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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."
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.
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.
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