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."

Comments

Jennifer Marcy

[imag0]

Geek girl developing space suits. How hot is that?

Man, i'd tap that radiation shielding if I had a chance ;)

How many people will go to Mars?

[Lurker McLurker]

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.

Re:How many people will go to Mars?

[Chess_the_cat]

Please. How long did it take for the robots up there now to pick up a bloody rock or to even get off the landing vehicle? In the time it took a machine to roll 10 feet I would have been able to pick up sacks of rocks and dig a hole 6 feet deep.

As for the article, why bother designing the suits now? I'm sure that in 20 years there will be materials that will be much more advanced that we'll want to use instead.

Re:How many people will go to Mars?

[Lurker McLurker]

You have to take into account the effort required in getting people to Mars, the health risks, the effort required to get them back (not an issue for robots unless they are returning samples), the technology required to keep them alive, and other factors. Using robots for the real work seems like the best solution.

Re:How many people will go to Mars?

[WegianWarrior]

As for the article, why bother designing the suits now? I'm sure that in 20 years there will be materials that will be much more advanced that we'll want to use instead.

Why bother upgrading your PC now? In two years time there will be faster processors and larger harddisk avilable, and then you can just ask yourself the same question again...

A spacesuit is in essence a highly complex, articulate one man spaceship. As such, it takes time to develop and iron out the bugs. The A7L suit used on the Apollo missions took nine years to develop, and was, as far as I can understand, a simpler piece of enginering than a suit for Mars will be - for starters, the gravity on the moon are less, meaning that the suit could have more mass without beeing uncomfertable to wear for extended periods of time. Also the moon has no atmosphere, while if you're going to Mars you might want to make sure there is no way the atmosphere on Mars affects your suit in a negative manner.

The EMU (Extravehicular Mobility Unit) that was developed for use on the Shuttle faced a simpler problem - no gravity to worry about, no moondust that could get into the joints, no chance of the astronaut stumbling over a rock - yet it took as long as the shuttle to develop the first flightrated variants.

Why indeed start designing the suits ten to twenty years ahead of the mission? Because it takes about that time to get the best possible design worked out, all the bugs ironed out and enought suits manufactured - during the apollo program each astronaut had 3 suits; one for training, one for flights and one backup.

Useless fact; The A7L suit had a mass of 22 while the assosiated PLSS (Portable Life Support System) had a mass of 26 kg. The EMU (Extravehicular Mobility Unit) used on the US spaceshuttle had a mass of 50 kg and a PLLS weigthing 15 kg.

What not to wear...

[T-Kir]

Just don't invite Trinny and Susannah, they'd probably throw all the current stuff out the nearest airlock.

Where the fashion going?

[jackb_guppy]

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?

Re:Where the fashion going?

[acceber]

...the prototype suit weighs only 21 kilograms -- on Earth.

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!

Re:Where the fashion going?

[0123456]

I would imagine that's the weight of the suit alone, without the life support equipment: that probably adds a significant amount by itself.

Demron

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

Re:Demron

[Zzootnik]

This is true. And also true is that maybe it wont be NASA going to mars. That whole X-Prize thing is meant to encourage some tendencies in the private sector. Maybe NASA should become more of an Advisory/Grant-giving Org... "You guys can go into space when you get off your fat asses and make it work!"

I hate to say it, but it very well could be that Corporate funding will put people into space. Now if only there was some way to ensure that such University research was mandatorily open-sourced...or open-patented...or whatever needs to be done to make sure standards can be put in place and the tech is available to everyone if it happens to be state-funded.

Important that there be a fly in the front.

[dankjones]

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?

It will be antiquated

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

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.

Not better than lead...

[Jott42]

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!

Material Choices for Mars

[isny]

Check out this pdf for a full 10 page report.

Piece of cake

[Alomex]

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).

Obligatory Jack Handey Quote....

[mscdex]

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.

Mars is less harsh than moon, not other way around

[kippy]

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.

Yeah, they should do it cheap...

[BrianMarshall]

By using cutting edge materials (20 years early)

• it's extremely expensive now
• it's 20 years old then

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.