In addition to raising these legal and ethical dilemmas, the Apollo garbage bags also inspired fascinating scientific questions. How long did these bags of microbes survive on the Moon? Did exposure to such unforgiving conditions cause any mutations or adaptations? Since all species on Earth are descended from microbes, this line of research would shed modern lightweight on great mysteries about how and where life emerges in the universe. The answers to some of the deepest and oldest questions about our place in space may indeed be waiting in Neil Armstrong’s 55-year-old used diapers.
“We are this multiplicity,” says Katherine Sammler, a human geographer at the University of Twente in the Netherlands, who has written about waste management in space through the prism of critical social theory. “We take with us non-human passengers like microbes and bacteria, as well as our own bodies and everything that goes in and out of them. We must think about the passengers who fly with us and their experiences with gravity and radiation on the Moon.” Waste bags would be a great place to conduct research, he adds. “What’s there? What’s left?”
In his mission concept, Lupisella proposes to answer some of these questions by, among other things, conducting biomolecular sequencing on Apollo astronaut fecal samples. These efforts could potentially reveal whether microbes experienced altered rates of genetic mutation after being trapped on the moon, which could hypothetically provide an adaptive advantage. Lupisella is also curious whether, given the right conditions, the microbial spores in the bags could respawn.
“We already know that life beyond humans is robust and can survive in strange environments, but if the human microbiome can survive in environments like those on the moon, that’s an even stronger indicator of how persistent life can be,” Lupisella says. . “This would be another data point that says it’s a little easier to believe that life could exist in many places throughout the galaxy, the solar system and the entire universe.”
Astronauts have often reported that the most critical question they receive from school children is how they go to the bathroom in space. It’s a uncomplicated inquiry that reveals a elaborate and constantly evolving set of challenges, many of which remain unresolved. It is unclear whether we will ever find satisfactory solutions to these problems, but continued efforts to address the legal, ethical and practical obstacles associated with waste management in space will also have benefits here on Earth.
“I’m very excited about working on space-related issues because we have the opportunity to achieve better results,” says de Zwart. “We should act in a sustainable and responsible way. It is worth considering how to minimize the amount of waste. Of course, if you can crack this nut and move into space, it will have huge benefits on Earth, so we can help in our waste management and disposal game.
For example, billions of people on Earth you don’t have access to safe sanitation services, which has stimulated campaigns to build more innovative toilets and sewage systems. Meanwhile, the growing number of farm animals around the world and the billions of tons of waste they produce each year burden waste management programs. Wastewater often pollutes the environment and exposes people to health risks, including respiratory diseases or waste-related pathogens. Sewage systems I am currently contributing on greenhouse gas emissions, while the effects of climate change, including extreme weather events such as floods and hurricanes, place greater strain on waste disposal infrastructure.
“Perhaps humanity will be able to avoid the worst effects of global climate change by adopting what even the military-industrial complex has deemed an absolute necessity for every spacecraft: a bioregenerative life support system,” Munns and Nickelsen write in their book.
“By writing a book about what people did with their shit in space, we also wrote a book that addresses the problem of what people do with their shit on Earth,” they conclude.