HOLLIFIELD: Don’t flush wrench down space toilet

By SCOTT HOLLIFIELD
MEDIA GENERAL NEWS SERVICE
Published: June 5, 2008

The intergalactic keg party is in jeopardy. That’s because someone clogged the dirty Russians’ space toilet.

As of this writing, which I’m actually typing in a fairly random manner, hoping some of the sentences make sense, NASA astronauts were preparing for a weekend shuttle launch with a pump and other hardware onboard to fix the faulty foreign toilet on the international space station.

According to The Associated Press, the source I turn to for news about non-functioning interplanetary bathroom fixtures, the toilet has been acting up for weeks and the three astronauts onboard have “temporarily bypassed the problem.”

The story did not elaborate, but if you visit the international space station, do not look in cargo hold No. 4.

To make room for the space-toilet pump, some items originally slated to be on Discovery and rocketed to the station have been jettisoned, including wrenches, a spare part for the oxygen generator and a microbe-killing device. As a result, over the next few months no one on the space station will want to hear the phrase, “Hand me a wrench, I need to kill a microbe on the oxygen generator.”

It was unclear how the toilet became clogged, but I figure it went something like this:

“Excuse me, Ted, can you take over the anti-gravity experiment for a minute? I’ve had four glasses of Tang and I’m about to bust.”

“I wouldn’t go in there, Kevin.”

“What do you mean?”

“The space toilet is clogged.” “Clogged? How did that happen?”

“You’ve been so busy with your anti-gravity experiments, how would you know? The truth is Randy and I eventually got bored out of our skulls looking out the window and waiting for the military to shoot down another satellite. Randy said, ‘I bet I can flush a wrench down this Russian-made space toilet. ‘Well, the upshot is, you really can’t flush a wrench down a Russian-made space toilet.”

“Good heavens, Ted. The intergalactic keg party is Saturday. The girls from the Venusian School of Design are going to be here.”

“The ones with the big thrusters?”

“Yes, the ones with the big thrusters. Now, what are we going to do?”

“There’s always cargo hold No. 4.”

Clearly, there needs to be more than one toilet on a multibillion-dollar facility like the international space station, especially if it’s going to host intergalactic keg parties. I’m no rocket scientist (which I have proven time and time again) but I believe NASA officials should chuck a few more items off the shuttle — spare booster rockets, the PlayStation 3, those copies of Maxim — and make room for a specialist who can add a much-needed second bathroom. I suggest Cousin Junior, who just obtained his intergalactic contractor’s license and opened Cousin Junior’s International Space Station Improvement and Repair Service, where the motto is “We do it right, or you don’t pay for the flight.”

I urge NASA to get an estimate as soon as possible.

“Yeah, I can put you another bathroom on the west wing over there near the rec room. Now, I’m going to have to rewire the oxygen generator, but that shouldn’t be too big a deal. You can go with all new materials, which is going to cost you, or I’ve got some spare parts from an old Mars rover I bought at a yard sale over at Cape Canaveral and a whole bunch of scrapped heat shields from an old Apollo mission. I can shore it up with some tin and two-by-fours from an outbuilding I tore down at Neil Armstrong’s house last summer. I’d say the whole thing is going to run you about $123 million. That’s including labor.”

“Can you get it done by Saturday? We’ve got an intergalactic keg party.”

“The gals from the Venusian School of Design going to be there?”

“Oh, yeah.”

“Consider it done, hoss.”

Scott Hollifield is editor/general manager of The McDowell News in Marion, N.C.