Abstract Startled by NASA’s decision to let orbiting astronauts collect their own feces in a bag for medical experiments, a pair of sanitary engineers at Berkeley designed an algae-based bio-regenerative system to recycle oxygen, water, and even nutrients. This article explains the technological choice facing the emerging space program between the infamous ‘fecal-bag’ and a now-forgotten alternative, the ‘Algatron’, in the mid-1960s. The article situates the case of the Algatron at the intersection of the history of the space program and the history of biology; it uses the case of the Algatron to expose the different meanings of ‘shit’ as an object of scientific, medical, and engineering study. For nearly a decade after Sputnik, engineers worked under the assumption that human waste was part of a new space ecology, but by the time Neil Armstrong landed on the moon, human excrement had become understood solely as a diseased and disposable medical object to be contained and preserved in a bag. The ecological system was rejected in favor of a medical device and served to elevate Man above Nature in contrast to placing people as but one component in a biospheric system.

中文翻译：

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生活在群星之中：早期太空时代的人造环境

摘要 由于美国宇航局决定让轨道上的宇航员将自己的粪便收集在袋子中用于医学实验，伯克利的两位卫生工程师设计了一种基于藻类的生物再生系统，以回收氧气、水甚至营养物质。本文解释了 1960 年代中期臭名昭著的“粪便袋”和现已被遗忘的替代品“Algatron”之间的新兴太空计划所面临的技术选择。这篇文章将 Algatron 的案例置于太空计划史和生物学史的交汇处；它以 Algatron 的案例来揭示“shit”作为科学、医学和工程研究对象的不同含义。在人造卫星之后的近十年里，工程师们在假设人类排泄物是新空间生态的一部分的情况下工作，但当尼尔·阿姆斯特朗登上月球时，人类排泄物已被完全理解为一种有病的、一次性的医疗物品，可以装在袋子里保存。生态系统被拒绝支持医疗设备，并有助于将人提升到自然之上，而不是将人视为生物圈系统中的一个组成部分。