Offbeat @lemmy.ca jeffw @lemmy.world 5 mo. ago

Pooping on the Moon Is a Messy Business - If humans are to return to the moon, space agencies and governments need to figure out the legal, ethical, and practical dimensions of extraterrestrial waste

www.wired.com Pooping on the Moon Is a Messy Business

If humans are to return to the moon, space agencies and governments need to figure out the legal, ethical, and practical dimensions of extraterrestrial waste management.

33 comments

"You'll just have to hold it 'til we get back."
- Gets real stinky in those space suits when you shit liquid.
Once working colonies become a thing, any organic matter will be worth its weight in uranium.
- And perfectly sterilized by radiation.
  
  Ian MacDonald has a great science fiction trilogy. The first book is 'Luna: New Moon."
  
  Does a great job of worldbuilding along with pushing a sweeping saga.
No shit?
Poopin on tha moon 🎵
- I was poopin on the moon one day 🎵 In the merry month of December, no May 🎵
  
  Control to astronaut Jenkins, please be aware you are on an open channel. Jenkins to control, I'm aware control. I... am.... AWARE
- I heard that in my head to the tune of Infected Mushroom's "Walking on the Moon".
- Are there gaseous clouds around Uranus?
It's full of organics, I'm sure it'd be valuable on the moon for growing things.
- We dont fertilize our agriculture with human waste as is, there are far too many diseases and such to be transmitted. I believe the north koreans are doing this, and are often suffering from parasites and disease transmitted this way.
  
  To use it on the moon they would need bioprocessors first that break down the waste thoroughly
  
  Just put it outside for a while; it'll freeze-dry and get sterilized.
  
  (I didn't come up with this insight; I heard it in a video analyzing the plausibility of The Martian.)
  
  It's a hell storm of radiation up there with no magnetosphere or atmosphere.
  
  Yeah of course, but sterilizing it is going to be way way easier than bringing up dirt from earth.
  
  Any organic matter would be used.
  
  Its perfectly possible to use human waste as a fertilizer, on earth you just need to compost it for around two years to make sure that the pathogens are gone.
  
  As someone said on the moon the process might just be to leave it outside for a bit and you get a perfectly sterile pile of fertilizer
You can’t use a plastic dalkron eliminator any more because microplastics.
Can you just throw it into space?
- We should definitely try doing that for all our waste on earth as well, why didn't anybody think of that ^^ although on the moon you probably wouldn't need a rocket to launch it into space i guess
  
  The escape velocity of the moon is over 2 km/s, so you would definitely need a rocket to get stuff into space from the moon. And even then it's still just in orbit around the Earth, just like the moon is. With the risk of it being disturbed and coming back down some time in the future. It would really suck to be on the surface of the moon and be killed by a meteor of shit coming down.
  
  As for why we don't do that on Earth and nobody ever having thought of that, I hope you are joking.
  
  Just drop a deuce.
Outhouse - sun shuttle

Solar biome ass...biomass
Well it's not like there's an ecosystem there to fuck up. The lunar surface should kill just about anything we could poop out onto it. And if the problem is how it looks, just dunno it on the dark side where China set up shop. They're used to being a shitty government already.
- We have the technology. Poop balloons

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