As we contemplate a Muskian future of space travel and life on other planets, it’s important to understand that you will have to deal with the perils of pooping in zero gravity.
We’re all spoiled here on Earth, where we enjoy gravity all the time. You don’t think about what it would be like to not have gravity and a downward pull all the time working on your body and all the bodies around you. And when you defecate, you blissfully assume that gravity will be there to drop the turd in the toilet.
Things don’t drop without gravity. So just stop and think of how messy it would be in a spaceship and have to number 2. You may already be dodging floating liquid from your number 1.
Naturally, having their personal waste floating around them would piss-off the astronauts, so scientists have been working feverishly to develop space-age pooping technology. And according to a fresh dog-poop study that just came out, there is more to this issue than gravity.
To better understand pooping, scientists have turned to man’s best friend, the dog. Dogs are often used as subjects in scientific experiments, since that’s how man treats his best friends. In this case, they were chosen because dogs have easy to see buttholes.
The study looked at more than the effect of gravity on fecal separation from the anus, or as it is medically called, the “plop drop”. It also looked into the integrity of the turd, or how it held itself together, and how that effected the plop drop phenomenon.
According to the study, mushy turds are messy. The ideal turd is firm, but not too hard; soft, but not too mushy; should hold together like a sausage; and should pinch off perfectly at the end, without leaving any visible residue on the anus.
The study examined the defecation of 24 dogs of various breeds, fed exclusively either a diet that gave them mushy turds, or a diet that gave them nice, firm turds. The dogs were walked in the same park for 7 days following their meals, and their pooping was recorded by iPhone. Measurements were made of the turd thickness, time to finally drop from the anus, and anal residue, if any.
After lots of statistics software was used, the data revealed that firmer turds are better pulled by gravity than mushy turds, leaving the anus cleaner. This study heralds in a new age in space travel, and is being hailed as the greatest thing to happen to space travel since William Shatner.
The results astounded the scientists, who have all decided to alter their own personal diets.
Hopefully, the importance of gravity and poop integrity will get the attention it deserves. It is a subject that most people don’t want to step into, leaving this subject void of proper examination. But we can thank space research for giving this scoop on space poop.
And I think we can all thank the researchers who have opened this new frontier, and the dogs who agreed to having their pooping filmed for the study.
Note: This is satire. The dog study is made up. But NASA has had a turd problem, for real. See The Floating Turd Mystery that Still Haunts NASA.