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Waste Collector Subsystem

Water Processor Assembly

Waste Collector Subsystem

Water Processor Assembly

Actually, the company I work for makes the space toilet, as well as the space suit and several other systems for for the ISS. I can assure you that very few, if any, of the engineers are making $145,000. The head of Engineering probably makes about that much.

You make it sound like there is absoulutely no accountability, this couldn't be further from the truth. Financials are due every month and quartlery major programs have full reviews. Things are expensive because they are manufactured in extremely low volumn. Go ahead and look at what these systems are designed to do and how reliable they need to be, then take into the account that you are only producing maybe 3 or 4 of them.

Mass production is what makes things cheap. Virtually all of the work for these things, from tooling to wire harnesses to assembly, are done by hand.

Actually, the company I work for makes the space toilet, as well as the space suit and several other systems for for the ISS. I can assure you that very few, if any, of the engineers are making $145,000. The head of Engineering probably makes about that much.

You make it sound like there is absoulutely no accountability, this couldn't be further from the truth. Financials are due every month and quartlery major programs have full reviews. Things are expensive because they are manufactured in extremely low volumn. Go ahead and look at what these systems are designed to do and how reliable they need to be, then take into the account that you are only producing maybe 3 or 4 of them.

Mass production is what makes things cheap. Virtually all of the work for these things, from tooling to wire harnesses to assembly, are done by hand.

Are you the type of person afraid to go outside because an airplane may crash on your head? Or, all kidding aside, you are far more likely to be killed in your morning commute than an astronaut is to be struck be any sort of debris.

And to add a bit to your analogy, that highway would be over 25,000 miles long, with a relatively few objects traveling on it. Those objects are also traveling on pretty much the same course as you with a pretty a fairly close velocity.

As an aside, I happen to work for the company that makes the EMU and the studies have all been done. Suffice it to say there are alot of other more probable things that can go wrong than running into a fleck of paint off of an old booster.

Because this is an academic boondoggle that will never be implemented in the current suit. The first article talks about the current US spacesuit, however goto the actual website and they are working with the Russian Orlan suit. This is nothing more than a proof of concept for something that may be usable for a Mars suit, whenever that happens.

The limiting factor in just about all spacewalks are battery life. You can get about 4 hours max. Every milliamp matters. Currently the suit uses an old rad hardened cpu that runs at like 8mghz(I think its an NEC but I'm not positive, and I believe is now out of production). Last I knew they are looking to upgrade that to a more recent/powerful cpu and I believe a rad hardened PPC was in contention. However, the form factor size was about double the current and I believe it drew like 20% more power than the current.
Currently NASA on the ground gets real time data from about a dozen various systems in the suit. This info includes things such as voltage readings, temp, air flow rates, etc.

More info can be had here: here

Actually, Ham Sund does alot of work on the Russian suit now. There have been several occasions when I've walked into the lab area and seen a US and Russian suit side by side being worked on. The actual company is Space Systems Internation and our web page is here.

Here's a picture of the employee lobby which shows from right to left: Apollo moon suit, I believe a mercury suit, gemini suit, current shuttle eva suit, and then a mars prototype suit.

You'll see to the right of the mars suit is a little rover. The idea being that the rover would follow the atronaught around, carrying any tools, oxygen, etc, etc for him. Something like this will probably be needed because the different in gravity between the moon and mars is enough that the weight of the suit needs to be reduced in order to increase the endurance of the astronaut.

I can tell you that there will only be one replacement suit that everyone in the world will use (Except maybe the chineese, who can tell about them). There is a major drive in the industry for consolidation.

Actually, Ham Sund does alot of work on the Russian suit now. There have been several occasions when I've walked into the lab area and seen a US and Russian suit side by side being worked on. The actual company is Space Systems Internation and our web page is here.

Here's a picture of the employee lobby which shows from right to left: Apollo moon suit, I believe a mercury suit, gemini suit, current shuttle eva suit, and then a mars prototype suit.

You'll see to the right of the mars suit is a little rover. The idea being that the rover would follow the atronaught around, carrying any tools, oxygen, etc, etc for him. Something like this will probably be needed because the different in gravity between the moon and mars is enough that the weight of the suit needs to be reduced in order to increase the endurance of the astronaut.

I can tell you that there will only be one replacement suit that everyone in the world will use (Except maybe the chineese, who can tell about them). There is a major drive in the industry for consolidation.

More information regarding the suit is available at the Hamilton Sundstrand site: http://www.hsssi.com/SystemSolutions/protectivesui t.html