There's no way you can use water to collect waste in zero gravity. So, basically, our toilet on shuttle operations is a vacuum cleaner. The urinal lo…

- Mike Mullane

You can't put toilet paper in the toilet [in the space ship], so there's a separate vacuum can in front of you on the wall and when you're done, you …

- Mike Mullane

In weightlessness, one of the physiological changes is a fluid shift. Your blood and fluid is equally distributed in your body. So that makes your ca…

- Mike Mullane

In the space shuttle program, where we had males and females, I can tell you that nobody was doing that [sex] because there's absolutely no privacy. …

- Mike Mullane

The solid waste is returned to Earth with the shuttle. If we [astronauts] ever dump solid waste overboard, it's going to give new meaning to wishing …

- Mike Mullane

NASA's training philosophy is "no surprises." So what they did is put a simulator on Earth where it looks exactly the same as a shuttle toilet and th…

- Mike Mullane

The opening for solid waste is very small [in the space ship]. It's not toilet-bowl size. And aim is critical. To be honest with you, you don't know …

- Mike Mullane

If you look at astronauts closely, their eyes look kind of puffy. And it gives you this mild headache. But one of the advantages of that, if you will.

- Mike Mullane

After the urine is collected over a couple of days, it's dumped into space, which is beautiful to watch because the urine freezes into a glitter of i…

- Mike Mullane