It sounds like all involved had a grand time at the recent Explorers Club meeting featuring Richard and Owen Garriott talking about their experiences as astronauts.

Perhaps predictably, however, the discussion went…in this direction:

[American businessman Dennis] Tito [who also paid to go to space] stood up to ask his question and paused before saying, “One experience that people always ask me about is, ‘How do you go to the bathroom in space?'”

As the audience laughed, Owen Garriott jumped in to add: “Elementary school children, usually.”

But Tito continued, saying that despite his eight months of training with the Russians, he wasn’t all that prepared to go the bathroom in space.

“I guess the Russians really don’t like to talk about these things — they have funny attitudes,” Tito said. “So I got on board the station and the first thing that happened was Jim Voss, an American astronaut, gave me toilet trailing.”

“Now, I hadn’t had toilet training in 60 years,” Tito added. “So I was wondering, did you get toilet training on the ground?”

Richard Garriott, who trained with the Russians, too, corroborated Tito’s story.

“It is hilarious because every other system — everything except the toilet — you use the exact hardware you will use in space on the ground,” Garriott said.

Garriott said he had a cheat sheet for which switches to turn on for when he needed to use the space commode, the toilet does not work the same way as it does on the ground.

“Gravity’s actually really important for how to separate yourself from your waste and there’s no discussion of that,” Garriott said.

By the way: here’s what can happen with that.

Anyway, overall, it sounds like the evening was a success overall. You can peruse this small gallery of images at Flickr to see more images of the Garriotts, Dennis Tito, and some of the artifacts that were evidently on display.

(Image credit: alertfive)