Technically a urinal, the "Teslapunk" toilet is completely functional but offers some rather unusual features, including a laser guidance system, a "flush capacitor," a cup holder, and more gauges than you can shake a pair of goggles at. Sure, it works, but I'm not sure we need that much electricity so close to a giant bowl of water:

[via Make]

There's been an ongoing toilet crisis on the ISS ever since the last one broke, and we've been trying not to imagine all the pooping into bags that's been going on up there. Luckily, the new mega-recycling toilet was already in the works and arrived this week. Already, flight engineer Sandra Magnus has installed it and the plumbing is all hooked up and ready to go.

All they need now is some privacy. Apparently the toilet came with a flimsy curtain, which Magnus removed in order to install the toilet. Hopefully they'll re-hang the curtain - or maybe get a door or something for just a little more privacy.

The toilet is part of a much bigger overhaul of the ISS life support systems, which includes a complete water-reclamation system for recycling the astronauts' urine and sweat for use as gray water as well as (hopefully) potable water too. Right now, the water recovery system (pictured below) that will recycle urine has been tested back on Earth and the purified urine is deemed safe for use in washing. Further tests will reveal if it's safe to drink as well.

The water recovery system, it is hoped, will make life easier for a bigger crew in the coming year. Six astronauts will crew the ISS, doubling the number of humans living in orbit.

SOURCE: Space.com

All images via NASA.

While the technicians fix the “gas separator issue” (we can’t make this stuff up, people), the crew will redirect individual efforts to the loo in the visiting Soyuz spacecraft—yup, the very vehicle schlepping computer-game developer/lucky-bastard space tourist/commode commodore Richard Garriott. Meanwhile, NASA is shelling out 19 million bucks for a second, state-of-the-art Russian back-up toilet that’ll surely put that hoity-toity gold-plated throne in Hong Kong to shame.

Malfunctioning toilet? Possible former communists on board? We smell (among other things) a cover up! Vote on what you think the real reason is behind NASA’s latest crisis:

(a) a run-of-the-mill technical difficulties
(b) a clandestine alien invasion
(c) some knucklehead flushed a condom down the hatch
(d) a sentient central-computer-system hazing its peeps
(e) that damn cabbage-and-liver borscht that space-station commander Sergei Volkov insisted on whipping up

Image courtesy of davefigley

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• In Lexx, the living spaceship was also equipped with... living toilets. They even had large, waggling tongues, a la Little Shop of Horrors, and were more than eager to lap up the crew's waste materials. That would either make going to the bathroom incredibly fun, or moderately terrifying. Think you can hold it for 42,000,000 miles? You could if the toilet looked like it wanted to eat your ass.
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• Lexx wasn't the only living spaceship with bathroom facilities. Moya in Farscape also grew convenience spots for her crew, including showers and toilets. In fact, the water system was provided by Moya's own internal plumbing system, which her saliva powered the sewer system. That just seems like all kinds of "two girls, one cup" wrong.
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• In the future of Demolition Man, Sylvester Stallone was perplexed by the futuristic toilets. The bowls looked the same, but as far as waste management went, there were three mysterious "seashells" next to the toilet that he never quite figured out. We never figured it out either, and we'll chalk it up to extremely lazy writers who didn't feel the need to explain how they wiped their asses in the future, so now we'll forever be wondering what those damn shells did.
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• Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey was so detailed that the Zero Gravity Toilet installed on the passenger ship to the moon including verbose instructions on how to use the waste facilities. Although if you really had to go, we can't imagine anyone taking the time to actually read through all of these steps before stepping inside. Wouldn't you print something like this where you could easily read it while doing your duty? The only way this could be worse would be if they just handed you a 200 page manual as you went in.
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• Onboard the Serenity in Firefly, living space is at a premium, so they've got toilets that fold neatly into the wall and flush as they go. Then you pull out the sink like a drawer and wash your hands, although preferably using soap. In the clip below, Captain Mal Reynolds takes a whiz and then simply WETS HIS HANDS DOWN THE WATER then puts them on his face. Meaning he's just coated his cheeks in penis germs. No wonder he hasn't scored with Inara just yet.
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With apologies to Kathleen Meyer's How To Shit In The Woods.

The toilet sounds great and I like the idea, but calling it the "dignity toilet" just underscores one of the basic problems with this design: nobody really wants to carry their poop around on their back like a Timbuktu bag. But if you ignore this issue, there's something truly ingenious about the bottom part of the toilet, which lets you mulch your waste into the soil without ever getting your hands dirty:

Sanitary Facilities for Africa [via TreeHugger]