The Space Shuttle Discovery will be launched today with a very important delivery for the International Space Station:
May 30 (Bloomberg) — A scheduled NASA shuttle launch tomorrow has taken on new urgency as the crew of the International Space Station awaits delivery of a part to repair the outpost’s only toilet.
The shuttle Discovery will take off at 5:02 p.m. local time from Cape Canaveral, Florida. While its biggest piece of cargo is a Japanese-built lab segment, the station’s plumbing problems have attracted more attention.
The vacuum-based commode began acting up about a week ago, losing the suction that is necessary to dispose waste in zero gravity. The three-person crew devised a manual alternative after several days. Flushing now takes 10 minutes and the efforts of two people.
“Insert that into your daily life, and you can see it would be quite inconvenient,” Kirk Shireman, NASA’s deputy space station program manager, said in a televised interview from Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral.
Umm, yea, I can.
