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What To Wear On Mars
Roland Piquepaille writes "If men ever land on Mars, what will they wear to protect them from radiation, micrometeors and the very cold climate? Several students from the University of Alberta tackled the problem and designed space suits for Mars. Their prototype suit is composed of twelve layers of materials, including one made from Demron, a new nanotechnology material developed by a Florida-based company, Radiation Shield Technologies. The students and their professor, Dr. Barry Patchett, think their suit will largely be ready before real missions to Mars start in about twenty years. They also hope that NASA will pick their design. More details and references are available in this overview, including some illustrations."
Geek girl developing space suits. How hot is that?
;)
Man, i'd tap that radiation shielding if I had a chance
There will be some people landing on Mars, for reasons of prestige. Putting people on Mars will be a histroic achievement, but I think it will be robots that actually get stuff done. Let the astronanuts plant flags, the robots will continue to do most of the research.
Mod parent up!
It's great to see research into technology that can be used for colonisation.
If we can design effective living areas and 'farms' for use on mars, then it just becomes a question of funding.
What else needs designing for use on mars?
Looking forward to taking a trip there.
ah, mod points
Just don't invite Trinny and Susannah, they'd probably throw all the current stuff out the nearest airlock.
Are you local? There's nothing for you here!
I was hoping to see wide lapels, or padded shoulders that look like airplane wings.
Instead it talks about material make up.
How is that what to wear?
Y'know, Mars has an atmosphere ...
Did you know you can fertilize your lawn with used motor oil?
Right, let's start out by including a patented product in construction which will likely involve a long-term contract with NASA; even if Demron proves to be not the best choice, or if better fabric/material constructs come along.
I know that spacesuit design is expensive, but is anyone else worried about universities becoming little more than state funded corporate technology parks?
Whatever their mummies tell them to wrap themselves in ;-)
When you're unsure of the weather, dress in layers. Ten is good, twenty is better.
Ceci n'est pas une sig
So that they can unzip their spacepants and piss on a rock and say "Ha ha! Take that Mars!".
What else would be the point of spending $9346294673945639046723548409 dollars to send a manned mission to Mars instead of 345767 unmanned probes to all the other planets and moons, and also another bigass space telescope?
Well according to my wife if it's after labor day then it can't be white.
http://www.leadmagnet.50megs.com
Will it make my butt look fat?
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
Mars needs women.
And apparently, so do the men going there.
You mean that bottle of SPF 4 000 000 000 is not enough for mars?
Dont forget the tin foil hat!
All Mars explorers will need are Grizzly Bear Proof Suits.
They're well armoured for micrometeorites and, hey, you never know about those Martian grizzly bears.
Trolling is a art,
Do they really think they will get NASA to adapt a design that will be twenty years antiquated when they actually use it? You can't run space missions like that! Would we send astronauts into space today with the same technology we used twenty ye... Oh. Maybe I should invest.
Wouldn't these technically be pressure suits or something? Since they would be worn on the surface of mars you wouldn't actually be in space.
The governor of California should be able to answer this.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
For the physisists out there: There is no magic involved. According to the specification from the Radiation Shield Technologies homepage:
"CIVILIANS DEMRON(TM) is effective as a radiation shield, comparable to lead in terms of g/cm2 and tantalum according to the mass attenuation coefficient, against gamma, x-ray and beta emissions."
Which gives that the weight for equal protection as a certain thickness of lead will be the same!
These suit designers are right up there with the people doing Mars-on-Earth research (learning the skills and techniques for actual large-scale planetary surface exploration) and human-scale rover designers (building the car to do the exploration in) out there getting it done.
And like both those other lines of research, this one has payoffs right here, right now. Bravo!
Check out this pdf for a full 10 page report.
Red Mars, Green Mars and Blue Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson. Excellent reading and well researched. If you like this topic, check out the series.
To Navigator Columbo:
We regret to inform you that this is the current state of the Spanish economy: there are ten brass bits to one copper piece. There are ten copper pieces to one silver piece. There are ten siolver pieces to one gold piece. There are 24 gold pieces to one platinum piece. There are 50 platinum pieces in the coin called the Royal Treasury. There are 15 Royal Treasuries in the royal treasury. I don't know how this stuff goes in Genoa, but here in Spain it means that we're in a budget crunch - what with having to fund the Inquisition in the name of our Holy Father and so on.
Therefore we regret to inform you that we cannot in good conscience fund your escapist exploration of New Worlds or barring that a passage East to the Indies. However, our minister Slash and his wife Dorothy have suggested the following solution: if you would be willing to send occasional village idiots and heretics in rowboats to explore this New World; we can fund that. After all for the price of the ships you propose to use (what did you want to call them Nine, Five, and Saint Mary?) we can pay for ten thousand rowbots and village idiots are not in short supply.
The universe may not be flat Mr. Columbus, and Ptolemy may be correct to our royal dismay, and certainly we respect the analysis of our beloved minister and his wife, but all these constitute no reason to distract our royal selves from our tasks here at home. We can send one rowbot every three years. Take it or leave it.
Her Royal Majesty of Spain: Isabel
Now imagine if the royalty of Europe had been as short sighted as you are? Hmmmm? We explore space in person because 1) village idiots cannot be trusted. 2) Arrival is claim 3) Like Mt Everest, Space is there and we're going to climb it.
As anybody who has been to Alberta in February knows, all you need is walk into the local Walmart, ask for standard gear for the Albertan winter, remove a couple of layers and voila: martian-ready space suit.
On the day the rover sojourner landed in Mars it was colder in Edmonton than in the sojourner landing area (seriously).
Agreed. She doesn't look like a hot geek according to her mug shot. [grin] :)
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
I don't know about space suits, but Jennifer Marcy becomes current slashdot playmate of the month. Right, after Natalie Portman and that chernobyl girl.
She's pretty!
* Dear God, would you please let me marry one of these girls?
Ah... nevermind.
- Arwen, I'm your father, Agent Smith.
- Well, you're just Smith, but my father is Aerosmith!
When the chairman introduced the guest speaker as a former illegal alien, I got up from my chair and yelled, "What's the matter, no jobs on Mars?" When no one laughed, I was real embarrassed. I don't think people should make you feel that way.
To get it unzipped for a pee? Since a lady was involved in the design I would hope the ladies would be thought of too.
Just think, a pissing contest on Mars....
and a step in the right direction.
Hmm. Dolphins and Scorpions are immune to radiation.
Dolphins are mammals. So are we. I wonder if we can learn how to develop technology that would dispense with the need for radiation suits.
Will we adapt over the next thousands of years to be radiation tolerant?
just a thought...
My hyperlinks aren't worth the paper they're printed on.
Parachute pants!
Is it just me, or should we get Roland his own "Whatever Mr. Piquepaille writes today" section? Don't get me wrong, many of your post are interesting Mr. Piquepaille, but c'mon /. editors - he does have his own site y'know - WITH COMMENTS, AND TRACKBACK!
/. is from somewhere else, but still...
If he didn't have a (very) good blog of his own I'd see the point, but the articles on his site are sort of enough, don't you think?
If not, shouldn't we start duplicating the articles on Kuro5hin too? Or any of the hundreds of COMMENTS/TRACKBACK-enabled tech sites/blogs out there? Yes, I know, almost every OP on
Their prototype suit is composed of twelve layers of materials ... [they] think their suit will largely be ready before real missions to Mars start in about twenty years. They also hope that NASA will pick their design.
Jesus NO!. Just think of the deaths that will happen without the "13th-layer". If I were nasa, I would demand more layers. 20 years should be enough time to come up with one more.
And I was hoping for a few million sentient Martians so that all the Christian Conservative Evangelical Humans would leave the planet Earth to convert the Native Martians. Well, if wishes were fishes we could feed the 5,000.
-same Anonymous coward.
So my North Face jacket and L. L. Bean mittens aren't going to cut it, eh?
--- Ban humanity.
'The radiation is so bright..they need to wear shades.'
Nothing is immune to radiation -it's all a matter of dosage
Ionizing radiation damages DNA, protein, lipids etc both directly and by generation of free radicals (hence the term ionizing...). Organisms differ greatly in sensitivity mainly due to different efficiencies in repair but nothing is *immune*.
With enough juice the cockroach eventually fries like the rest of us...
This is cool and all but the article is a bit misleading about the demands of a Moon suit as opposed to a Mars suit.
- Radiation. Mars has little to no magnetosphere but it does have some atmosphere. This provides some protection that the Moon does not. Also, the Moon is much closer to the sun so the levels of radiation from it are higher. There are also little baby north and south poles around the planet. Landing in one of those will provide a bit more protection.
- Temperature. The Moon has much higher and lower temperatures to worry about than Mars
- Sandstorms. True, the Moon doesn't have these but with the low gravity, thin atmosphere and fact that they won't be sleeping in hammocks, explorers/settlers should be able to handle them as long as they wear something thicker than a windbreaker.
In short, Mars suits have fewer extremes to deal with than Moon suits. The article exhibits some FUD about Mars.
Blaze a trail to the New World
Are they suits weather proof?
There is brief mention of the martian dust in the first paragraph of the technical document, but it isn't addressed elsewere, Martian winds can carry dusts to excessively high speeds and will stick it to almost any material like it were spray paint, nearly impossible to remove.
How do the space suits counter this, and will the dust should it stay on degrade the suits performance?
if a man could land on Mars, he would surely be crushed by the gravity problem. this equates to my feeling that Mars is very far away, in real terms. are these scientists bonkers or greedy for diamonds and pearls?
well that's not gonna work is it? If man could truly live on other planets, then he would be green. And there would be some foliage. as it is, he isn't and there's not, so really and truly I believe the making of spacesuits should be left to the experts. hang on, this doesn't make sense. If NASA was a clever dog, they would know this time they are wrong, wrong da doo ron ron.
They should do this on the cheap, using the simplest most standard materials/approaches that they can.
What they would end up with might not be the very best, and probably won't be the final design, but it could set a standard... any final design should be a lot better if it is going to cost a lot more.
With the right publicity (for the next 20 years), this could draw more attention to the school (and its important supply of girl geeks) than developing an expensive design that is out of date and not chosen.
"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro" -- HST
It should match the outfits, you know... ...with matching Evian bottle holder, if not one of those camel-back types with the straw sticking out. The aliens would shoot for the straw first, in extreme cases.
...Jean Paul Gaultier, then our astronauts would be the most fashion forward in the galaxy.
Assuming of course that he is not outbid by a certain Issey Miyake...
"No, that's Barry Pratchet. Get your names right".
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
I do not overlook your insistence that there are "better things to do". I say that the better things you say there are to do are not better, and not worth doing.
You presuppose that the only reason to colonize is population pressure. Don't put words in my mouth, because I never posted that. Would Martian colonization lower the Earth's population? No, but then the purpose of colonization from Europe to the New World wasn't to lower Europes' population either!
Who went to the new world? Answer: fortune seekers and malcontents. There's precious little space for malcontents to go anymore. Space 'em, I say.
We, of the US, claimed none of the US. The landmass comprising the US was claimed by England, France, Spain, the Netherlands and Russia. The East Coast was "liberated" through insurrection and terrorism by the founding fathers. The land west of the Mississippi was purchased or joined through succession. The US exists only via a set of smart and not so smart purchases.
I will not engage in a discussion of Native Rights or mourne there loss with you. There are no Martian natives to displace or conquer, educate or rob of culture and religion. The guilt trip you intend to embark upon doesn't apply. The point you attempt to make is moot.
t'would seem mr. patchett's surname is not an auspicious one for a spacesuit designer...
since you're dreaming....
Engineering is the art of compromise.
My Question is this: If I'm on Mars, will I have to wear a tinfoil hat to keep the people on Earth from reading my mind?
by Mike Buddha -- Someday the mountain might get him, but the law never will.
Here on earth, we have much the same Mars has:
Micrometeors: Interstellar dust entering earth's atmosphere happens many times a day. Leaves a crater of about 1*10E-20 nm.
Radiation: UV Radiation. First Degree burns ahoy!
Climate: Its pretty damned cold up here in Canada from November right to April.
The funny thing is, we have already invented something to defend up against each of those.
Its called clothing. T-Shirts and Pants easily defend us from UV Radiation, they stop lots of objects hurled at us, and they keep us nice and toasty when it gets cold.
Frink: Nice try floyd, but you were designed for scrubbing, and scrubbing is what you shall do.
How space suites would have looked/worked if they had been designed in the 40's?
btw, Support the 1st Amendment follow all pop-ups, it's your duty as an average American to mis-understand the bill of rights.
www.facebook.com/DareDefendOurRights
www.fairtax.org
wrong about the radiation. research information regarding magnetosphere's. Mars doesn't have one, while the moon is protected by the earths. thus, mars radiation conditions are quite a bit more severe.
Temp. yeah that's true, but it's still cold on mars.
mars has many more extremes to consider and not all of the problems are fully understood. that's why they send those rovers (which break down in a week)
cheers!