Slashdot Mirror
Space Jackets Down to Earth
Roland Piquepaille writes "Several technologies used to design the space suits protecting astronauts are now being adapted to protect workers facing extremely hot and dangerous conditions. According to the European Space Agency (ESA), these 'space-cooled' jackets are using three different technologies: special 3D-textile structure, cooling apparatus derived from astronauts' suits, and a special water-binding polymer acting as a coating. Even if these protective clothes are primarily intended for firefighters or steel workers, several applications are possible, such as in sportswear or in cars as parts of air conditioning systems. Read more for additional details and pictures."
I wonder how long until these things get adopted for use in regular clothes.
Maybe it's just me here but I have a slight problem with the wording of the article.
"special 3D-textile structure"
At what point did we start making 2D clothes? Arn't all clothes and materials 3D by being oh.. part of a realm using 3D form?
Maybe this is just going over my head, but seems like bullshit marketing for idiots to me.
I like muppets.
Can anyone say "Sneaking Suit"? *hides in a cardboard box labeled "Nuclear Warhead Storage Building"*
The only experience Europe has with space travel is situated in Sweden, and they have very long hair and annoying synth lines. Why doesn't the Europe Space Agency just save some of their taxpayer's money and ask NASA how they accomplished this AMAZING FEAT back in the 1980's?
But seriously, you'd think Europe would want to streamline their space budget since they're planning on releasing a technology to compete with the United States' GPS system, but if they keep throwing away money like this it won't happen anytime soon.
Space travel has not progressed like it should have in the decades following the amazing progress of the 1960s. Hell, it hasn't progressed like the exploration of the New World in the 1500s.
I feel that it is because we (as in, both Europe and the U.S.) have become completely and hopelessly terrified of danger. Many men and women died in those eras exploring the great unknown. But without their sacrifice, we would never have been able to accomplish what we have.
Apollo 1, The Space Shuttles Challenger and Columbia's losses were all tragic. And I am NOT saying that their loss should be shrugged off as "eh, someone had to die to explore space." What I am saying is that we as humans needed to grow and explore space, much as the Europeans needed to grow and explore beyond their continent. When there was a tragic event in colonial exploration (Jamestown), those people learned from their mistake and tried again and usually succeeded. When we fail today, we usually cower up and shut down all exploration for a half-decade or so.
It's actually a bit sad how Europe is learning from the mistakes made in the United States. A few years ago it was the other way around. Re-inventing the wheel doesn't make driving any safer, and considering the wheel (in this case, the spacesuit) is the LEAST of space travelers' worries, I cannot see our presence in space advancing much further.
ScuttleMonkey posts another Roland Piquepaille story.
Would these be useful for young nerds to wear to school, as a protection against bullies.
Imagine being a bully taking a nice swing at your gut, when his hand his stopped by space-age meteor
shielding!
Maybe we can get thinkgeek to carry it....
Hamsters are at least as feathery as penguins. HamLix
gues who's posts come up on a google phrase search on
read more for additional details
Sad that Slashdot keep accepting stories from this spammer, a billion websites with billions of articles and we have to have the same names/spammers/copy&pasters/desperate individuals crap over and over again
no wonder people block adverts here and dont subscribe, try adding value to this site and listening to your potential audience, it might give people an incentive to help this place and donate/unblock ads instead of being teated as fskin idiots ready to lap up whatever shite some shill is pushing (in this case that advert application called ZDNet)
AC
Page with the actual jacket.
"Roland Piquepaille writes"... that put me off, right there.
Yes this is a troll. But Roland is an attention whore. It's worth the karma burn.
-- No Sig is a Good Sig
When I go into a building with uncontrolled fire I have gear currently weighing between 60 and 80 pounds. This includes a pants and jacket made with a gnomex fabric, traditional helmet, heavy leather boots with steel under the foot, in the toes, and at the shins (which is nice when you bark your shin on a ladder). I'm wearing on my back an air bottle and SCOTT pack good for 30 minutes or so (a full hour if I'm acting as a member of a Rapid Intervention Team - RIT). My face is covered with mask that allows me to use that air, and I'm wearing a carbon fiber hood that encircles the mask and covers my head and neck. Long leather gloves cover my wrists to the inside of my jacket. I am "Fully Encapsulated".
I am fairly safe from heat and smoke up to the point of a 'flashover' -- in which case I have between 4 and 16 seconds to be somewhere else before being incinerated. I am so well protected, that many of the guys refuse to wear the hood or else won't fold down the leather flaps on the helment to cover their ears further because their warning for when the heat is too intense is when their ears start to feel too hot even through the protection.
In addition to all this, I am carrying one or more of the following: Radio, Light, Axe (or other similar tool), Water Can, Thermal Imaging Camera, escape rope, hose line.
Exactly how is it that this fancy jacket or undershirt is going to help me? I'm hot, but not so much that I can't make it through the 20 minutes in there. When I come out, I am handed a 20oz bottle of water and expected to finish it on the spot while having my pulse and respiration checked before even considering going back in.
This jacket would supposedly protect me from flashover -- several thousand degrees where anything that can combust, will.
BULLSHIT.
Even if the jacket worked, my face mask would melt to my face while the straps on my airpack along with the protective clothing I'm wearing would literally disintegrate.
The way to be protected from a flashover is to jump out the nearest window or to use the axe you're carrying to make a hole in the exterior wall and dive through it. That's pretty much it. When it comes to flashover -- Don't be there. If you are there, get out. I've taken classes that involved practing the fine art of going out a second floor window head first onto a ladder and flipping over, or slamming an axe into a wall braced across the corner of a window, tieing off a big of rope to it and bailing out the window -- even if its just to hang 20 or 30 feet down from the room where the flashover is about to happen until someone gets around to moving a ladder to you.
Don't believe this crap that a little water held in that jacket is going to help.
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
During the training for that kind of move (which actually isn't QUITE that dramatic) we were told quite clearly that the exit procedure was very dangerous and should only be done in one of two cases....
a) the room is about to flashover
b) there is a news crew out side -- it looks GOOD on film.
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
regardless of the moronic and inciteful way you made it, you're point is accurate if we're talking about how to PREVENT flashover. It is NOT, however, what the FA is about.
The story (and Slashdot isn't the place I read it first -- I think Science Daily covered it earlier in the day) claims the suit will protect firefighters during flashover.
If you've cooled the overhead there IS NO flashover. If you've vented right, there is no flashover.
If someone doing a search gets too hot and decides to break a window before you're ready to vent -- you may set the stage for something that this suit is NOT going to help protect you from. THATS my point.
As to using a pick headed axe to get out? Putting the Axe across the corner of the window and using your own weight to hold it while you bail is a well known practice. I've done it in training, from a second floor, with a blindfold (and a safety line). I've done it over, and over, and over. I've done it using a figure 8 and my built in harness, and I've done it without a figure 8 just looping the rope around my back and using my gloved hands for the friction device.
On your last comment, my copy of the NFPA Essentials guide is 3 feet to my right.
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
Ugh. I literally JUST got back in the door from a structure fire (sorry, no links to pictures yet, but they'll be up in the morning at www.kuhlhosefire.org). My bunker gear was sopping wet when I finished my second bottle, and we were just doing RIT/overhaul! (Uh, sorry, overhaul is what you do when the main fire is out and you find all the hot spots and burning debris and put it out so that you don't get called back three hours later once everyone is home in bed).
There are a couple of major issues that this technology might address that would be helpful.
1) At hazmat incidents, turnout gear is frequently inappropriate. The people doing the hot zone work are in "level 1" suits, which are fully encapsulated. However, level 1 suits are HOT, and level 1 techs are hard to come by. This might make it easier for level 1 techs to stay in the hot zone for longer periods of time or perform more evolutions.
2) For my brother firefighter who pointed out that structural firefighting gear including nomex hoods provide inadequate protection for flashover (or getting steamed by the idiot outside who started squirting when we're inside), imagine having a level-1 type of setup for fighting fire. Your hands and head are no longer the most vulnerable because with this new technology your whole body is being cooled actively. I realize that level 1 is bulky and wouldn't be appropriate NOW, but if the technology is available someone will figure out a way...
3) Barn fires in August just KILL crews. If you're standing outside in the sun for any length of time in turnout gear, you get completely baked. This might make it easier for us to endure fires in summer.
4) Brush fires suck. SOG for departments that don't have nomex jumpers for fighting brush fires are to wear FF boots, turnout pants, and gloves. So you're slogging around through chest-high red brush getting cut to hell, a mile off the road, getting your ass kicked in your heavy gear, taking a shovel, axe, or if you're a rookie an Indian Can strapped to your back. Again, it doesn't take long to get overheated. Maybe not any longer.
I hope that the technology performs. I'm whipped.
Friends help you move. Real friends help you move bodies.
Never forget: 2 + 2 = 5 for extremely large values of 2.
Okay, I was a little harsh. Probably why I never made B/C because I always spoke my mind. However, you never enter a structure without an attack line and any firefighter worth his salt can see a flash-over develop, as I have many times. So, I really don't understand your point or where you are coming from at all. Also, I still say this out the window escape is bogus. Imagine being exhausted, wet leather gloved hand holding a combination tool or pick-headed ax in the corner of a window you just broke, and cleaned of course, and hanging your body weight outside. I'm thinking broken wrist, maybe a silver fork fracture and a fall to the ground. Oh, you said safety rope. Let's see, emanant flash-over, and you have time to break a window, clean the corner of shards, tie a safety rope? I don't think so babe. This might work at the drill tower but this isn't good fireground practice and if I were on your department it would be eliminated.