Slashdot Mirror
The Evolution of Space Suit Design
William_Lee writes "According to space.com, it looks like we may finally be on the verge of seeing a long overdue, radical redesign of space suits that will result in much lighter, more maneuverable, custom fitted suits.
Now if we can actually get around to sending someone to Mars..."
_>_>_>
How about sending someone to space first?
200 miles up doesn't qualify.
Laws are for people with no friends.
I am not your father's space suit.
Bumming Sigs since 1952
To be first.
. It is custom fitted to each astronaut using a laser scanning/electrospinlacing process.
Do not look into the sun with your remaining eye.
liqbase
Is that set of day glow orange moonboots.
Just watch the latest Missy Elliot music video.
soon, but we shouldn't let that get in the way of fashion. I say we should make a rover catwalk.
Yeah baby, shake that spectrometer, OWWW!
I apologize profusely.
We will get around to it eventually. Thanks to the strong leadership of President Bush, we have a real plan for space, as opposed to mostly circling around Earth currently.
I think the President has done a fantastic job in revitalizing our space program and command him for his decisive leadership and strong character.
God Bless America.
http://www.space.com/php/multimedia/imagedisplay/i mg_display.php?pic=h_astronaut_djn_02.jpg&cap=Futu re+space+explorers+may+apply+a+%93spray-on%94+seco nd+skin%2C+an+organic%2C+biodegradable+layer+offer ing+protection+in+extremely+dusty+planetary+enviro nments.+Incorporated+into+the+second+skin+will+be+ electrically+actuated+artificial+muscle+fibers+to+ enhance+human+strength+and+stamina.+Artwork%3A+Cam +Brensiger
Looks more like space flight will include playboy subscriptions.
These images are just asking for trouble.
They are just like the aircraft safety pictures that did the rounds a while back.
liqbase
Do you like your quasi-futuristic clothes Mr. Powers? I designed them myself.
A redesigned suit? How about before they do that they come and fix my toaster. It's been shooting toast at me for years because NASA reprogrammed it for 'defense from hungry aliens' If they can't fix my damn toaster, what makes them think a redesign will help?
Bite me. Seriously, I enjoy it.
I was actually just watching an IMAX Nasa special the other day and was shocked to hear that the current space suits weigh in at almost 250lbs!! I know that without gravity, it doesn't matter how much you weigh, but the bulk in those suits seriously made it hard for the astronauts to do their job at times.
A new "second skin" version of the suit would certainly make it easier on the astronauts, and would free up a ton of space for hauling more cargo up there as well.
On a side note, Nasa was testing this cool 100ft solar array in the movie, which when folded up fit into a 7 inch tall box! It was pretty cool.
Tight-fitting suits may mean that astronauts are more likely to get turned on, resulting in all kinds of mayham and soap operas. Space can get lonely. Maybe the baggy look is better afterall.
Table-ized A.I.
...the first medical accident when someone thinks this stuff is aerosol cheese.
I don't get it.
MIT says the biggest problem with the suits is bowl movements. As one researcher put it:
"We spray these guys like shrink wrap and then 5 minutes later he has to take a dump. Now what?"
It's funny, I just finished my new book, Who Sucks is This Guy Right Here and am about to have it published. It largey deals with how bad you suck, so you might want to pick up a copy if you ever start to wonder if you don't suck.
Of course you probably suck at buying books, but give it a shot, champ.
They may? Right in the spray right? must come out like protein noodles. That or the mussles and the electronic traces are assembled by nanomachine in the spray. I'll get right on that, You can spray that on someone else.
This article contains material on spacesuit evolution. Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of spacesuits. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully and critically considered.
A thin layer of biomaterial may be sufficient for protecting you from the vacuum of space if they get around the engineering considerations, but I for one would not want a "second skin" as my only protection from radiation and cosmic rays.
This is a consideration particularly where there is no atmosphere absorbing any of it before it gets to you (eg the moon and Earth orbit). The Earth also has its magnetic field helping shield us.
Also consider that the thinnner and lighter a material is the more likely a rip becomes. That one rip will easily end your life. You'd need to incorporate a system self repair of small holes and tears - perhaps a gluey substance that seals under pressure.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
-- they can be made equal-volume suits, so bending an arm or a leg won't have the resistance caused by changing the volume of air. Think high-tech plate armor.
:)
We might see Imperial Storm Troopers yet.
Is it just me... or do the old suits look freakin' cool and the new ones look totally gay?
The old ones look functional, with color-coded hose hook-ups and all... like a deep-sea diver... a deep-space diver, if you will.
These new ones... jeez... you can tell if the guy's circumcised or not! Seeing as how an astronaut is probably more likely to encounter an alien being than the rest of us land-lubbers, I'd be very concerned if the first human the martians meet is dressed like a metrosexual.
I heard slashdot was gay, but I never thought it was this bad.
An article about space suits makes you think about boners. That's so gay.
There thing that would stop me from going into space in a new or old suit it small, but important (to me).
What if I get an itchy nose?
I know it sounds silly, but I'm serious. I can imagine getting a serious, claustrophobic panic attack in one of those things, of something as minor as that. Being trapped in this thing and unable to take it off.
"I think the most critical element for success will be the early creation of an effective, modular EVA system architecture"
*Yawn*
Let me know when they start developing Gundams.
again, star trek precedes real life... all we need are female vulcan astronauts.
Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.
When somebody is talking so high on Bush it seems it's ment to be ironic. But I'm not sure on this one.
Dyslexics have more fnu.
If you read official NASA stuff, you will find that the space suits are there to keep the guys warm in the cold of space. That is total BS. Put a self warming thing in a perfect insulator and what happens? It gets hot. It turns out that since the Russians haven't figured out how to make peltier effect space suits, that many of the details of the Apollo era suits are still secret. Even some of the details of early astronaut almost dying from dehydrating in their suits haven't been released
One of the other things is that your blood will boil or explode in space. Thats not true either. All thats needed to protect the skin is a thin layer of something like a cheap wet suit. There have been studies that show thick rubber gloves would work fine for the pressure if there was a way to get rid of the sweat.
The real mechanical problem is keeping the head protected along with proper containment of everything the body is trying to get rid of.
Of course the real problem is all that radiation.
it may be incredibly heavy by earth measure, but the suit also includes a personalized liquid cooling system, thermal protection for the extreme temperature differences between sun and shade, and a pretty serious amount of puncture protection. While it may not fit the bill for hiking across the mars terrain, it does offer some serious advantages over what sounds like an incredibly complex and complicated applied second skin. having worn one (attended space camp far too many years ago), i'd have to say that i much prefer it to a wet suit.
Solve the problem of bone rot and muscular atrophy then work on creating vehicles to move people to LaGrange points or beyond.
Ahhh yes... we're one step closer to getting Power Ranger suits. Then we all have to learn to talk and nod our heads at the same time.
Live forever, or die trying.
"Incorporated into that second skin would be electrically actuated artificial muscle fibers to enhance human strength and stamina."
When do you think this will be available for the public and how much longer after that will it be banned from all sports?
[cx]
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
They claim to integrate artificial muscle fibers to enhance strength and stamina. These suits are allegedly for use on Mars. On Mars? A planet with 0.376 times Earth's gravity? Why bother? If you can stand up on earth on your own legs you should be able to lift yourself and 62.4% of your body mass of additional mass with as little difficulty as you walk on earth today.
The problem with reduced-gravity environments is losing muscle mass and bone density. If anything a long term martian astronaut will have problems getting an adequate workout on Mars.
(More than 30 years ago, Larry Niven proposed such spacesuits in his "Known Space" novels).
If I say "space suit" and the first thing this guy thinks is "boner," how is that not gay? Did I say "you're gay, and that sucks"? No, I merely pointed out that if one's immediate reaction to something completely non-boner-related is "boners," that's a good sign that they might be a homosexual.
Oh, and derogative is not a noun, faggot.
I'd like to see on their way to Mars !
That's a real problem, but current space ships offer little protection, much less current 250lb+ space suits. No suit is really going to help you, so you need a shelter. Some ideas are lithium shields and crew quarters inside fuel tanks!
These suits are being designed mostly for places like mars which has a partial pressure. They offer protection against dust, which would foul up current joints.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
Its unfair subsidies hurt free market space exploration programs. What ever happened to the Small Government the US was founded on? Adam Smith sheds a tear.
ooooooKay then. I suppose this has been dreamed up by the same people who envisioned "Nuclear cars", jetpacks, tube-elevators, practically sentient computers, and ray guns?
Seriously- what qualifies some of these people to talk about the future of space ANYTHING? For 40 years, they've been mostly getting it wrong, and doing not much better than playing the part of scifi authors.
Please help metamoderate.
cheap labor conservatives - they want to keep you hungry enough to be thankful for minimum wage.
In space? Without bacteria or oxygen?
The only thing I can think of to degarde your suit would be sunlight and I don't think that would be a design feature.
Fluffy, very fluffy but meaningless.
I hope it includes a cup for sensitive areas. I am uncomfortable with the idea of space rocks impacting my organs.
On that note, I guess that's why I'm a geek and am not qualified to actually explore space.
I bootleg Fizzy Lifting Drinks.
Notice how the space suit seems to be approaching this?
I mean, do they tell us that the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is MIT?
A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/
The new uniforms are skin-tight. So that's what T'Pol's uniform is for! :p
It is impossible to enjoy idling thoroughly unless one has plenty of work to do.
- Jerome Klapka Jerome
Yeah, and those people who dreamed up a computer smaller than ten feet by ten and weighing less than two tonnes. What were they thinking?
Drill baby drill - on Mars
I'm not sure if I agree with their approach. I would think that loose fitting, light, super high strength baggy outfits would be the best way to go. They could be weaved in with netted fibre, like a hot air baloon. As long as they have enough pressure to maintain proper-psi on the skin, it doesn't matter if they're a little loose. or if they puff out a little. Shoes could be regular tennies worn on the outside of the suit, maybe something similar with leather gloves. Humidity, temperature, and varying air pressure would half to be managed (maybe a high humidity zone for breathing, and a low humidity zone for sweating). A portable (roll along?) unit hooked up to a long tube would be eaiser to work with. If a problem happens, the could just disconnect the tube, walk back to the unit, and plug in there, take a spare along too. For radiation, there could be carry along umbrellas, or shelters. Maybe light protection in the suit, but not to weigh it down.
IMHO, The idea of laser custom fit suits, and spraid on super-skin just seems like problems waiting to happen. It's better to keep it simple to use, simple to change, repair, simple to manage, and inherently uncomplicated.
I pity the first crew on a mars mission... radiation sickness is a horrible way to die... in a tin coffin millions of miles away from home with nothing but the coldness of space arounb you no less...
What a disappointment. I thought it would be something like this.
NASA announced today its plan to recruit exclusively from the U.S. bobsled and luge teams.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
Here are some more photos of the suit, including sketches, of what the suits look like in cool poses.
- pictures.shtml
http://www.batkhela.com/msn/power-rangers-display
I couldn't think of a sig.
http://www.pbase.com/ukexpat/image/32809264
C'mon guys, this isn't news. It isn't even a press release purporting to be news. It's just a gee-whizz-somebody-is-doing-research-on-an-idea news. It's so far away from being news that when it finally is, years or even decades from now, you won't be able to recogize the connection.
Let's leave this stuff unread in in Popular Science or Technology Review where it belongs.
Yet another intelligent and needed item for space exploration.
It will be cut in two years.
Are hot... These just suck...
I think we should start advertising on going to mars. Ads everywhere, "Mars is great", "Lets explore Mars" etc. etc. Maybe Slashdot can have a vote and put up an ad if the audience says yay.
Incorporated into that second skin would be electrically actuated artificial muscle fibers to enhance human strength and stamina.
Right - this technology is WAY far away. Synthetic muscle fibers have been under development for the last decade. One of the first innovations were Contractle Polymers. These have since given way to other technologies - but non yet equal the strength of human muscle. In addition to make them more useful, these fibers are going to have to be multiples of the strength of human muscle. Also, the notion of a "spray on" skin that creates a powered exomuscular infrastructure requires a fusing of so many current and future technologies that this is not a particularly realistic goal at this time.
I think what i'm trying to say - this isn't news it's a dream. Obviously people need to figure it out - but there are not going to be tangible results from such research for sometime.
it has the female-repellant capacity of a dozen Radio Shacks.
I met Mr. Kittinger in October this last year.
He's the man who jumped from a weather balloon at 102,000 feet wearing a space suit. On the ascent he had a problem with one of the gloves on his pressure suit. He elected not to tell anybody believing that the silk glove he wore underneath as a liner would keep his hand from rupturing. It did in fact keep his hand from rupturing, though it swelled to 3 times its normal size and was useless until the swelling went down.
The point I'm making is that it if the spray-on suit is flexible enough to allow you to bend your elbow, thereby stretching the material on the outside of the bend, could it be strong enough to not only contain the pressure of your body; but contain it with enough pressure to maintain its shape? With all of the potential twists and movements of a normal human body, how would it know what stretching to allow, and which to contain?
Hot Damn! It's the Soggy Bottom Boys!
Don't the Fremen use stillsuits that are just like this?
spray-on suits will be something the sex toy and porn industry will be best able to take and refine to make better and more cost-effective...
Is the peacekeeper spacesuits from Farscape.
They're black - instantly cool but probably a problem to spot your mate when his dark face shield is closed - the helmet is just barely bigger than your head - so you don't go knocking your noggin on stuff cause you forgot - and all the fastenings had that appearance of being sturdy and functional without taking ages to fiddle with.
They weren't skin tight, more like about how baggy a tracksuit is on a regular sized person, but they weren't overly bulky either. The costume designers even made sure to put small "life support" systems on the backs of the suits too, and although they only looked big enough to scrub CO2 for maybe 30-45 minutes, I imagine something slightly bigger could be made, or have hook-up points on the suit and ship for extended EVA.
It would have been good to find an interview with Claudia Black or Ben Browder that asked if the general design of the mock-up suits was comfortable.
Skin tight is functional, but I can see personal aesthetics screwing with the crew - we're only human, and things that shouldn't bother us generally do.
His name is Robert Paulsen...
After travelling recently to 16000 feet with out any pressurization, I would think in my uneducated experience that a space-traveller could get the bends with these new suits. Could someone please explain? I don't have any background that explains this. Do the space-travellers depressurize while in the ship/space-station?
- The ISS is now a disaster since we did not finish our parts.
- GWB stopped the X-33 from being finished and prevented L-M from finishing the rest on their own (frame was finished, the engines were tested, and the tanks were finished about 1 year ago). We would be in space right now, except for GWB.
- We are now grounded and not flying anybody into even LEO space, but just about everybody else is.
- He just canceled the hubble repair. I really do not care one one or another about it (we can actually build better ones at either pole), but doing a space repair via robotics is what is needed. Yet he is not even willing to allow another space agency to take over the hubble.
In good shape???? You have to be kidding. That statement is about as good as GWB now saying that we were invited into Iraq (shades of Communist china and USSR). To really make matters worse, even most people in GWB's staff knows that what is said is full of shit.Human skin is actually a surprisingly strong pressure barrier. The conterpressure suit can be an open weave with up to millimeter sized openings. The biggest problem is figuring out how to keep pressure on the concave areas such as under the arms and behind the knees. An advantage of counterpressure suits is that a tear in the suit doesn't result in catastrophic pressure loss. It only causes injury to the area of the tear. Another problem with them is getting them on and off. It would be like putting super tight pantyhose over your whole body. (not that I know anything about that)
- 2311.pdf
Here are some papers on counterpressure suits:
http://mvl.mit.edu/EVA/BioSuitDJN_Nov03.pdf
http://spacecraft.ssl.umd.edu/publications/ICES02
http://mvl.mit.edu/EVA/NIACPhaseIReport.pdf
ooooooKay then. I suppose you'd prefer that everybody in research positions stop using their imaginations and coming up with new ideas?
Seriously- what qualifies this person to question some MIT professors' qualifications to talk about the future of space ANYTHING?
Look, they're doing real research, and if you RTFA (the rest of it), you'd know they're planning on prototyping and making it. Is it guaranteed that they'll use this stuff? No. But none of these people who envisioned nuclear cars, jetpacks, tube elevators, practically sentient computers, and ray guns were promising anything. Except, well, we've got ray guns, practically sentient computers are still possible (the time-frame was just wrong), and cars or planes with quantum nucleonic reactors are feasible.
Hmmmm... turns out, there actually is data on animals (intentionally) and humans (accidentally) exposed to a vacuum.
- You'd lose consciousness after about ten seconds
- Your blood would NOT boil.
- Your body would swell up to about twice its normal volume, but this could be constrained by an elastic body suit.
- You'd want to open your mouth: If you tried to hold your breath, your lungs would balloon up and rupture.
Then there's the interesting case of a balloon ascent to 20 mi (32 km, near vacuum) in which the pilot lost pressurization only in his right glove. His hand swelled and became stiff and painful, but three hours after landing, his hand was back to normal, with no ill effects.Details of all this here
and 98ft long :)
it's like a cheap hotel....no ballroom
Diplomacy is the art of saying "Nice doggie" until you can find a rock. Will Rogers
I wonder if I could get one of those to use when I go biking or surfing...
Ehta nyeh IBM, ehta Macintosh!
Things like this are the perfect target for the Centennial Challenges program, a NASA program of prize contests for private endeavours to create or accomplish things related to space exploration. Spacesuit design is an area where a small private company can make appreciable progress with a reasonable amount of investment.
An even more specific goal is a better astronaut glove. Gloves sound like very simple things, but it's been pretty tricky so far to create a glove which can reliably remain intact in a vacuum while also giving the user a good degree of manual dexterity. A space policy analyst said the following in an article:
In fact, the glove is the biggest problem in designing the high-pressure space suits necessary to avoid the bends (the same problem a diver has when she surfaces too quickly) when an astronaut goes out into the vacuum of space. Larger joints like shoulders and knees have special designs that are zero-volume change, but no one has yet miniaturized such a design to finger joints.
Because this is a critical technology, and one that has great leverage in influencing launch system trades, I would propose the following:
Build a vacuum glove box with a task box inside (perhaps an automobile engine that has to be dissassembled and reassembled). Put up a purse of a million dollars to the first person who can achieve the task working through gloves under a pressure differential of half an atmosphere, without a break.
Unlike many space activities, it's a project that can be literally done in someone's garage, and it may spur a great amount of innovation for very low cost. Accordingly, it would make an excellent candidate for the Office of Exploration's new prize fund, and I hope they'll strongly consider it. At very low cost to the taxpayers, one or more successful concepts could lay to rest myths about the intrinsic difficulty of working in space, opening up the options for how we will get to the planets beyond redoing Apollo, perhaps saving billions in dollars, and constituting a major step toward becoming a truly spacefaring nation.
The spray-on thing may be new, but the idea of a mechanical counter pressure suit isn't.
Jerry Pournelle mentioned a project like this in A Step Farther Out, a collection of science articles related to space travel and other science fiction ideas written in the seventies. He claims that tests of the suit design in actual vacuum conditions were going very well, and then the project got canned for no apparent reason.
I'm glad that it's back in development - I don't think we'd get very far in space relying on clunky armoured suits.
On a side note, it's very amusing how many people have bizarre misconceptions of the effects of vacuum on the human body, thanks to godawful movie "science".
>Then there's the interesting case of a balloon ascent to 20 mi (32 km, near vacuum) in which the pilot lost pressurization only in his right glove. His hand swelled and became stiff and painful, but three hours after landing, his hand was back to normal, with no ill effects.
You'd really want to make sure your fly was done up!
like in the old days of bbs.isca.uiowa.edu:
Nuff said
what is the obsession with this lifeless
desolate planet.
To me titan seems to hold more information.
Yea ok it might have held life at one time.
It does not now, and sending a human there is going
to accomplish?
"Moving Mars" by Greg Bear
/. mentality in it.
They had spray-on emergency space suits, used during a student protest on a future Mars. The scene had some elements of
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
I find it interesting how it seems that so many ideas in science today are first appeared in science fiction novels from the past. I wonder if this is because the authors of these novels forsee problems that will occur in the future that must be solved or are these new creations a result of the creators being inspired by the novels they read in the past.
The whole Mars landing can be simulated at Area 51 just like the Apollo landings. They could use Tuxedos instead.
Oh yes, and before you cast me as a troll, as someone did last week, read the friggen papers.
What's that hissing sound???
First, why is everyone so damn aggresive in their rhetoric on this issue. Chill out and explain your ideas rather than lashing out.
"You're a Hollywood-trained idiot. Your blood will not boil. Your body will not explode. There will be outgassing, but not so much as you think, and that's not the same thing as *boiling*, anyway"
This is not correct. If you went into the vacuum of space you would start to blead out of your nose (vessels very close to the skin surface) first then your eardrumms would pop and you would blead out of your ears. Meanwhile your skin would be hemoraging all over your body, you would swell up like a balloon (ever been on a long airplain ride and taken off your shoes?) and you would pass out from lack of blood supply to your brain. The blood streaming out of your nose and ears would most certainly "boil" as there is no pressure to keep it in liquid form. PV=nRT. With the pressure going to zero the volume must increase, creating a very large diffuse quantity e.g. a gas. Call it outgasing or boiling, but liquid blood will leak out of your body and becomes a gas.
Yahh skin tight vac suits that rely on mechanical pressure to augment your skins pressure holding ability - new and exciting technology. I remember how exciting it was to read about...in 1968, when it was first discussed.
There is no God, and Dirac is his prophet.
Even without gravity you're mass still matters.
Spelling and grammar also still matter.
An interesting article, but the principle is hardly new. Paul Webb first proposed the MCP suit in the late 1960's. The Wiki entry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_activity_suit has links to the original 1968 and 1971 reports and is worth reading.
The suits are interesting but not perfect. You apparently have to prebreathe and use low air pressure (in the helmet). Then there's the twin items of protecting the crotch and providing sanitary 'facilities' for astronauts stepping out for more than an hour or two.
Other items that some people have commented on could actually be fixed quite easily. Radiation protection and micrometeorite armor could be provided by a coverall worn over or strapped to the inner pressure suit (imperial storm trooper armor?). Because the coverall doesn't have to be airtight its tolerances (and costs) can be a lot lower. tactically placed holes in the coverall would allow tubes from the PLSS through. The hard torso would, if used at all, only be used to carry the PLSS since the suit appears to do all the pressure support.
Space.com and the base article appear to have left out the most important link of all of this. http://mvl.mit.edu/EVA/biosuit.html has more pics and more technical data.
I doubt that suits like this would initially be used for any kind of space tourism. For that the ability to adjust and resize a suit, as can be done with the current EMU suits or with a fully rigid hardsuit design, is probably more important. A modular suit, especially a hardsuit, would bring the price down a lot. A commercial operator might also like a hardsuit's zero-prebreathe capability.
A non-spacegoing but interested Coward.
The first season ones were loose, but go watch "Kansas" and you will see they are tight like a the concept Bio suit. The outer loose layer could have been extra radiation protection overall or something.
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
Thank the powers that be that they are *FINALLY* going back to trying to design a reasonable space suit. For those of you have have never heard of the 1968 (to long...) experiments in designing a flexible reasonable suit should look here:
t
m l
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_activity_sui
Some info on the relationship between the old and the new is given here:
http://chapters.marssociety.org/winnipeg/sas.ht
The basic concept seems to go back to the '50s and maybe even the 40s.
At least they are looking at it again.
On a slightly different topic: The pictures are very interesting. But, there is a problem in that *all* the holes in the human body have to be covered. So, the pictures showing a helmet over the head and a nice smooth body everywhere else are a bit misleading. At the very least you need a "helmet" that cover the anus and urogenital region. So, you wind up with a hard helmet around the head and a hard diaper around the pelvis. At the very least you wind up with a kind of back to front cod piece.
Seriously, the pictures from NASA allways portray the astronauts as being built like Barbie and Ken.
Stonewolf
The space suits being gay comment could be taken as bad taste, but it's not that far off the mark.
Surf over to http://www.gearfetish.com/ and you will see that space suits can in fact be very gay in a "Who's your daddy asstronaut boy." kind of way.
Me personally, I'll stick to my flight gear. I prefer my kink to have at least alittle atmosphere.
"You can see I know very little about pimp policy." George McGovern.