# Dry showers in space ships - any ideas?



## Montero (Apr 29, 2010)

Just read a scene where as is frequently the case in SF, the person steps into some sort of people dry cleaning unit, rather than a shower with water.  Seems a reasonable idea in theory.  We already know from submarines that water cycling means that showers have to be very short, so going one step further and not needing to make the water dirty seems a good idea.

What I was wondering was - any ideas on how it might be done?

Sonic dirt remover to shake the dirt off your skin, so finely tuned it doesn't disintegrate your internals would be one.  If you did that, then you'd need some sort of vacuum cleaner to pick up all the dirt that falls off.

That comes onto energy rationing - in theory space ships have big engines compared to the power needed to run a sonic cleaner and vacuum cleaner and it is water that could be in short supply.  But would it really be more energy efficient to run a sonic cleaner and vacuum cleaner, than a spray of water and a filter system?

Solvent spray is obviously out if water is out, as you are back to needing tanks of liquid that have to have the dirt filtered out.

Anyway - any other thoughts anyone?


----------



## iansales (Apr 29, 2010)

If you have your closed loop life support system set up correctly, water shouldn't be a problem. Alternatively, you might use a fuel cell, which creates water.


----------



## Chel (Apr 29, 2010)

I'm no expert, and my memory is notoriously bad, but I have this vague memory of people having washed themselves with sand sometime somewhere. Some animals do that too (along with licking themselves, but I suppose that's not an adviseable method for humans). Sand, I would imagine, could be heated to burn away the dirt - or some (off the top of my head) larvae could feed from it. Something else could in turn feed on the larvae and so on, until at some point the people on board would feed off their own dirt.... Eeeww!!!


----------



## ktabic (Apr 29, 2010)

I thought of flash-burning the top-most surface of the skin to ash. Cleans really well, but might not be usable for very long. Or by people with hair. And leaves a lingering burnt kind of smell.

Alternatively, use some sort of dry powder, similar to talc, rub themselves all over with the powder, use a hi-tech towel that attracts the powder, to clean off. You wouldn't even need to use water, for the washing of yourself or even the cleaning of the towel afterwards.


----------



## chrispenycate (Apr 29, 2010)

Ultimately, everything on a long voyage will be recycled, just as it is on a planet (you didn't think the waste you produce was shot off into space somewhere now, did you? All the sewerage on the planet will ultimately come back round as food or drink, distilled and regrown; any long haul space ship or space station will have to emulate this. And algae tanks and fish tanks will probably be a large part of this ( or algae tubes, if gravity or equivalent is too unpredictable) 

But the Romans, lacking soap, coated themselves with olive oil, then scraped it off, which uses a lot less liquid than a continuous shower. Babywipes. Talcum powder, rubbed in, flash dried and sucked off? Skin living symbionts inside your space suit which are gene tailored to eat anything that smells, and produce only odourless water and carbon dioxide (that's a bit less erotic than the previous selection, but might allow us to include onions in our recycling vegetable garden)?

In a fast spaceship (acceleration a tenth of a gee, don't aim the exhaust at the planet please) you wouldn't have to worry about energy restrictions; relative to the drive, the life support would use so little power it is negligible. With a slower ship, ion drive or the like, if you didn't spin the vessel for centrifugal force, the surface tension of the water would cause it ti spread in an even layer over anything it wetted, especially you…  so best to wear a shower cap that includes all your face.

Now, as to washing your hair–


----------



## mosaix (Apr 29, 2010)

Actually Chris, I was taught at junior school that Romans did use soap - but without knowing it.

Apparently there was place in Rome, on the banks of the Tiber, where if clothes were washed they became cleaner than elsewhere.

Research has shown that this was below a hill where sacrifices, animal and human, were burnt. The fat from the bodies mixed with the ash from the fire and was washed down to the river bank by rainfall. 

An alkali + a fatty acid = soap.


----------



## kurzon (Apr 30, 2010)

Nanites! They ooze all over you, pick off what their programming permits, ooze down to a collection chamber and extrude anything which isn't themselves, and then ooze back to their waiting chamber until the next bather steps in.

Fantastic device to have go rogue on your characters.


----------



## Steve Jordan (Nov 28, 2010)

Engineers are currently developing anti-bacterial fabrics that can remove a lot of the source of dirt and odor from the body.  For more significant dirt, I'd think a great solution would be a treated cloth that could be cleaned and recycled, as opposed to spraying water all about.

Concerned about spreading around other peoples' dirt?  You can keep your cloth with you at all times, and use it as you need to.  Wait... I think Douglas Adams wrote about that one...


----------



## Boneman (Nov 29, 2010)

In space, no-one can hear you clean...  

In time magazine 'best inventions of 2010' there was a washing machine that didn't use water: it used small beads that knocked the dirt off biologically and physically. I foresee a kind of children's play area where you dive into apool of small beads, swim around for a moment or two, and voila. To clean the beads of all the bacteria and dirt, you put them in an airlock, bleed the air out and then open the door for a few seconds - absolute zero kelvin, and all the bacteria are destroyed, the dirt frozen to a frazzle; just agitate to get rid of them. Simple.


----------



## Rodders (Nov 29, 2010)

Perhaps some sort of gel that disinfects and evaporates?


----------



## Bella Donna (Dec 1, 2010)

In Babylon 5 they had vibe showers. I think the idea was that you'd be hammered with sound waves till the grime came off. I think the big baby-wipes are the most plausible idea -- they're certainly the most practical one.


----------

