Last April, the Ax-1 mission made history by becoming the first private spaceflight to the International Space Station. For this, the capsule was used. Crew Dragon, of SpaceX, and veteran Miguel López-Alegría was chosen as commander. Several months after the trip was completed, the experienced Spanish-American astronaut took advantage of his Twitter account to reflect on his experience and left a striking statement.
“Best and worst about Ax-1? Best: listening to my crewmates seeing Earth for the first time; worst: the bathroom. There are no surprises, it’s always the bathroom“He published. The curious comment has not gone unnoticed, especially coming from someone who carries his experience.
After all, let’s not forget that Miguel López-Alegría holds the record for the most spacewalks among NASA astronauts, with 10. And he is the second with the most extravehicular activities in history, only behind the Russian Anatoly Solovyev. (16). He has flown into space on SpaceX’s Space Shuttle, Soyuz and Crew Dragon, so he too is the word for eschatological experiences in space.
The worst thing about space travel is the bathroom, even on modern ships like Crew Dragon
You don’t have to be an astronaut to understand the discomfort of going to the bathroom during a trip to space, or while aboard the International Space Station. The uncomfortable suits and microgravity do not collaborate to make the experience as pleasant as possible.
But in the case of SpaceX, the engineers They have suffered to get the Crew Dragon bathroom to work properly. In fact, Elon Musk’s company had to redesign the toilet of his capsule after detecting a problem in the Inspiration4 mission.
As was known at the time, a tube that sent urine to a container broke during space flight. This caused a leak on a fan that spread it under the floor of the ship. The astronauts did not notice the problem at the time, but the American company soon detected it in its other capsules.
The problem wasn’t the urine itself, it was the mechanism in the bathroom mixing it with a disinfectant called potassium monopersulfate. SpaceX’s concern was that will cause corrosion to the components of the Crew Dragon in the event of prolonged and inadvertent exposure.
We do not know if what Miguel López-Alegría exposed is related or not to some extraordinary event during his last flight into space. The truth is that, despite the training and experience, he surely nothing can prepare you to go to the bathroom comfortably in such a situation. Not even if you’re aboard a state-of-the-art ship, be it the now-defunct space shuttle or SpaceX’s Crew Dragon.