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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."
Y'know, Mars has an atmosphere ...
Did you know you can fertilize your lawn with used motor oil?
Wow, 46 lbs for a spacesuit is definitely improved technology, since flight suits generally weigh more than 200 lbs on earth. That prototype would weigh less than 18 lbs on Mars since mass on Mars is about 38% the mass on Earth.
And this is just the prototype!
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!
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.
That prototype would weigh less than 18 lbs on Mars since mass on Mars is about 38% the mass on Earth.
No, it really isn't...
Mass is not affected by the strength of the gravitational field. kg is a measure of mass, lb and Newtons (SI system) are a measure of weight (which is affected by the strength of the gravitational field).
Uttering logically derived and empirically supported truths to the disciples of the orthodox establishment.
It's also for Mars, not the moon or space.
(That said, Mars only has 0.01 Earth atmospheres...so it may as well be the moon.)
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
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