• Question: Do you take 6 months worth of clothes or are you able to do laundry!?

    Asked by evie to Steve, Shefali, Kevin, Katie, Floris, Delma on 11 Jan 2016.
    • Photo: Steve Price

      Steve Price answered on 11 Jan 2016:

      Hi,
      That’s a very good question. I must admit I don’t know the answer. 6 months of clothes would be an awful lot and mass is important in getting to and moving around in space.
      We try and make spacecraft as light as possible, because every kilogramme of mass needs fuel to get it off the ground and into space. We’d rather have another experiment in space than more clothes.
      My guess is that they clean them somehow, but I don’t actually know.

    • Photo: Floris Van Den Berg

      Floris Van Den Berg answered on 12 Jan 2016:

      Hi evie,

      I knew I read this somewhere so I just copied it from the ESA folder:

      There is no washing machine on the ISS, and it is hard to pack enough clothes like underwear or socks, because each kilogram launched into space is very expensive. The result is that they cannot change their clothes every day: underwear is changed every 2–3 days. On average, ISS crewmembers get one pair of shorts and a T-shirt for every 3 days of exercising. Their work shirts and trousers/shorts are changed, on average, once every 10 days. There is usually a new T-shirt to wear under their work shirts every 10 days.

      Quite smelly place the ISS 😉

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