Riding Rockets

I quickly learned that the videos NASA released to the public of Vomit Comet–borne astronauts laughing and tumbling were recorded on the first couple dives because by the tenth weightless parabola someone would have already retreated into his or her seat and be vomiting copiously. Like the chain reaction of a nuclear explosion, the odor of fresh barf would drift through the cabin and send a few more over the edge. Those new smells would combine to affect yet more people. Even those who tried to block the smell by breathing through their mouths could not shield their senses, for the guttural sounds of the damned would fill the volume like a pack of barking German shepherds. By the twentieth parabola there were few smiles remaining. By the thirtieth parabola, some would be wishing the flight controls would freeze and the plane would smash into the sea at 600 knots and put them out of their misery. But through it all there would be the lucky minority, the immune who would smile and whoop and tumble and ask for more. I hated them.

I never barfed on any of my Vomit Comet rides, but I had wanted to on all of them. From the fifth dive onward my gorge was continually at the back of my throat and only by a super-human effort was I able to keep it there. I sucked on Life Savers by the gross, hoping the constant swallowing reflex they generated would keep my stomach where it belonged. I knew I would have felt better had I periodically retreated to the rear of the plane and vomited, but that would have been a sign of weakness and a violation of rule number one: Better dead than look bad. Besides, there were female TFNGs unaffected by the maneuvers. The image of me strapped into the back with my head in a barf bag while Anna Fisher and Judy Resnik did loop-de-loops was too much for my testicles to take. So I faked it. When Judy suggested we do simultaneous somersaults I smiled through gritted teeth and nodded agreement, all the while cursing my balls for their bravado.

Of all of NASA’s simulators, none was more memorable than the toilet trainer. It occupied a room next to the fixed-base SMS so astronauts could practice on it when they were in those training sessions. And practice was certainly needed.

The shuttle toilet was basically a vacuum cleaner. (Do not try this at home.) The urinal was a suction hose with attachable funnels to accommodate male and female users. Because of its strong suction (one marine proposed marriage), the toilet checklist contained a warning for males not to allow the most cherished part of their anatomy to get too deep into the funnel. If an inattentive astronaut’s appendage got sucked into the hose, he would find himself qualified for a second career as a circus freak working under a banner heralding, “See the world’s longest and skinniest penis!”

Urine was collected in a holding tank and dumped into space every few days. I would later find these urine dumps spectacular to watch. The fluid would freeze into thousands of ice crystals and shoot into space like tracer bullets.

The toilet solid waste collection feature also used airflow as a flush medium. A plastic toilet seat sat atop a “transport tube” approximately four inches in diameter and a couple inches in length. Users attached themselves to the seat with padded thigh clamps then pulled a lever to open the transport tube cover and turn on the steering air jets. The waste would be directed into a large bulbous container directly beneath the user. Astronaut solid waste is not dumped outside but is retained in the toilet, no doubt to the great relief of the rest of humanity. If solid waste is ever dumped into space, it will give new meaning to the phenomenonmeteor shower.

One feature of the toilet made it particularly difficult to use…the narrow opening of the solid waste transport tube. This was an engineering necessity to achieve an effective downward airflow, but it made transport tube “aim” critical to waste collection success. A user not perfectly aligned in the center of the tube could find their feces stuck to the sides of the tube and smeared over their rear end. To help the astronauts find their a-holes, NASA installed a camera at the bottom of the toilet simulator transport tube. A light inside the trainer provided illumination to a part of the body that normally didn’t get a lot of sunshine. A monitor was placed directly in front of the trainer with a helpful crosshair marker to designate the exact center of the transport tube. In our training we would clamp ourselves to this toilet and wiggle around until we were looking at a perfect bull’s-eye. When that was achieved we would memorize the position of our thighs and buttocks in relation to the clamps and other seat landmarks. By duplicating the same position on a space mission we could be assured of a perfect “shack” (fighter pilot lingo for a perfect bomb drop). Needless to say, this training took a lot of the glamour out of being an astronaut.