Win NASA's Space Elimination Prize

NASA has opened a competition for design of the system for human elimination inside a space suit and the winning system must be able to work for six continuous days at a time.  (IBI:  Space Poop Challenge: NASA Seeks Solutions To Astronauts’ Potty Problems)

Waste management systems should address fecal, urine, and/or menstrual waste management in a pressurized survival suit environment for six days while protecting the safety and health of crew members.  Solutions should provide for urine collection of up to 1L per day per crew member, for a total of 6 days.  Fecal collection rates should be targeted for 75 grams of fecal mass and 75 mL fecal volume per crewmember per day for a total of 6 days duration.  Menstrual collection systems should handle up to 80 mL over 6 days.

- NASA:  Space Poop Challenge

We will leave the tittering over the words to Jimmy Fallon since the function is serious and the design specification for six days is in case of catastrophe in the space station after which the astronaut must survive for that long to have any hope of a ride back home.

It's not my intention to be so prosaic about the matter we can talk about the actual processes such a system would use but all of us are reasonably familiar with the needs of such a system.  Come up with a mechanism to store six days of the result of that and maybe you wind up in space.

Storing six liters of anything for six days takes significant space so how about if the source of the fluids is partitioned such that one side serves to provide water to the astronaut.  As the water is consumed, the other side fills with the waste so there's no net increase in storage space needed.

So, yah, build the system like that and send me ten percent of the prize.  It's a deal, right?

Ed:  the inventors hardly ever get to fly!

No, they don't.  It's one of the saddest ironies of space travel that Werner von Braun never got to fly and that story is repeated with so many others.  I'm sure von Braun could have come up with something pithy to say such as 'the stars are for the young' ... while he secretly resented their youth and wished he could go.

Ed:  did he even want to fly?

Unknown.  That would have been even more ironic if he could have flown but chose not to do it.  I don't believe that was ever a possibility, tho.

Here's more about the spacesuit to be modified in this project.

You will design a solution that can be incorporated into the orange Modified Advanced Crew Escape Suit (MACES).  MACES has been adapted for missions of longer duration than the original Advanced Crew Escape Suit (ACES) was designed for.

- NASA and WIKI: Modified Advanced Crew Escape Suit 

In case you wonder why you should bother, the prize for the winner is up to $30,000.