To live among the stars: artificial environments in the early space age

Abstract

Startled by NASA’s decision to let orbiting astronauts collect their own feces in a bag for medical experiments, a pair of sanitary engineers at Berkeley designed an algae-based bio-regenerative system to recycle oxygen, water, and even nutrients. This article explains the technological choice facing the emerging space program between the infamous ‘fecal-bag’ and a now-forgotten alternative, the ‘Algatron’, in the mid-1960s. The article situates the case of the Algatron at the intersection of the history of the space program and the history of biology; it uses the case of the Algatron to expose the different meanings of ‘shit’ as an object of scientific, medical, and engineering study. For nearly a decade after Sputnik, engineers worked under the assumption that human waste was part of a new space ecology, but by the time Neil Armstrong landed on the moon, human excrement had become understood solely as a diseased and disposable medical object to be contained and preserved in a bag. The ecological system was rejected in favor of a medical device and served to elevate Man above Nature in contrast to placing people as but one component in a biospheric system.

Keywords:

• Algatron
• Apollo
• space program
• life support systems (space environment)
• waste

Notes

1. “Space Quotes” Vol II no. 3, March 1964. In Folder ‘Correspondence with NASA Headquarters, Oct 18, 1963’. Box 2. Series 36: Life Sciences Directorate, 1963–67. RG255. NARA (Acc.No#255-93-022).

2. Bewicke and Potter, Chlorella, 8.

3. ‘The Living Machine’ in the Findhorn ecovillage, for example, uses a series of connected barrels with plants and algae as a sewage system. For all-too-brief introductions see, Birnbaum and Fox, Sustainable Revolution, 268; and Dawson, Ecovillages, 44.

4. McCray, Visioneers.

5. As Fred Turner describes, the counterculture began as anti-technological and as antithetical to the institutions and structures of the 1950s Cold War state, including the aerospace industry that developed and tested several bioregenerative systems and built the rockets for the space program and nuclear weapons. Turner, From Counterculture to Cyberculture.

6. Oswald and Golueke, “Environmental Control Studies,” 184.

7. Kirk, Counterculture Green, 8.

8. Höhler, Spaceship Earth.

9. Dickson, Sputnik; and Siddiqi, Sputnik and the Soviet Space Challenge.

10. Everyone at the time linked superior status with top-notch technology, from AEC Commissioner Daniel Ford, who said that ‘the United States had all but formally adopted [the popular state religion] that promised ever-expanding material progress from the exploitation of advanced technology’, to The Saturday Evening Post, who noted that both the Soviet Union and the United States saw ‘their destinies as depending on technological achievement’. Quotes from Ford, The Cult of the Atom, 236; and Gunter, “The American Scientist,” 30. For broader discussions see, Adas, Dominance by Design, 18, 225; and Jervis, “Identity in the Cold War,” 25.

11. Kevles, The Physicists, 385.

12. Low, “Biological Payloads and Manned Space Flight,” 16 November 1959. Document III-3, In Exploring the Unknown. Volume VI, 313–14. There is now some doubt if Laika actually lived for 6 or 7 days, but the Americans believed she had and thus the flight of Laika continued to be a touchstone for years afterward. NASA’s director of biotechnology and human research, Eugene Konecci, noted in 1963 that Laika still held the record for the longest time in space for a living thing. Eugene B. Konecci, “Bioastronautics Review – 1963”. In Folder “Biotechnology & Human Res. Advis. Cte., 7/19/63,” Box 1. Series 36: Life Sciences Directorate, 1963–67. RG255, NARA. (Acc. # 255-93-022), 12.

13. On the Kitchen Debate see, May, Homeward Bound. Also Cohen, A Consumer’s Republic, 126. See also Oldenziel and Zachmann, Cold War Kitchen.

14. Eugene B. Konecci, “Bioastronautics Review – 1963”. In Folder “Biotechnology & Human Res. Advis. Cte., 7/19/63,” Box 1. Series 36: Life Sciences Directorate, 1963–67. RG255, NARA. (Acc. # 255-93-022), 13.

15. Voskhod I was launched on October 12, 1964. Quoted in Brooks and Ertel, The Apollo Spacecraft, 348.

16. Science Policy Research Division, Review of the Soviet Space Program, 47.

17. From Document III-2, in Exploring the Unknown. Volume I, 404. See also, Portree, Humans to Mars.

18. Letter from Hess to Webb, October 30, 1964 attached to Statement of the Space Sciences Board of the National Academy of Sciences on National Goals in Space, 1971–1985, October 28, 1964. Folder “Exobiol. Exec. Summer Study Aug 12, 1964” Box 2. Series 36: Life Sciences Directorate, 1963–67. RG255. NARA. Acc No.#255-93-022. NAS Press Release, November 17, 1964. Folder “Exobiol. Exec. Summer Study Aug 12, 1964” Box 2. Series 36: Life Sciences Directorate, 1963–67. RG255. NARA. Acc No.#255-93-022.

19. Letter from Hess to Webb, October 30, 1964 attached to Statement of the Space Sciences Board of the National Academy of Sciences on National Goals in Space, 1971–1985, October 28, 1964. Folder “Exobiol. Exec. Summer Study Aug 12, 1964” Box 2. Series 36: Life Sciences Directorate, 1963–67. RG255. NARA. Acc No.#255-93-022.

20. NAS Press Release, November 17, 1964. Folder “Exobiol. Exec. Summer Study Aug 12, 1964” Box 2. Series 36: Life Sciences Directorate, 1963–67. RG255. NARA. Acc No.#255-93-022.

21. Rare is an author like Klerkx, Lost in Space, 13, who notes that one of the justifications of Apollo was as proof of concept for future permanent human settlements.

22. Salisbury, “Controlled Environment Life Support Systems,” 171; Seedhouse, Martian Outpost, 144; According to Robert Zubrin, while the Saturn V could launch weight at about $7000 per kg, the actual cost to launch weight in the Space Shuttle was closer to $20,000 per kg. Zubrin, Mars on Earth, 5–6.

23. Jesse Orlansky, “Bioastronautics R&D in NASA,” July 12, 1963, in folder “MIT Scientific Advisory Board-Bioastronautics,” Box 35, H. Guyford Stever Papers, Gerald R. Ford Library.

24. Lockheed also manufactured the Agena rocket, used for NASA but also the military. Brzezinski, Red Moon Rising, chapter 6. Any NASA funding on the order of hundreds of millions of 1960s dollars are still an order of magnitude below the defense contracts given to aerospace industries: as Hughes noted, Lockheed alone being awarded over 10 billion dollars between 1960 and 1967. See Hughes, Human-Built World, 81. Likewise, for the development of the ICBM, see Hughes, Rescuing Prometheus, chapter 3.

25. Jagow and Thomas, “Study of Life Support Systems for Space,” 75–144, 77. Downloaded from http://ntrs.nasa.gov accessed July 14, 2016.

26. Konecci, “Closed Ecological Systems”. See also Norman Belasco and Donald M. Perry, “Waste Management and Personal Hygiene for Extended Spacecraft Missions”. Presentation to the American Industrial Hygiene Conference, Philadelphia, April 26, 1964. NASA-TM-X-57096. Downloaded from http://ntrs.nasa.gov accessed July 14, 2016.

27. Minutes: NASA Research Advisory Committee on Biotechnology and Human Research, March 11–12, 1963. In Folder “Biotechnology & Human Res. Advis. Cte., 7/19/63,” Box 1, Series 36: Life Sciences Directorate, 1963–67. RG255, NARA. (Acc. # 255-93-022).

28. Muenger, Searching the Horizon.

29. Jesse Orlansky, “Bioastronautics R&D in NASA,” July 12, 1963, in folder “MIT Scientific Advisory Board-Bioastronautics,” Box 35, H. Guyford Stever Papers, Gerald R. Ford Library.

30. “Minutes of Meeting NASA Research Advisory Committee on Biotechnology and Human Research,” December 6–7, 1965. Folder “Biotech & Human Res. Cte. Mtg 12/6-7/65,” Box 1. Series 36: Life Sciences Directorate, 1963–67. RG255. NARA (Acc.No.#255-93-022), 8. Also, Konecci, “Closed Ecological Systems,” 3–20, 5–9.

31. Memo from H. Julian Allen. 1 July, 1966. Folder “Life Science Accomp. Dec 6, 1966,” Box 2, Series 36: Life Sciences Directorate, 1963–67. RG255. NARA. Acc No.#255-93-022.

32. Minutes of Meeting of NASA Research Advisory Committee on Biotechnology and Human Research, 9 September 1963. Folder, “Biotech & Human Res. Advis. 7/19/63,” Box 1, Series 36: Life Sciences Directorate, 1963–67. RG255, NARA. (Acc No#255-93-022).

33. Drake et al., “Study of Life-Support Systems”, 20.

34. In his summary of NASA’s ideas about space stations, for example, Roger Launius mentions that plans for space station were pushed to the bottom of NASA’s priority list. While strictly true, it erases the substantial efforts in the life sciences that underpinned a space station. Launius, “Space Stations for the United States,” 541. The literature on Skylab itself welcomes the notion that the first American space station was to investigate the physiological and social aspects of living in space. Gorman, “The Sky is Falling,” 529.

35. Compton and Benson, Living and Working in Space, 152. The standard argument is repeated in Kevles, Almost Heaven, 51, and Pitts, The Human Factor, 114–15. For important background to NASA’s attempts to re-start the abandoned efforts into ‘waste management subsystems’ and ‘man-machine integration’, see “The Life Sciences Program of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration,” 1 Feb. 1974. Document III-19, In Exploring the Unknown. Volume VI, 376.

36. Mating rats at g > 3.5 was evidently challenging. Hartman, Adventures in Research, 481.

37. Influential has been a wide array of literature including, Strasser, Waste and Want; Ard, “Garbage in the Garden State”; Douglas, Purity and Danger; Essential reading for every historian remains Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class, rescuing the poor English stockinger.

38. Willing to elaborate is Mullane, Riding Rockets, 77–8, also Mullane, Do Your Ears Pop In Space?, 118–22, who also mentioned the molds made of vaginas to attempt to build a urine collection device for women. Much of the spirit of the astronauts comes through in Roach, Packing for Mars.

39. Del Duca, “Nutrition-Waste Complex”, 9.

40. Schweickart, “There Ain’t No Graceful Way”.

41. Kelly, Endurance: A Year in Space, 52.

42. Allen, The Quest, 218. We thank Luis Campos for this remarkable reference. More confronting still, no less an authority than Arthur C. Clarke quoted Time magazine’s science editor as hinting that in order to ensure complete closure of an artificial environment for long-duration space travel ‘cannibalism would be compulsory among interstellar travelers’. Clarke, The Promise of Space, 292.

43. Wynn, “Foreword,” vii.

44. Benidickson, The Culture of Flushing.

45. In the over five hundred pages of retrospective account that Neil Armstrong, Edwin Aldrin and Michael Collins provided of their 220,000-mile journey towards the Moon and back, there is not one reported incident of anyone going to the bathroom. Armstrong, Aldrin, and Collins, with Farmer and Hamblin, First on the Moon. What seems a decision of a wily editor to sell books, the title of William Pogue’s book promises a frank assessment of the topic in fact his teenage readers were perhaps disappointed with only 3 of over 250 questions (#79, 80, and 81) concerning one’s toilet. Even more disappointing for his young readers is the euphemistic mention that ‘because of their recessed plumbing, women have a special problem urinating hygienically in weightlessness’. Pogue, How Do You Go To the Bathroom in Space, 71. A respectable silence appears to be the policy of the massive official documentary history of the early space program, Exploring the Unknown. No document related to the decision to abandon the Algatron nor the decision to adopt the fecal bag is offered. Likewise, from the top-down perspective of the collection there was no ‘urine’, ‘feces’, nor any mention of a ‘toilet’, while the major references to ‘sanitary’ are limited to only the Russian experience, and ‘waste management’ to the post-Apollo world. Exploring the Unknown. Volume I-VII.

46. Laporte, History of Shit.

47. Tarr, “From City to Farm”; Tarr et al., “Water and Wastes”; and Melosi, The Sanitary City.

48. Simmons, “Waste Not. Want Not”.

49. “Request for Major Capital Improvement Sanitary Engineering Research Laboratory,” October, 1957. CU149, box 40, folder 16. Archives, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.

50. Rome, The Genius of Earth Day, 19; and Melosi, The Sanitary City, 180–201.

51. Conference Program, April 14–15, 1966. Folder, “Dr. Schnitzer,” Box 2. Series 36: Life Sciences Directorate, 1963–67. RG255. NARA (Acc.No#255-93-022).

52. Copy of “Bioscience in the Manned Orbital Space Station” provided to Harold Klein, August 19, 1966. Folder “NASA Manned Space Station, Oct 11, 1966” Box 2. Series 36: Life Sciences Directorate, 1963–67. RG255. NARA (Acc.No#255-93-022). The full conference proceedings, including Oswald and Golueke’s presentation on the Algatron is in Ames Research Center, The Closed Life –Support System NASA SP-134 (NASA, 1967): 75–144, 77. Downloaded from http://ntrs.nasa.gov accessed July 14, 2016. See, Golueke and Oswald, “The Spin-Inertia Culture System”.

53. See “Prelude: A World of Trons,” in Munns, Engineering the Environment, xix.

54. Munns, “A Tale of ‘trons’”.

55. The foundational work is Forman, “Behind Quantum Electronics”; Roland, Military-Industrial Complex; Much of the debate is summarized in Galison, “Ten Problems,” 114. The Marxist biologist Richard Lewontin remembered being on ONR and AEC contracts for fifteen years, whose ‘program officers’ never ‘intervened in any way except to remind me annually to send in my renewal application for money that had already been put aside’, he said. Lewontin, “The Cold War and the Transformation of the Academy,” 16.

56. Report on the Richmond Field Station to dean John R. Whinnery, April 30, 1962. CU149, box 79, folder 11. Archives, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.

57. Oswald, Golueke, and Horning, “Closed Ecological Systems,” 31.

58. Oswald, Golueke, and Horning, “Closed Ecological Systems,” Table 1.

59. Ibid., 30.

60. Oswald and Golueke, “Environmental Control Studies,” 183.

61. According to Sabanas, the female ring-tailed monkey survived the month enclosure without stress, even gaining a pound in weight as she had a tendency to ‘overeat’. Sabanas, Closed Ecological Life-Support Unit for Primates.

62. Compton and Benson, Living and Working in Space, 131.

63. Oswald and Golueke, “Environmental Control Studies,” 183.

64. Oswald and Golueke, “Man in Space,” 456. For a general discussion of the important and widespread notion of ‘cycle of life’, see Ackert, Sergei Vinogradskii.

65. Oswald and Golueke, “Environmental Control Studies,” 183.

66. For discussions of what engineers consider ‘elegant’ solutions see, Reid, Paris Sewers and Sewermen, 53. Also, Hecht, The Radiance of France.

67. See, Oswald, Golueke, and Horning, “Closed Ecological Systems,” 45; and Golueke, Oswald, and Gee, “Study of Fundamental Factors Pertinent to Microbiological Waste Conversion,” 1.

68. Golueke and Oswald, “Closing an Ecological System,” 525, 527.

69. Golueke and Oswald, “Role of Plants in Closed Systems,” 393.

70. Description taken from Oswald, Golueke, and Horning, “Closed Ecological Systems”; and Golueke and Oswald, “The Algatron”.

71. Nickelsen, “The Organism Strikes Back.”

72. Nickelsen, Explaining Photosynthesis; Nickelsen, “The Organism Strikes Back”; and Zallen, “The ‘Light’ Organism for the Job”.

73. Belasco, “Algae Burgers for a Hungry World?,” 621.

74. Myers, “Basic Remarks on the Use of Plants”.

75. Myers, “Combined Photosynthetic Regenerative Systems,” 283.

76. See, e.g. Myers, “Basic Remarks on the Use of Plants”; and Myers, “Combined Photosynthetic Regenerative Systems”.

77. Charles Golueke was the panel discussant for Ott’s session. Ott, “Waste Management for Closed Environments”. MESA stands for ‘managed environmental system assessment’. There was also the major conference held at NASA’s Ames Research Center, The Closed Life – Support System, 77.

78. Teller, “Water Generation in Space,” 176.

79. Our thanks to Leah Aronowsky for introducing us to her early work on the Recyclostat. Aronowsky, “NASA and the Dream of Multispecies Spaceflight.” Robert W. Krauss, “Discussion: Combined Photosynthetic Regenerative Systems,” 294. Krauss continued to work on this device up to 1973, funded with NASA grants, see, e.g. his final report: Krauss, “A Study of Phycophysiology in Controlled Environments”.

80. Krauss, “Discussion: Combined Photosynthetic Regenerative Systems,” 289. Krauss claimed at a conference in 1966 that his was ‘the only group who has a recycling system in operation’ with their Recyclostat, perhaps unfairly dismissing the Algatron which he certainly knew about. See the discussion at the end of Krauss, “The Physiology and Biochemistry of Algae,” 108. The competition to get one’s instruments into space was as fierce as that between astronauts.

81. See, Aronowsky, “NASA and the Dream of Multispecies Spaceflight,” 365.

82. Space Station Requirements Steering Committee, The Needs and Requirement for a Space Station. September 1966. Folder “NASA Manned Space Station, Oct 11, 1966” Box 2. Series 36: Life Sciences Directorate, 1963–67. RG255. NARA (Acc.No#255-93-022), 14.

83. See the collection of essays in Westwick, Blue-Sky Metropolis. The aerospace industry, like much of the military-industrial complex, remains hidden behind what Trevor Paglen calls the ‘black world’ of secret organizations, blank budgets, in-joke Latinism patches, and ghost people, including nearly 200 of them residing in Box 221943 in Chantilly, Washington DC. Paglen, Blank Spots on the Map, 172. His Google presentation is critical viewing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mApBa2qKVDM

84. Konikoff, “Closed Ecologies for Manned Interplanetary Flight,” 2.

85. North American Aviation, Inc., Manned Mars Landing and Return Mission Study: Final Report April 1964. Box 1. Series 36: Life Sciences Directorate, 1963–67. RG255. NARA (Acc.No#255-93-022).

86. A summary of the Boeing system is in Eugene B. Konecci, “Bioastronautics Review – 1963.” In Folder “Biotechnology & Human Res. Advis. Cte., 7/19/63,” Box 1. Series 36: Life Sciences Directorate, 1963–67. RG255, NARA. (Acc. # 255-93-022), 10. The full proposal is R. H. Lowry and Eugene B. Konecci, “An Operating Five-Man, 30-Day Life Support system,” presented to the XIVth International Astronautical Congress Sept 26- Oct 1, 1963. Folder “Biotechnology & Human Res. Advis. Cte.,” Box 1. Series 36: Life Sciences Directorate, 1963–67. RG255. NARA (Acc.No#255-93-022).

87. For the full horror story, see R. H. Lowry and Eugene B. Konecci, “An Operating Five-Man, 30-Day Life Support system,” presented to the XIVth International Astronautical Congress Sept 26- Oct 1, 1963. Folder “Biotechnology & Human Res. Advis. Cte.,” Box 1. Series 36: Life Sciences Directorate, 1963–67. RG255. NARA (Acc.No#255-93-022).

88. R. H. Lowry and Eugene B. Konecci, “An Operating Five-Man, 30-Day Life Support system,” presented to the XIVth International Astronautical Congress Sept 26- Oct 1, 1963. Folder “Biotechnology & Human Res. Advis. Cte.,” Box 1. Series 36: Life Sciences Directorate, 1963–67. RG255. NARA (Acc.No#255-93-022), 10.

89. “Langley Research Center Life Support Studies,” n.d. In Folder “Biotechnology & Human Res. Advis. Cte.,” Box 1. Series 36: Life Sciences Directorate, 1963–67. RG255. NARA (Acc.No#255-93-022).

90. Golueke and Oswald, Biological Control of Enclosed Environments, 50.

91. Oswald, Golueke, and Horning, “Closed Ecological Systems,” 24.

92. Ibid., 27.

93. Oswald and Golueke, “Man in Space,” 459.

94. Stanley Deutsch, “Human Factor Systems,” January 5, 1964. Folder “Correspondence with NASA Headquarters, Oct 18, 1963.” Box 2. Series 36: Life Sciences Directorate, 1963–67. RG255. NARA (Acc.No#255-93-022).

95. Kirk, Counterculture Green, 172. Likewise, Messeri, Placing Outer Space, and Aronowsky, “NASA and the Dream of Multispecies Spaceflight.” Ecological and environmental notions certainly received widespread public attention via the picture of the Earth as a pale blue dot, supplied by NASA. Poole, Earthrise, 152.

96. Anker, “The Ecological Colonization of Space,” 243. Anker shows how the ecologists shaped ideas of space ‘colonization’ after the 1970s which, in turn, shaped environmental thinking about sustainable and maximum human populations on Earth. This is then more fully developed in Höhler, Spaceship Earth.

97. Aronowsky, “NASA and the Dream of Multispecies Spaceflight”.

98. Cooke, “Ecology of Space Travel,” 498.

99. The Economics of cost (weight) versus time for various life support configurations. From Cooke, “Ecology of Space Travel,” 499.

100. Ballester et al., “Ecological Considerations for Space Colonies,” 2.

101. Kirk, Counterculture Green, 94–100.

102. Warshall also prized Joseph Hanson’s shrimp and algae ecospheres, which built on Clair Folsome’s and Jack Myer’s work on closed systems. See Kelly, Out of Control, 132–3.

103. General background on the Biosphere 2 is in Allen, Biosphere 2, 13–14; Alling and Nelson, Life Under Glass, 196; John Allen, “Historical Overview of the Biosphere 2 Project.” (1990). Downloaded from http://ntrs.nasa.gov/search.jsp?R=19910004531 accessed September 30, 2016.

104. Alling and Nelson, Life Under Glass, viii.

105. Alling and Nelson, Life Under Glass, 18.

106. Compton and Benson, Living and Working in Space put NASA’s best face forward.

107. Preliminary Results from an Operational 90-Day Manned Test of a Regenerative Life Support System Compiled by Albin O. Pearson and David C. Grana (NASA, 1971) NASA SP-261. Downloaded from http://ntrs.nasa.gov accessed November 5, 2017, iii, 547. See also, Lane, Sauer, and Feeback, Isolation, 8–9.