And really, it’s not (good, that is).

Found this little news-gem over at the Yahoo news (Via AP), claiming that the toilet over at the international space station is broken! The good news is, that the poop part of the toilet is working fine, but the pee one isn’t. Now that news article makes it sound rather tame, it’s only the pee one that isn’t working, they do have a temporary place to pee, and spare parts are being sent. I did however also find a news piece over at MSNBC on the same subject, which seems a lot more pessimistic, and is saying that there have been repeated attempts at repairs that have only been temporary, and the same problem always re-surfaces. They even go as far as saying it is a “fabrication flaw”, and that they expect the spare parts from NASA to fail quickly as well. Is MSNBC just spicing things up a bit to get more viewers? Quite possibly, but i wanted to show their side as well as they claim to have insider knowledge on the matter.

All is not lost however! As the astronauts DO have a backup system. The old way of going in space, adhesive bags to seal up fecal matter. It may not be glamorous but they may have to make do with that until further notice. According to MSNBC, there is a new module set to arrive late this year which would have additional toilets (I’m assuming they mean the Russian multipurpose lab module), lets hope for their sake that they can work something out until then and won’t have to use the bags for that many months.

Here’s a short video of Col. Chris Hadfield explaining how a space toilet works: