They let Lovell get out of his suit, and so he’s in his underwear, and then. Finally, they let one of them take off their suit. But mission control, NASA, was really uncomfortable with this, and it was this back and forth. They found that the underwear literally decomposed after a few weeks, and so, you know, they’re itchy, they’re really feeling uncomfortable, and they really wanted to get out of their suits. I mean there had been simulations, back in the '60s, on earth, specifically answering these questions. And they would go back and forth on to get out of their suits. You know, just like two guys, orbiting earth, talking about skincare. Frank, are you having any dandruff problems up there?” They ended up taking off their suits.Īnyway, so I would be going through and there would be these moments, because the flight surgeon was very involved in this particular mission, so he’d get on, at mission control, and he’d be like, “Gemini VII, this is Houston.

Gemini VII, which was the first time we had been in space for two weeks, it was kind of a dress rehearsal for the moon shot, and NASA was trying to figure out, “Well, what will happen to two guys, who spend two weeks without showering, in a suit?” You, know not being able to bathe, kind of hot, sticky, like, “Is it actually something that you can do to a human being and expect them to make it through?” It really wasn’t. Well I was focused on a couple of missions in particular. What do you find in those amazing moments? So I would open up my computer, and my husband Ed would be watching a Giants game, and I would just sit there going through, you know, mission after mission, “Turd,' 'Fart,' 'Urine,” because.they’re literally thousands of pages long, but you do really come across some amazing moments amongst all of the jargon and tedium. That is exactly what I did, because they are PDFs, searchable by keyword. Did you just sit down with 10,000 pages of transcripts of missions and just look for the word 'fart?' You found some really remarkable things in transcripts of NASA missions. Roach Searched NASA Transcripts for 'Turd,' 'Fart,' and 'Urine'.With Great Results Be aware, I have selected some of the grosser bits of the discussion.because they're oddly educational. You can also jump to the parts we've highlighted using the time codes shown at the beginning of reach snippet. You can hear the full interview using the SoundCloud player above. This interview is from 2010 (the Mars era), but it's so delightful, I asked the Bullseye staff to dig it out of the archives so that mental_floss readers could enjoy it too. In this weekend's Bullseye with Jesse Thorn interview, we hear from Mary Roach, the author of Stiff, Spook, Bonk, Packing for Mars, and Gulp.

Spook by mary roach summary