9 Totally Normal Things You Can’t Do In Space the Way You Do them on Earth

2. Use the Restroom Like Everybody Else – Normal Rules Must Be Adapted

Believe it or not, before going into space, all astronauts go through a state-sponsored potty training program. While it might be easy to laugh it off as yet another space-related quirk, this is actually a pretty important phase of the training.

If you remember our piece on fun yet strange facts about poop, you know that before heading into space, astronauts have to essentially ‘’reset’’ their toilet habits. It occurs because, as it turns out, doing a number two is a bit different than doing it on earth. There are two different mechanisms in your typical space station, each designed for a specific bodily function.

So, can you poop in space? Yes.

How do you poop in space? Well, now, this is a different story, so read on, as things get interesting when it comes to things you can’t do in space the way you do them on Earth.

How Do Astronauts Poop?

One of the hottest topics people debate is how do astronauts poop. Meaning how do astronauts poop in space, not back home, just to make things clear. Well, it is time to shine some light on this mystery once and for all:

• When nature calls, astronauts either use a toilet seat purpose-built for solid waste and a vacuum tube for liquid waste, designed both for men and women.

In other words, to clearly answer the mind-bending questions of how do astronauts poop and how do astronauts pee in space, the answer is: technically, just like everybody else, but they use space-dedicated contraptions.

Do Astronauts Wear Diapers?

Well… some do. The early astronauts wore diapers, which NASA proudly called “Maximum Absorbency Garments” (and others called “space poopers”), for their entire mission.

Now the technology has evolved so much so that today they use airflow, the seated space toilet, special waste containers, and even urine recycling devices when on the ISS.

However, diapers are still used when waiting for launch, or when an astronaut goes out on a spacewalk, which can take up to nine hours.

3. Undergo Basic Hygiene Habits

So you’ve been in space for, I don’t know, three weeks? And you think it might be high time to give the face a good old shave or get a haircut. The problem? Nobody wants to see hair laying in the sink, let alone float around a space cabin. So what astronauts do is use a hair shaver attached to a vacuum that sucks up all the tiny hairs.

Manicures in Space

But something as basic as brushing your teeth or washing your hands must be a cakewalk, right? The answer here is, still, a big no. So how do astronauts pant their nails?

To avoid poking someone’s eye out, or risking damage to delicate technologies, astronauts clip their nails directly into a vacuum to immediately eliminate the danger.

Hand-Washing

For hand washing, astronauts use pre-soaped water that comes in pouches. Using a straw, astronauts quirt the soapy water out of the container, after which they trap the weightless liquid with their hands and lather up. There’s no special protocol for drying, though – towels are safe to use in zero-gravity conditions.

But How Do Astronauts Shower?

When it comes to shower in space, things are both similar and different from Earth. If you thought bathing is one of those things you can’t do in space, you are almost right, but not completely wrong either.

Rather than a typical shower, astronauts take sponge baths. From here, things just get more interesting:  

• Astronauts use liquid soap and water from the aforementioned pouches (rinseless hair shampoo, also). In microgravity conditions, the water and soap suds stick to their skin rather than floating away.
• They use towels to remove the excess water/soap from their bodies and hair.
• A special airflow system dries them up quickly so they can go about their day.

How do Astronauts Brush Their Teeth?

The European Space Agency has a few funny videos on how to brush your teeth in space. Meant mostly for kids, these videos make it very clear that hygiene in space is no easy feat.

5. Eat (Normally)

Still wondering about the things you can’t do or have in space? A burger, that’s what!

What Do Astronauts Eat?

Before we explain what do astronauts eat in space, we should first analyze what they don’t, can’t, and shouldn’t eat in space.

Food is still an issue humanity has to figure out before embarking on long space journeys, both due to practical and logistical reasons.

For a food to be considered adequate for space, it needs to meet two criteria:

• long shelf life, because it’s not like you can run to the nearest supermarket to restock,
• and safety. Yes, you heard that right – in space, even the most basic of foods can physically hurt people.

The first no-no is bread.

Bread has long been avoided by space programs not only because it lacks structural integrity and shelf life, but because it leaves behind hundreds of crumbs that can float around and cause havoc on the ship.

This was experienced firsthand by Gemini 3 astronauts John Young and Gus Grissom when Young retrieved a corned beef sandwich he had smuggled aboard the capsule. Rather than eat the fragrant snack, however, Grissom stored the sandwich in his pocket after it began to break into pieces.

The same thing applies to salt, pepper, and other granular spices and seasonings, which you certainly don’t want ending up in your eyes in zero-gravity.

But hey, bread is not so healthy anyway so it might be for the best. At least you can enjoy a few pieces of healthy, wholesome veggies, right? Well, not quite.

Vegetables like spinach come in vacuum-sealed packaging, and astronauts have to attach them to a water distributor and fill the bag up until the dry brick of spinach turns into something vaguely resembling edible food.

Again, What Do Astronauts Eat?

Eating in space, while difficult, does not differ much from eating on Earth under special conditions. Astronauts consume vegetables, dairy, fruits, and other frozen/dry/canned/concentrated foods that don’t even begin to match a fresh-out-the-oven hot pizza but represent food anyway.

Do Astronauts Crave Shrimp? What about Tabasco Sauce?

When they arrive in space, astronauts go through a complex series of physiological changes. In zero gravity, bodily fluids go up instead of flowing down towards your feet.

For this reason, research suggests that most astronauts experience puffy eyes, clogged sinuses, lack of taste, stuffed noses, dry mouths, etc. They experience a significant diminishing of their sense of smell – which correlates powerfully with the sense of taste.

In other words, after a while, astronauts reach for hot sauces, spicy, salty, or sweet foods, going through cravings that they may have never imagined back home.

Most astronauts crave Tabasco sauce, hot peppers, and pungent flavors to spice up their life and give taste to the foods they eat.

So why do astronauts crave shrimp? It’s not the shrimp itself they’re after: it’s the horseradish in the cocktail sauce of this tangy side dish. And, probably, they want to feel like humans once in a while.

7. Intimacy and Sex

One question that is on many peoples’ (dirty) minds is: do astronauts have sex in space? While technically not impossible, sex, intimacy, and romance become even more complicated than on Earth, if that was even conceivable.

Do Astronauts Have Sex in Space?

Let’s see why sex is one of the things you can’t do in space (unless you try very, very hard):

• There is not enough comfortable space or privacy to hit it off – cabins are small, bathrooms are basically toilet seats with curtains, sleeping takes place in sleeping bags (on walls or ceilings!), and there are few if any rooms where two people can retreat for some good time.
• Sex in space may cause people health problems – zero gravity can lead to nausea, which is not the foreplay anyone is looking for. Moreover, in space, astronauts have to deal with lower blood pressure than normal, and… we all know what this means.
• Carbon dioxide levels are building up, giving the “I have a headache” thing a whole new (and absolutely real) meaning.
• Last but not least, in space, people are usually so busy and so tired they want anything else BUT engage in even more exhausting activities.

Since humanity took space exploration seriously, there have been a handful of rumors regarding several astronauts doing the hot stuff, but such gossip has never been confirmed.

Nobody said you cannot fall in love in a shuttle or while on the ISS. But when it comes to consummating the relationship, we guess astronauts prefer to wait for a little until they go back home to more proper conditions.

Do Astronauts Masturbate in Space?

If they do, nobody is talking about it. Masturbation in space has never been commented upon by neither NASA or the ESA. The science and trickiness of sex in space is a hot topic and it is going to get even hotter soon, as simulations and theoretical designs for the Lunar Getaway or for Mars Settling are becoming more real by the minute.

8. Perform Regular Exercises

Astronauts on the International Space Station have a rigorous exercise routine, scheduled two and a half hours a day, six days of the week. However, among the things you can’t do in space is exercise like normal people.

Their equipment isn’t something that might be found at a gym here on Earth. Instead, all of it has been specially designed for space. Three machines give a full-body workout:

• The bicycle. Unlike the bicycle you might have had as a child, the one on the space station has no seat: the astronaut’s butt wouldn’t stay on it anyway. Instead, there’s a back pad to lean against and handles to grip to remain stationary as the astronaut strengthens his or her legs.
• The treadmill. In space, when you hit against something – for example the platform of a treadmill -, you bounce away from it. So astronauts must be strapped into this machine with a harness and bungee cords to remain in contact throughout the entire run.
• The weightlifting machine. Since lifting weights in a weightless environment wouldn’t achieve very much, this machine uses two canisters to create small vacuums that astronauts can pull against to do squats, deadlifts, calf raises, you name it.

Why Is So Much Exercise Necessary?

Besides needing to keep up the rigorously healthy state they maintained as a spaceflight candidate on the ground, astronauts’ bodies aren’t built for space any more than ours are.

Humans have adapted to perform excellently in the gravity well of our planet: take that away and astronauts experience loss of bone density and muscle mass. All that exercising is necessary to counteract as much deterioration as possible, keeping astronauts healthy for when they eventually return to Earth.

9. Use Normal Writing Tools

One of the last things you can’t do in space that we put on our list is writing using a pen. You might wonder who in their right mind uses pencils and pens anymore, with so much digital technology available, but if you ever go to space and want to use a pen to scribble your own signature on a document, you can’t. And astronauts hate it. 

Tasks performed regularly on a space mission include making notes about the numerous scientific experiments being run, performing a quick calculation by hand, keep a classic pen-and-paper diary, or even writing a letter home – and none of it can be performed with a normal pen.

A typical pen needs gravity to pull the ink down. Without this fundamental force, when held upside down, for example, or in the microgravity conditions of space, the pen won’t write.

To counter this issue, astronauts on early missions used mechanical pencils to write their reports, until someone invented a special space pen for exactly this type of situation.

The ink cartridge in this pen is pressurized with nitrogen gas, pushing the ink toward the pen’s tip and allowing it to work without gravity.

Since then, the Fisher Space Pen has become widely available for use in harsh conditions such as extreme temperatures or underwater, alongside its use in space.

Writing with pens is not the only piece of a normal workday that the lack of gravity affects.

Everything an astronaut uses must be constantly held or monitored, or else it’ll just float away.

Chris Hadfield notes:

In space, if you don’t hang on to them, things like spoons, pencils, scissors, and test tubes simply drift away, only to turn up a week later, clinging to the filter covering an air intake duct.

A hive of lost spoons and test tubes isn’t exactly desirable, so the walls of the International Space Station are nearly completely covered in Velcro. This provides any number of places to stick your space pen when you’re finished with your report.

An interesting side effect of this unique wallpapering is that the station’s distinct smell is composed in part of, you guessed it, glue.