space exploration has come to in the post-Apollo age of the NASA monopoly. No moon base, no missions to Mars, no commercial development of space.

The dreams of the Space Age pioneers in the 1960s reduced to orbiting around the earth, waiting to use the one working john.

[Dr. Bogus Pachysandra]

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2296088/posts

[Regulator]

no commercial development of space

Oh no. Commercial space is all about telecomm. The average Telecomm satellite generates about $60-80 million a year in revenues, pays for itself in a few years at most, and then generates oodles of profits for a decade after that.

And that's just the fixed satellite services (FSS). For the DTH segment, DirecTV and EchoStar are running around $16 billion a year (each).

Commercial space is alive and well and growing. But the passengers on the rockets are electromechanical machines designed to turn around as many bits as possible, and charge a lot for it. People going to space just don't pay as much....

[UCANSEE2]

There is already a thread on this.

[davisfh]

Buzz Aldrin was on Fox News Sunday this AM. He encourages a mission to Mars. When asked why, he says that Mars is a much more hospitable place than the Moon. I absolutely trust his judgment and believe that, if we can once and for all subdue and eventually eliminate leftist politics in this country, we will be able to accomplish a mission to Mars and the eventual colonization of that planet.

In the meantime we have to contend with the idiots who argue that the Moon mission never happened. They simply cannot come to grips with the fact that tens of thousands (perhaps even millions) of people would have had to have been sworn to secrecy to accomplish such a scam.

[Chode]

no relief tubes there...

[Domandred]

Someone should have told them the Americans were coming

[ProtectOurFreedom]

...he says that Mars is a much more hospitable place than the Moon.

I always thought that, but I understand that the Mars atmospheric pressure is 1% of that on earth. That sure wouldn't seem to make it more hospitable. Why does he think it is more hospitable than the Moon?

[SandRat]

Houston, we have a problem: ISS toilet broken call ROTO-ROOTER.