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."

Comments

Page with the actual jacket

[HoneyBunchesOfGoats]

Page with the actual jacket.

Re:erm..

[everphilski]

Traditional fabrics are woven in 2 dimensions. Consider cloth a plane, a 2 dimensional entity. It is wrapped about a 3-D body to create a piece of clothing. Cloth is very 2-dimensional.

Instead here the fabrics are being considered in three dimensions from square one - their manufacture is in three directions to provide sweat wicking and other interesting properties.

I am a firefighter - and I find this suspect.

[CFD339]

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.

Re:I am a firefighter - and I find this suspect.

[fuego451]

Just wanted to say, your department really needs to get with the times and I would also recommend a department subscription to Fire Engineering magazine and a complete set of IFSTA and NFPA manuals.

You should know that there are modern methods of combating flash over. The first is to ventilate the structure and the second is to use short burst of spray from a 60 degree fog nozzle which cools the unburned particles of combustion (aka smoke) just enough to eliminate flashing but not so much that the smoke banks downward. The latter is known as the 'Swiss' method because it was developed by Swiss engineers and firefighters.

You should also know that leather boots are not recommended for structure firefighting by the NFPA. Your department should be wearing bunker boots, we wore Fire-Walker bunker boots made by Ranger Footwear, and Nomex pants jackets and hoods.
I don't know of a fire department anywhere that still wears 'traditional' firefighting helmets with leather ear protectors, except yours, I guess. Most department have been wearing composite helmets with face shields and Nomex ear protectors.

Everything I've described here is 'old' technology.

Oh, and sticking a pick-headed ax in a wall, tying a rope to it and jumping out a window to escape a flash over? Sounds like something someone pulled out of their ass.

By the way, over a 24 year period I was a Firefighter I, II, III, Firefighter/Paramedic, Fire Specialist, Fire Engineer and Engine Company Captain. I've been retired for 8 years.

Re:Sounds Boss

[eh2o]

Two words. Laptop pants. Ouick, somebody call Steve Jobs! Its not too lata to put the G5 in the macbook!

RTFA -- it claims to protect you from flashover.

[CFD339]

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.

I'm a firefighter, and I hope this works

[MikeyTheK]

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.