Living the Astronaut Way

Ever wondered how the astronauts in space managed to do basic living out there? It’s tough to think of how they must do things like eat, drink, poop and sleep. Here’s some facts that you may like to know about how astronauts manage these basic functions in space.

Eating is perhaps the simplest function as they eat precooked, prepackaged food. It may not be the greatest cuisine but it includes the basic nutrients required to keep the astronaut healthy and functioning optimally.

Drinking is also pretty much the same with bottles working as well in space as they do on Earth. For visiting the loo, it’s a little different where the pee goes into a funnel attached to a hose. That is connected to a suction fan and will take it away to a containment drum.

For solid waste, the astronaut must ‘dock’ over a hole the size of a drain pipe and clamp their feet into restraints. The poo is then caught in an individual bag liner and sucked away into the containment drum.

The sleeping is not at all like back home. The astronauts zip themselves into vertical sleeping bags that have been secured to the room’s interior. Of course it would make no difference being upright as gravity is really weak. Not a science project I would volunteer for.