NASA wants your help in designing future lunar toilets, so it announced a $ 35.000 competition.
The Project Artemis NASA aims to bring humans to walk on the moon again in 2024. They will not just walk and then leave, but this time they will stay on the moon for a long time. The crew will include both men and women. It is an ambitious project that requires tremendous preparation and several problems of space travel and lunar survival will have to be solved. Like the toilets.
Of course, there are already space toilets (like, for example, on the International Space Station), but NASA wants a new idea so that the new toilet is smaller, more efficient and works both in microgravity as well as lunar gravity.
The existing ISS toilet is designed for light weight only (without weight). Lunar gravity is about one-sixth of the Earth's gravity, and so body fluids, and you know what else, will "fall down", but more slowly, which brings its own small challenges.
So you are invited to give your idea to NASA for an innovative design toilet and you can her submit to the HeroX network, which manages the competition for account her. There's $35.000 in prize money, plus the endless personal glory of being able to say you helped design a lunar toilet.
The competition also gives the opportunity to compete in one second category persons under 18 years of age. According to the press release, "We know that students can think about this problem without the limitations of adults."
There is one enough extensive list of technical requirements for the sought after toilet and the creators will have to take into account a number of factors, including female needs and an ailment. For example, while the preferred method for vomiting is vomit bags, NASA says bonus points will be awarded to designs that can vomit without requiring crew members to put their heads in the toilet.
Submission deadline is August 17, with winners adult to be announced on September 30 and the minor winners on October 20.
