What do you do when number 2 is near impossible… and you’re hundreds of thousands of miles away from the nearest john?  You PANIC! 

I read from CNN.com here that fixing the toilet problem of the International Space Station has been the top priority mission today.  “So much so that a spare pump was rushed from Moscow, Russia, to Cape Canaveral last week for a last-minute ride aboard space shuttle Discovery. Cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko put in the new pump, and the toilet started working normally again.“, CNN says.  I must admit that I was laughing out loud, literally.  That has just got to be the most expensive (and yet most important) operation for such an “important” project.

For two weeks, the three men living aboard the space station had to manually flush the Russian-built toilet with extra water several times a day. It was a time-consuming job and waste of water, not to mention an unpleasant chore.

So everyone — especially in orbit — was thrilled that the new pump seemed to solve the problem.

“Let’s start using it,” Russian Mission Control told Kononenko. “We’ll keep our fingers crossed.”

 

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