Americana: Space Spectacular

Many astronauts say that the most spectacular sight they have seen in space is their own planet, a fertile blue ball glowing in a black void. Apollo 9 Astronaut Russell Schweickart has a somewhat different view. In an interview in Co-Evolution Quarterly, a magazine devoted to ecology, Schweickart says, among other things, that perhaps the most beautiful sight in space is a urine dump. A urine dump? It seems that when orbiting astronauts release into space their voided urine, the liquid instantly freezes into millions of tiny ice crystals, which form a hemisphere and spray out in all directions from the exit nozzle. The same thing would happen to ordinary water, but none is ever dumped; it is all recycled through the spacecraft. "The most beautiful sight in orbit, or one of the most beautiful sights, is a urine dump at sunset," says Schweickart. "It's really spectacular." Well, as the French say, one man's meat is another man's poisson.