Article ID: CBB144915707

To live among the stars: artificial environments in the early space age (2017)

unapi

Startled by NASA’s decision to let orbiting astronauts collect their own feces in a bag for medical experiments, a pair of sanitary engineers at Berkeley designed an algae-based bio-regenerative system to recycle oxygen, water, and even nutrients. This article explains the technological choice facing the emerging space program between the infamous ‘fecal-bag’ and a now-forgotten alternative, the ‘Algatron’, in the mid-1960s. The article situates the case of the Algatron at the intersection of the history of the space program and the history of biology; it uses the case of the Algatron to expose the different meanings of ‘shit’ as an object of scientific, medical, and engineering study. For nearly a decade after Sputnik, engineers worked under the assumption that human waste was part of a new space ecology, but by the time Neil Armstrong landed on the moon, human excrement had become understood solely as a diseased and disposable medical object to be contained and preserved in a bag. The ecological system was rejected in favor of a medical device and served to elevate Man above Nature in contrast to placing people as but one component in a biospheric system.

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Authors & Contributors
Weitekamp, Margaret Ann
Waring, Stephen P.
Samantha Shorey
Ward, Jonathan H.
Daniela K. Rosner
Odom, Brian C.
Concepts
Space programs
Technology
Space research and exploration
Astronauts
Astronautics
Space travel; space flight
Time Periods
20th century
20th century, late
21st century
Places
United States
India
Russia
Japan
Europe
Soviet Union
Institutions
United States. National Aeronautics and Space Administration
Project Apollo (NASA)
United States Space Force (USSF)
Raytheon Corp.
United States. Department of Defense
United States. National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics
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