Starting today, the International Space Station will get all those fixes – and when you count on your toilet to turn waste into drinkable water, that's pretty crucial.
When the space shuttle Endeavor docks with the International Space Station on Wednesday, it brings along the last major U.S. piece of the station – a new room that will make the station 90 percent complete.
Kim Shiflett, NASA / AP
The cupola, the last major U.S. addition to the International Space Station, will be delivered by the space shuttle Endeavor Wednesday.
Endeavor's 13-day mission will deliver supplies, science experiments and the new room, known as the "Tranquility" node, along with a cupola that will give astronauts a nearly panoramic view of Earth and space.
"In coolness, it ranks pretty high," said C.J. Wallington, a professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology, who studies space tourism, an industry that ranges from space flights by billionaires to less-expensive zero-gravity experiences. "That [cupola view], I would gladly drop my $30 million to see."
The cupola will have six windows around its dome. A seventh overhead one is circular and 31-1/2 inches in diameter. That's not exactly impressive by McMansion standards, but it is the largest window ever flown in space, according to NASA. And a big upgrade for the station, which now has only four small windows.
The cupola (dubbed "a room with a view" by NASA) is 9.7 feet in diameter by nearly 5 feet and will sit on Tranquility. Space and movie buffs may remember "Tranquility Base" as the Apollo 11 landing site on the moon's Sea of Tranquility.
An online contest helped NASA choose the Tranquility name. Comedian Stephen Colbert tried to get his own name appended by lobbying his fans to vote for it. Although Colbert won the popular vote, NASA's version of the Electoral College chose Tranquility instead, a name suggested by many of the online voters. Colbert settled instead for having the treadmill named after him (now officially the Combined Operational Load Bearing External Resistance Treadmill.)
The treadmill, of course, comes outfitted with elastic straps to keep the astronauts from floating off during their workouts. The treadmill and a weightlifting apparatus will both be moved into the station's new room. Astronauts exercise during flights to keep their bodies from deteriorating in zero gravity. The COLBERT is expected to log almost 38,000 miles of astronaut running during its lifetime.
The 23-foot-long by nearly 15-foot Tranquility also will house the bathroom, which will be moved out of the research lab to make more room for experiments. The Endeavor also will deliver some new parts for the malfunctioning toilet.
That waste-water system is crucial since it is the first step to turning urine into water for the crew to drink. Urine, perspiration and water used in personal hygiene are recycled, with about 93 percent of it turned into drinking water. "It saves us from having to transport water up to the station crew," said Bill Jeffs, NASA spokesman at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.
The space shuttles also help with water. Their fuel cells create water as a byproduct during the trip to the station, Jeffs said.
After the space shuttles end their service life, that recycled water will be especially important. When the Endeavor ends its 13-day mission on Feb. 20, only four more shuttle missions will be left on NASA's schedule. Discovery will fly two more missions this year, Atlantis one more, and Endeavor is scheduled to blast off again this summer as NASA puts the finishing touches on the station. President Barack Obama said earlier this month he wants to extend the life of the station until 2020, but other spacecraft will do the ferrying of astronauts and cargo.
Even that extension doesn't satisfy some space buffs. "It's a shame 10 years from now we've built this beautiful thing and we're going to shut it down," Wallington said. The 240-mile-high status of the station is not just its attraction but also its undoing because of the sky-high cost of keeping it operating there.
Location, location, location, as the real estate agents say.
