Using the toilet, a task often taken for granted on Earth, becomes a bit more complicated when the process is not aided by gravity.
Astronauts have used a variety of ways to relieve themselves in space, with the methods ranging from crude to high tech. To make the process more efficient, workers at Hamilton Standard in Windsor Locks have developed a new space toilet.
Donald W. Rethke, an engineer known to his co-workers as Dr. Flush, leads a team of about two dozen technicians "in search of the perfect flush."
"We're trying to come up with a space potty that's as Earth-like as possible," said Rethke, 54, a project engineer at Hamilton Standard, a division of Hartford's United Technologies. "The lack of gravity makes my job -- and the experience of using the toilet -- interesting."
Capt. John Creighton, an astronaut in the space program for 14 years, said anything that makes dealing with bodily functions easier helps astronauts concentrate on the mission.
He praised the recent advances that will help astronauts in this most personal matter.
In the Apollo days of the 1960s, astronauts were given clear plastic bags to use for disposing human waste. The astronaut, with his companions sitting close by, would raise himself off his seat and use an adhesive strip to affix the opening of the bag to his rear end.
One of the astronaut's companions would have to watch the process to make sure no waste escaped into the space capsule. When the astronaut was done, he would clean himself with a small piece of plastic attached to the bag, and pull the adhesive strip from his body.
The astronaut then would put a disinfectant capsule into the bag, seal it and put it in a storage bin.
"This was not the most comfortable way to answer nature's call," Rethke said. "We think we have developed a better way."
The toilets in today's space shuttles, which offer a bit more
privacy, resemble the ones found on commercial airliners, but they do not use water and they are far more expensive.
The main difference is that astronauts defecate into a bowl and urinate into a tube, which keeps solid and liquid wastes separate.
Motorized fans form a vacuum that draws both solid waste and liquids into the commode, and there are thigh bars to hold the astronaut in place. Both innovations help make up for the lack of gravity.
"It takes a while," Creighton, 49, said of relieving oneself in zero gravity. Creighton has been on three space shuttle missions.
Another problem with today's space toilet is that it fills up after about 11 days of use. After it is full, it must be removed and cleaned, Rethke said.
NASA needs space toilets that can be used for longer periods of time because the shuttles will spend as many as 16 or 18 days at a time in space when astronauts start work on Space Station Freedom in late 1995.
The toilet Rethke and about 30 of his associates have designed and built will enable astronauts to comfortably take care of their business for several weeks without doing extensive maintenance on the machine, Rethke said.
The new toilet uses the same basic design as the current model, but instead of storing solid waste in a container below the toilet bowl, it compacts the waste into flat patties at the bottom of a container that can be removed and stored elsewhere when it is full.
To test the container's seal, which is important because astronauts do not want the contents floating around the cabin, Rethke has kept a full bucket in his office at work for more than a year.
"See, it's still sealed, with no smell or leakage," Rethke said proudly as he pointed to a compost heap on his desk. "The only limit to the use of the toilet is the amount of storage room in the shuttle."
Rethke said it would cost several million dollars to buy one of the toilets. He said it is difficult to put a more precise price tag on it because designing and building it involved about five years of research.
The first new toilet was shipped in December to Houston, where it is being evaluated by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. It is scheduled to make its first flight at the end of the year. If it performs satisfactorily, Hamilton Standard hopes to land a contract to build more.
Rethke wants that contract because he enjoys his job and his alter ego -- Dr. Flush.
The back of his business card features a caricature of him sitting on a toilet balanced on a rocket-powered skateboard.
And when he addresses groups of colleagues or young people, he dons a white lab coat with "Dr. Flush" emblazed on the chest, and plays a cassette tape of music -- the sound of a flushing toilet.
"It breaks the ice when I start talking about an embarrassing subject," Rethke said. "But it's a subject we're all familiar with. You could say we're all experts."