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NASA's Astronaut Glove Design Competition
FleaPlus writes "NASA's Centennial Challenges program has announced its latest prize contest, the Astronaut Glove Challenge. The competition, a collaboration between NASA and the non-profit Volanz Aerospace, will be held in late 2006 and will award $250K to the team which produces the best-performing glove within contest parameters. The basic idea was originally proposed last year on Rand Simberg's Transterrestrial Musings blog to improve on current gloves, which have difficulties with remaining flexible while maintaining constant internal pressure in the vacuum of space. Previously-announced competitions include prizes for superstrong tethers, beaming power, and extracting oxygen from lunar regolith. These prizes are intended to lay the groundwork for larger competitions to further NASA's Vision for Space Exploration, possibly including 'an eight-figure prize for the first privately developed robotic moon lander.'"
Title:
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Spacesuit glove manufacturing enhancements through the use of advanced technologies
Authors:
Cadogan, David; Bradley, David; Kosmo, Joseph
Abstract
The sucess of astronauts performing extravehicular activity (EVA) on orbit is highly dependent upon the performance of their spacesuit gloves.A study has recently been conducted to advance the development and manufacture of spacesuit gloves. The process replaces the manual techniques of spacesuit glove manufacture by utilizing emerging technologies such as laser scanning, Computer Aided Design (CAD), computer generated two-dimensional patterns from three-dimensionl surfaces, rapid prototyping technology, and laser cutting of materials, to manufacture the new gloves. Results of the program indicate that the baseline process will not increase the cost of the gloves as compared to the existing styles, and in production, may reduce the cost of the gloves. perhaps the most important outcome of the Laserscan process is that greater accuracy and design control can be realized. Greater accuracy was achieved in the baseline anthropometric measurement and CAD data measurement which subsequently improved the design feature. This effectively enhances glove performance through better fit and comfort.
see http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-bib_query?b
"Truth is much too complicated to allow anything but approximations"
After I made the submission, I came across the following bit on Space Politics, which I think gives a better context for the competition:
Since Michael Griffin became NASA administrator a few months ago we have seen a gradual change in the agency's position on the role of commercial entities in carrying out the VSE. Griffin initially said he was open to it, but noted in early May that he did not want to get into a position where the agency had to rely on commercial contracts to carry out the vision: "I cannot put public money at risk depending on a commercial provider to be in my critical path." Last month, Griffin said he wanted to press ahead with commercial ISS resupply services--cargo initially, later extending to crews--to free up resources elsewhere.
Yesterday, though, NASA raised its commitment to commercialization even higher. Speaking at the Return to the Moon conference, NASA's Chris Shank made it very clear: "We've run the budget and we can't afford to do this with a traditional approach." A non-traditional approach, he explained, will put a far greater emphasis on commercialization, including ISS crew and cargo and perhaps other opportunities, such as purchasing launch services for the CEV. Later in the day, NASA's Brant Sponberg unveiled the agency's new Innovative Programs effort, which includes a mix of service procurements, other transaction authority, and prize competitions.
I also rather liked this bit on Clark Lindsey's RLV News:
Jim Muncy gave a brief but interesting summary yesterday of how he sees the situation with US space policy. He saw Shank's presentation as an indication that the long battle by the entrepreneurial space community to get commercial spaceflight companies welcomed as partners in space development has been won. However, winning a battle can actually mean tougher consequences than losing since now comes the challenge is to fulfill that partnership successfully.
Getting another "big idea" accepted is also making progress. Large scale space settlement must become the primary goal of the space program. No Antarctica-like outposts on the Moon but Las Vegas-es instead. Griffin, in fact, stated in testimony to Congress that human expansion into the solar system is his long term vision for space policy. However, this big idea is still foreign to many at NASA, in Congress, the press and the general public.
(Of course, all figures quoted are approximate.)
By reducing the pressure, they reduce the stress on the craft, the effects of an explosive decompression, they don't need to carry nitrogen with them, etc.
The Apollo 1 astronauts were killed by this, sort of. During the test, the capsule was filled with 100% oxygen as is customary, but they left it at full pressure. So the partial pressure of oxygen was 5x normal, which was high enough to make velcro burn very quickly ...
In any event, since we'd assume that their bodies would have acclimated to the reduced pressure, the pressure inside your arm would also be 1/5 atmosphere before you stuck it out in space.
I don't know how the body would react to going from 0.2 atmospheres to 0 atmospheres, but it would certainly be a lot less dramatic than going from 1 to 0.
I imagine that the effect would be like getting a hickey (but all over your body), at least with a 0.5 or so atmosphere difference. With a 0.2 atmosphere difference, the effect may be even smaller. I recall once giving a hickey and getting blood out, which really surprised me. But yet I didn't actually break the skin. I don't know how much of a vacuum I could create, but it wouldn't surprise me if blood and other fluids could start seeping out of somebody all over their body suddenly dropped from 1 to 0 atmospheres. Not explosive, but it could become life threatening very quickly if it happened body-wide. (Or maybe your body's pressure would quickly adjust and the blood/fluids loss would be small.)
Actually, I'd expect the greatest dangers to be 1) lack of oxygen, and 2) if you didn't let all of the air out of your lungs first, they'd expand and could very well be damaged by the difference in pressure. Radiation is indeed a danger, but unless it's extremely severe, it won't kill you in minutes, like lack of oxygen can.Now, the thing with the vacuum. Ever give someone a hickey, or been given a hickey? If you're planning to be out in that vacuum for more than a minute or two, I'ld suggest some kind of pressure suit. It doesn't have to be at one atmosphere, probably 2/3 or 1/2 atmosphere pressure would be ok. The trick is to design a glove so that the fingers don't want to pop straight because of the pressure inside. You want to be able to move your fingers with not too much difficulty. So basically you want a glove that fits snugly around the fingers, and such that when a finger is bent, the glove does not change much in volume.
In another forum, a long, long time ago, I recall someone talking about an experiment at a university on the effect of vacuum on exposed skin. I believe they were doing some research on low-pressure space suits.
They built a small vacuum chamber with an arm-sized hole surrounded by a pressure cuff. Someone put their arm through the hole, the cuff was expanded to seal around their arm and the chamber was pumped down to a reasonable vacuum.
The result was basically nothing. No pain, no significant swelling, nothing.
IIRC, they stopped after about 15 minutes because nothing was happening.
The conclusion was that undamaged skin makes a decent air-tight, water-tight, ummm, skin.
Seems like a pretty simple experiment if anyone was interested in replicating it.
An unanswered question is what low levels of HALON would do. These quench the free-radical combustion mechanism at relatively low levels. But are now banned as suspected Ozone depletors.
Glove design for EVA suits was/is one of the toughest challenges NASA and the Russian space program had to face. It's not "weird technology," it's one of the more crucial parts of an EVA suit. There's an excellent exhibit in the new National Air and Space Museum extension that illustrates the different designs and challenges that engineers went through.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.
In addition, the moisture in the upper layers of skin will be boiling away - carrying away more heat.
Yeah, but going from 10m to 0m is going from 2 atm to 1 atm. The scenario in the parent is going from 1 atm to 0 atm. If multiples matter instead of absolute pressure differential, things might behave pretty badly as your denominator approaches zero. In fact, this site http://www.sff.net/people/Geoffrey.Landis/vacuum.h tml says you lose consciousness in a vacuum in under 10 seconds and die in about 90 seconds.
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Tangent: I don't think they pressurize space craft, or aircraft for that matter fully to 1 atm. For example, there's a need to pop equalize your ears as aircraft take off and land, just like when diving. The shuttle is pressurized to ~25% of pressure at sea level. For more, see this very informative page. http://ares.jsc.nasa.gov/HumanExplore/Exploration
More on the story here, and google will find you more if you search for his name, vacuum and hand.