Mars Space Suit Trials in North Dakota

AbsoluteZero writes to tell us Space.com is reporting that a new spacesuit prototype being designed for Mars exploration is currently being tested in North Dakota. From the article: "The Mars spacesuit is the culmination of 14 months of work by faculty and students with the North Dakota Space Grant Consortium, which received $100,000 from NASA to develop the prototype. The local public is invited to view the Mars spacesuit in action on Sat. May 6, weather permitting, at its North Dakota test site."

Comments

Confusion

[Umbral Blot]

I am a bit confused, they will cancel the test if there is bad weather? It's a spacesuit, it shouldn't be affected by bad weather, and if it is it shouldn't be used in planetary exploration. Otherwise you end up with the following situation: "I would have been the first man to set foot on mars, but it was windy out, so we went home".

Re:Confusion

[allanc]

Because not everyone's going to be wearing a space suit.

(I.e., if the weather's crappy, the guy in the suit will be fine, but the spectators won't be having much fun)

Re:Wrong place to test it

[Ebirah]

Using the dry valleys of Antarctica would push up the cost of testing considerably. While they do approach Martian temperatures more closely than most terrestrial sites, the environment is predominantly bare rock, and the atmospheric pressure is normal for Earth.

So they only really (approximately) satisfy one of the conditions (temperature) that needs to be tested, which can probably be dealt with just as well (and much more cost-effectively) in a large refrigerator. The suit's handling of Martian atmospheric pressure can't really be tested in any natural terrestrial environment. I suspect North Dakota probably provides an adequate facsimile of Martian terrain, though (and at a reasonable price).

What's the big deal?

[Red Samurai]

It doesn't look much different to any other spacesuits.

How much use is a space suit...

[Pedrito]

if we can't get them to Mars alive? As far as I know, they still haven't come up with a way to protect people from the year-long travel's exposure to radiation. I think the trip would register somewhere near the maximum allowed by NASA guidelines (which is a lot higher than your average Joe gets), and that's assuming there's not some sort of solar event along the way. You get a singificant solar event, and everyone is going to start glowing in the dark for the last few minutes of their lives.

So, a space suit? That's easy. Build a safe ship. That's what I want to see. I don't think we're anywhere near doing that.

And that doesn't even address the issue of bone and muscle degeneration which from over a 1 year period in space and a year and a half in reduced gravity will be pretty significant. It's the bones that are the real problem. There are some possible medical treatments that might help, but at the moment, nothing that's going to be able to deal with the problem on that scale. I guess that's one of the disadvantages of being an adaptable species.

We got to the moon because the entire country was focused on it. Let's face it, the general public could really care less about a manned trip to Mars. They certainly don't care as much as they did back in the early Apollo days. And without that sort of public commitment, this just isn't going to happen anytime in the next few decades. NASA has a dwindling budget and the public doesn't really care. You simply can't go to Mars like that and expect to bring the crew home.

I'm all for going to Mars, but I'm also all for bringing the crew back in one piece. Without that, it's simply not worth it.

$100,000

[alex_vegas]

Is anyone struck by how inexpensive $100,000 seems for a space suit