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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"
Do away with a full suit and go with a tank top and shorts suit complete with space flip flops?
:-(
They can't quite do that, but they can get pretty darn close. The Space Activity Suit (aka: skinsuit) was a project to produce a spacesuit that was exposed to hard vacuum. The idea was that the human body is actually pretty good at maintaining its shape, so all you need is a bit of tight spandex to apply a pressure to the wearer, and a helmet to provide eye protection and a breathing apparatus. The suit itself would have pores in it, allowing the astronaut to actually *feel* what he's working on.
Sadly, the idea wasn't pursued despite encouraging results.
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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.
Here's my design. Comment on it at will.
A guy walks into a bar... well, I forgot the joke, but the punchline is that he's an alcoholic.
Honestly, what would happen if an astronaut just stuck his naked arm out from an airlock into outer space?
A common misbelief is that it would either instantly freeze or explode.
Space is a complete vaccuum, just like the kind in thermos bottles, and it's a VERY good thermal insulant. If your arm is at 37C, and you stick it in the best insulant possible, it will remain at 37C.
Now, the pressure inside your arm is one atmosphere, and the pressure outside is zero, so gases would begin to want to exit your arm, liquids will slowly turn to gases, tissues would expand, yes, but NOT EXPLOSIVELY.
Have you seen 2001: A Space Odyssey? At one point an astronaut jumps from a repair pod to an airlock without an helmet and survives just fine, which is perfectly realistic. The greatest worry is actually all the radiation that outer space is bathed in.
So for the glove design, a basic glove would an impermable layer and on top of that a metallic layer to block the radiations. It would, however, get hot very quick, so a cooling system becomes necessary for extended work outside. But a basic glove can be paper thin, because vaccuum is more harmless than you might think.
I see NASA has really thrown down the gauntlet with this challenge!
How about designing a really good glove solving all the current issues, patent every aspect of the design to h*ll and back, and then sell the exclusive patent rights to a Chinese conglomerate for at least ten times those $250k?
Hey, if the patent system wasn't meant to be used in that way, it wouldn't have been designed to allow it, right?
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
Lately I'm finding myself enjoying NASA's strategy for developing technology. By rewarding the "discoverer" they get top quality product, for minimal investment and risk of shady contractors. I wish more of our government branches would do this.
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.
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At the risk of sounding silly and with my hubris level ratched up real high? I'd like to suggest a couple alternatives which might be combined.
1. Mittens (less work I think per finger, more room for heating/cooling lines, less fabric and surface area). Also, enough surface area to be able to bind magnetically to tools maybe, and everyone knows mittens are warmer.
2. Robotic waldo claws, titanium and plastic hand simulacra and radical tentacles (as another poster also recommended waldos). Keeping the hand inside the end of the arm with a metal/rubber waldo attached to the outside (making your arms a bit longer basically) would have some definite advantages. First, you don't have to worry about puncturing your glove, you can get more strength into the waldo than your muscles provide, no pressure to work against, could be controlled by someone else, you could have more than two waldos coming out of your suit (either you multitask between them or you get someone to operate others), they could be shaped like tentacles or wrenches or whatever is best for space work, you can use materials best for space work without having to worry about bendability, temperature, or radiation protection, and you can use very thin or tiny waldo elements scaled down from your hand for tiny places, with mechanical aids adding precision (i.e. lock to an axis, etc.). Finally, consider that while you could just imagine having a single metal hand stuck at the end of a lengthened arm, looking like a deep sea diver's suit, it is also possible to imagine a plasticine hand virtually identical to that of man, but made with titanium bones and superplastic muscles. Considering that evolution and our brains have gotten this far with the current design, it may be best to simply use the same design but beef it up for outer space. If well integrated with the astronaut with advanced haptics technology, it could become like a "ghost hand" and very intuitive to use with fine control. Lastly, about those tentacles. Well yes, space anime does make good use of tentacles, and Doctor Octopus likes them, but I'm thinking that outer space might indeed be like the deep sea in that a large number of highly deformable tentacles could be extremely useful, if the mental barriers to efficient control can be overcome. Certainly it could be possible to mimic a hand with a bundle of fine tentacles, but I am mainly thinking about being able to grip and hold in place multiple large objects, hold oneself down so you don't float away when you try to screw something down, etc. If you could imagine yourself to be more of a fanciful creature from the undersea world than a landlubber biped, you might be able to imagine some improvements. Personally I like the idea of a utility tentacle that will grab onto secured parts to steady you when you are about to float away, and perhaps a couple additional ones that you can use to orient one or two parts in relation to your body while you are working on them.
3. muscle magnification. As someone said was posted earlier which I didn't know. If you have motors in your gloves they could detect where your are trying to move it and then supply more strength. Apparently the original post mentioned nerve signal sensing though I don't know if that's necessary. Also, use of memory metal and other active materials might be useful, and maybe a glove that makes it easier to (ratchet) close than open might be possible.
A combination of the above ideas might be useful, for example if you have a mitten and pull out the area between thumb and fingers to make it a convex box (maybe narrowing wrist to maintain pressure), you can then freely move your fingers and wrist to control a waldo. The movement of the hand could in fact be sensed by laser scanners built into the glove interior, possibly augmented if needed for precision work by having the astronaut first put on a silk glove with barcode-like patterns all over it and a non-slip interior coating. For manhandling big heavy things, coping with tiny things, or makin