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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."
May 6th was yesterday. I'm a big fan of Slashdot, and usually disagree with people that bad mouth editors and what not. I don't troll about speling or gramur.. but not knowing what day it is?
The funny thing is, that this has happened to me twice today already.. Heard a radio ad for a concert on May the 6th on my way home from a post midnight Taco Bell run.. Crazyness.
"They are only pressurising this suit to 1 PSI, about a quarter of what is required."
This raises questions about "ballooning". When a suit is pressurised, it balloons out and soon our intrepid space traveller is walking and looking like the Michelin man. This can of course be solved by making the suit out of hard materials, but probably increases complexity.
I do agree with parent, that making it as simple as possible should be a priority. Those things will have to be maintained with simple tools and thus should be made foolproof.
Some say he is made with ascii, others that he is eyeballed daily by millions. All we know is, he is known as the Sig
US Forest Service
STOP
THE AREA AHEAD HAS THE WORST WEATHER IN AMERICA. MANY HAVE DIED THERE FROM EXPOSURE, EVEN IN THE SUMMER. TURN BACK NOW IF THE WEATHER IS BAD.
Mount Washington has hurricane force winds and sub-freezing temperatures _every month of the year_. The highest wind speed over land ever recorded was measured from the summit at 231MPH before the anemometer was destroyed. The number of days of hurricane force winds average 110 days/year. In January, that means every 3 out of 4 days.
Deaths: http://www.mountwashington.com/deaths/index.html
North Dakota doesn't even come close.
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BMO
I would expect that a Martian dust storm possesses the requisite erosion capabilities you mention
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Why are the darned things still so big and bulky? Three points come into mind:
1) It has been 40 or 50 years since the Apollo-era spacesuits were designed.
2) It has been at least 30 years since the current NASA spacesuites were designed
3) The moon has no atmosphere. Mars DOES have an atmosphere. You don't need space suits on Mars, just suits to handle lower atmospheric pressure.
So, it has been 30 years since the last spacesuit redesign, and these things aren't even space suits, why the heck are they so damned big and bulky? You'd think 30 to 50 years of technological advancement would have led to bigger improvements than this...
I would assume that only the innermost layer would be skintight, taking care of the pressure problem. I bet it could be extremely permeable; it's an interesting materials science problem to find a material that could provide the correct tension and yet allow the skin to breathe.
I think additional layers on top of the inner skintight layer could take care of thermal and radiation problems. These layers would be like wearing regular clothing, because there would be no need to pressurize it. However, it would probably need to be airtight and contain a friendly gas at mars atmospheric pressure...I'm not sure how the skin would respond to the Mars atmosphere.
(I'm the AC from before)