Writing about science has taken Mary Roach to all kinds of places.

Research facilities full of decomposing bodies, taste testing labs for pet food, places

that most of us have never even imagined existed.

Places like this space potty at the NASA Training Facility in Houston.

It's a bathroom, a large bathroom, and it has, I think it's working all of the shuttle

toilet, which is very complicated.

It's a size of a washing machine with a, you know, a panel of instructions on the wall

next to it.

That's your bathroom reading material.

There's like 25 steps.

Besides the instructions, when you sit on it, you'll see a little TV screen.

But it is not there to keep you entertained.

There's a video camera facing up and a closed circuit television monitor right next to

you.

So you are seeing what's on the video camera pointing up towards your ass.

They called it the potty camp.

This is a training toilet for astronauts, because it turns out pooping in space is complex.

Because you need to learn to dock with it, because you're not sitting on a toilet in

space.

You're hovering above and getting, you got to dock with it.

You needed to get the angle right.

It's a small opening, and it's airflow that's moving the material as they call it, the

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