Kicker - Doing laundry in space

NICK EICHER, HOST: Nobody likes dirty laundry. (Except for, as the old song goes, journalists.)

But think about astronauts and dirty laundry, how do they deal with it? Not easy. They stuff dirty laundry into a trash capsule and send it out to be burned up in the atmosphere.

That means each crew member has to bring lots of changes of clothing, and that takes up room in an already cramped space.

Well, private enterprise comes to the rescue!

Procter & Gamble, makers of Tide detergent, signed an agreement with NASA to test laundry solutions on the International Space Station.

They’ll test Tide ingredients to see how stable they are in the weightlessness of space.

At the same time, scientists are developing a special washer-dryer combo that could operate in future outposts on the moon or even Mars.

I can just hear the advertising copywriters now: for out-of-this-world freshness—galactic Tide!

It’s The World and Everything in It.

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