In addition to raising these legal and ethical challenges, the Apollo waste bags also raise provocative scientific questions: How long did the bagged microbes survive on the Moon’s surface? Did exposure to such a harsh environment prompt them to mutate and adapt? Because all species on Earth descend from microbes, this research could shed new light on the great mystery of where and how life arose in the universe. The answers to some of the deepest and oldest questions about our place in the universe may indeed lie in Neil Armstrong’s 55-year-old diaper.
“We are this diversity,” says Catherine Samler, a human geographer at the University of Twente in the Netherlands. Waste management in space Through the lens of critical social theory: “We will be bringing non-human passengers, such as microbes and bacteria, as well as our own bodies and the things that move in and out of them. We have to think about the passengers who will be coming with us and how they will experience gravity and radiation on the lunar surface.” They add that the trash bags will be a valuable site to conduct research: “What’s there? What’s left?”
In his mission concept, Lupicella proposes answering some of these questions by conducting experiments such as biomolecular sequencing on samples of Apollo astronauts’ waste. Such efforts could reveal whether rates of genetic mutation changed after microbes were isolated on the moon, which could hypothetically confer an adaptive advantage. Lupicella is also interested to see whether the microbial spores in the bags would revive under the right conditions.
“We already know that non-human life is robust and can survive in strange environments, but if the human microbiome can survive in an environment like, say, the moon, that’s an even stronger indicator of how tenacious life is,” Lupicella says. “This would be another data point that would make it easier to believe that life could exist in many places in our galaxy, our solar system, and throughout the universe.”
Astronauts often say that the question they get most often from elementary school children is how to go to the toilet in space. It’s a simple question, but it highlights a complex and constantly evolving set of challenges, many of which remain unsolved. It’s not clear whether satisfactory solutions to these problems will ever be found, but continued efforts to confront the legal, ethical and practical obstacles to waste management in space will have benefits back on Earth.
“I’m really excited about working on a space problem because we have an opportunity to do better,” de Zwart says. “We should proceed in a sustainable and responsible way. We should think about how to minimize waste. Of course, if we can solve that problem in space, it will have huge benefits here on Earth and help our efforts with waste management and disposal.”
For example, billions of people on Earth No access Safe sanitation services are in short supply, sparking campaigns to build more innovative toilets and sewerage systems, while growing livestock populations around the world produce billions of tonnes of feces every year. It puts a strain on waste management programs.Wastewater often pollutes the environment and exposes humans to health risks such as respiratory diseases and waste-related pathogens. Currently contributing In addition to the impacts of greenhouse gas emissions, the effects of climate change, including extreme weather events such as floods and hurricanes, will put additional strain on waste infrastructure.
“Perhaps humanity can avoid the worst effects of global climate change by adopting what even the military-industrial complex has deemed an absolute necessity for spacecraft: bioregenerative life support systems,” Manns and Nikkelsen write in their book.
“By writing a book about what people have done with their trash in space,” they conclude, “we have also written a book that speaks to the problems people on Earth have to deal with their trash.”
