Riding Rockets - Mike Mullane [48]
The toilet design was essentially complete by the time TFNGs were undergoing waste management training, but an Edwards AFB Vomit Comet pilot told me of some of the early development efforts. These included female nurse volunteers who flew hundreds of weightless parabolas. They drank gallons of iced tea and during the thirty-second weightless falls would void into various toilet designs. Volunteers for the solid waste collection tests included a USAF lieutenant. The Vomit Comet would be parked near a taxiway with all the ground support equipment attached and ready to go, just like a Cold War nuclear bomber. And just like those bomber crews, the Vomit Comet pilots made sure they were ready for the scramble call…not from the president of the United States but rather from the bowel-distressed lieutenant screaming, “I’ve got to go!” At that, everybody would run to the plane, fire up the engines, and roar skyward. The weightless parabolas would begin and the test subject would have multiple thirty-second intervals to try a bowel movement. Where do we get such men?
Urine collection for spacewalking females proved to be a particularly challenging engineering problem. Catheterization was quickly eliminated—too dangerous and uncomfortable. Diapers were messy. The most bizarre design was the brainchild of a gynecologist. He proposed that a mold of the inside of a woman’s vagina could be used as an alignment tool for urine collection. Before dressing in the spacesuit, the woman would insert her personal mold into her body, which would bring the exterior-mounted urine collector into a seal around the urethra. Urine could then be cleanly collected as it left the body. A test subject was needed to try the design and a call went out for volunteers. Kandy answered.
Kandy was a free-spirited Ellington Field flight operations secretary with a wonderful sense of humor. She easily tolerated the AD astronauts, as when she pulled up a chair to join a group of us waiting for the fog to lift so we could fly our ’38s. Several of the navy astronauts were telling “beat this” stories about bizarre tattoos they had seen. One pilot recalled a photograph of a man’s crotch in the window of a Filipino tattoo parlor. Tattooed on the thighs of both his legs were huge elephant ears that gave the man’s penis the appearance of the animal’s trunk. (Who says we men aren’t in touch with our inner feelings?) Kandy joined in our laughter.
It was later in my TFNG life when, at a party, she recounted being the volunteer for the vaginal-insert urine collection design. The gynecologist had made the mold and she had tried it, but with limited success. Eventually the design was rejected and diapers were adopted as the best solution. Kandy finished her story: “I’ve got the mold sitting on my coffee table at home.” Upon hearing that, I choked, shooting beer out my nose in the process. I had an instantaneous vision of a guest at Kandy’s home picking up the object and asking, “What’s this unique knickknack?” I told Kandy NASA should have given her a medal, or at least mounted the device on a plaque signed by the NASA