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There's always the true story of Alan Shepard, the first American in space. From Wikipedia:

The countdown began at 8:30 p.m. the previous night, with Shepard waking up and eating a breakfast of steak and eggs with toast, coffee, and orange juice (the steak and eggs breakfast would soon become a tradition for astronauts the morning of a launch). He entered the spacecraft at 5:15 am. ET, just over two hours before the planned 7:20 launch time. At 7:05 am, the launch was held for an hour to let cloud cover clear – good visibility would be essential for photographs of the Earth – and fix a power supply unit; shortly after the count restarted, another hold was called in order to reboot a computer at Goddard Space Flight Center. The count was eventually resumed, after slightly over two and a half hours of unplanned holds, and continued with no further faults. All of the delays resulted in Shepard lying on his back in the capsule for almost three hours, by which point he complained to the blockhouse crew that he had a severe need to urinate (because the mission would last under 20 minutes, nobody had thought to equip the Mercury with a urine collection device). The crew told him that this was impossible as they'd have to set the White Room back up and waste considerable amounts of time removing the Mercury's heavily bolted hatch. An irate Shepard then announced that if he couldn't get out for a bathroom trip, he'd simply urinate in his suit. When the blockhouse protested that that would short out the medical electrodes on his body, he told them to simply turn the power off. They complied, and Shepard emptied his bladder. Because of the position he was sitting in, the urine pooled somewhat underneath his back and with oxygen flowing through the spacesuit, he was soon dried out, and the countdown resumed.

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For some time (in the 1980s) college-age summer employees at a museum near me gave a "How Astronauts Urinate on the Moon" lecture.  The students came from the second largest, but seemingly most conservative Methodist college in the area.  Seemingly, they all enjoyed lecturing about pee.  The suit required a dehumidifier to cope with sweat.  Like everything else, it was designed to deal with extremes that could not be foreseen until actual usage situation.  perspiration required every circuit or chemical gadget on sealed off could tolerate some degree of condensation.  I don't know the limit.  Medical sensors shutting down should not harm the astronauts -- just upsets Earth-side medics.

Some summer employees had a small problem with the space-suit mock-up / costume they wore to attract visitors to the museum.  It did not provide for urination and required substantial spanner use in getting into and out of it.  Someone returning occasionally gave some kind of signal.  A same-sex friend would gab the tool kit and the suit removal would take place in a restroom where the returnee could jump directly from suit to fixture.  I never heard of any actual leakage.  But they would not and should not have told me about any such -- unless it got into the minimal air-circulation and lighting wiring remaining in the mock-up.  The space suit was one of several items for which they kept maintenance work-orders within their own supervisor's overview.  This was early space-shuttle time and I had my own department's NASA loan items to look after.  And my department never would have thought of a "How Astronauts Urinate on the Moon" lecture.

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On 12/5/2019 at 6:42 AM, Bulge_Lover said:

Pretty sure this kills the astronaut.

 

20 hours ago, Shaved Monkey said:

why?

 

18 hours ago, Bulge_Lover said:

Because spacesuits are full of all kinds of tech. Who knows what it could damage if not properly contained.

It shouldn't damage any of the suit's tech, though it could disrupt the functioning of biomedical sensors.  The first 'layer' of the suit is the cooling system, which pumps coolant around the astronaut to help keep them from overheating.  It is possible for this system to develop leaks, so the suit needs to be designed so that a small leak in the cooling system won't create a life-threatening situation immediately.

 

18 hours ago, Luna said:

I had a nightmarish thought that they'd peed so much it slowly filled up to their helmet, unable to remove it as they're in the middle of the walk they drowned in their own pee.

It doesn't take much fluid to drown in zero gravity.  The issue is surface tension- Pee, or other liquid, would cling to anything nearby as the surface tension on it is the primary force shaping its behavior.  This means anything that gets to the astronauts' helmet could potentially create a deadly situation.  There was a case where an astronaut had some eye irritation during a spacewalk and the tears that his eyes were producing almost resulted in an emergency.  Since then, procedures have been modified where they now have a sponge, or a spare mag, on top of their helmet to help deal with any stray liquids, so they hopefully do not drown on tears or sweat or anything else during a spacewalk.

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