Whuh oh. Seems the only toilet on the ISS is busted and they can’t get a plumber out there until next week. Astronauts aboard the space station have been able to impose upon the nearby Russian Soyuz spacecraft, using its limited-capacity toilet in a pinch, and have now apparently rigged some sort of sack-like contraption to the toilet on the ISS. Sounds delightful.
The good news is that the problems are only occurring when going number one. The astronauts can go number two just fine, Lord o’ Mercy.
“While one of the crew was using the Russian-made toilet last week, the toilet motor fan stopped working, according to NASA. Since then, the liquid waste gathering part of the toilet has been working on-and-off.
Fortunately, the solid waste collecting part is functioning normally.”
Space Shuttle Discovery is set to launch this Saturday and will meet up with the crew at the ISS on Monday. NASA is “considering having some parts flown to Cape Canaveral, Florida, and placed in the shuttle during its countdown,” which is apparently a bit dangerous. After everything else has already been weighed and balanced, any extra weight could throw off initial calculations.
Come on, though. You gotta fix the toilet, right? That, or hang a sign above it saying “If it’s yellow, let it mellow. If it’s brown, flush it down.”
UPDATE: The Associated Press is reporting that NASA will be sending a special pump up with Space Shuttle Discovery to fix the broken toilet. Flush away, boys. Flush away.