How did the 12 lunar astronauts dispose of their feces & urine ? Did they bury it ?? Leave on-board the LEM?

Question

Surely they did not transport their waste back to earth !! Not when the cost to transport moon rock was about $1,000,000 per lb...

Answer 1

To avoid contamination of the lunar surface, three vectors of contamination had to be contained: waste products (feces, urine, and residual food), terrestrial microorganisms released during lunar-landing module depressurization, and microorganisms present in the lunar module waste water system. Their containment posed an engineering problem-and meant that additional weight had to be lifted from the lunar surface. It was finally decided that the only feasible procedure would be to collect all wastes in special bags that would be stored in the equipment bay of the lunar module descent stage (which would remain on the lunar surface). These bags were not expected to leak, but if they did it was expected that the leakage would remain contained within the descent stage.

http://history.nasa.gov/SP-4213/ch7.htm

http://history.nasa.gov/SP-368/s6ch5.htm

Answer 2

The immediate disposal method of the time required only men fly in space - the shuttle has a vacuum toilet! Appropriate containers - bags, etc. - were then used and returned to Earth, partly for medical analysis. Today it's largely dumped into space.
Part of the overall cost profile for quoting lunar rock transport involved fetching them from the surface; these materials however, are a necessary part of life.
While burying such things may put them temporarily out of sight, there have always been plans to colonize the moon. There is no known biology which would degrade the stuff, so it would be largely unchanged when it were dug up during construction. The vast temperature swings on the moon and intense vacuum would dry things out thoroughly, but the dried crystals would invalidate future samplings.
For similar reasons waste was not included in the discarded LEM. Being large waste, these were removed from orbit and crashed to the moon. These were somewhat recycling events in a sense once seismometers had been emplaced - the known mass crashing on the surface helped elucidate the internal structure of the moon with vibration recordings.

Answer 3

Urine and feces were stored in special bags... urine was ejected into space i believe and feces was exposed to vaccuum and completed dried out... not much weight was added due to this.

Answer 4

Built in containers, part of space suits.

If you have a better solution, don't call them, they will call you.

Answer 5

Think you'll find that everything was brought back for analysis!