Slashdot Mirror
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."
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".
Philosophy.
I would have been there, since I live in North Dakota, but oddly enough I was in outer space at the time. How ironic.
"We wanted to really concentrate on the suit to improve mobility and to create a planetary spacesuit instead one for zero [gravity],"
;).
Surely if it's used in space, it's a spacesuit. But if it's for use on a planet rather than in space, it should be called something else. I propose we call it a Hazardous EnVironment or HEV suit
Oh no... it's the future.
There is a lot of comment in the Apollo Lunar Surface Journal about future planetary space suits. Comments from the moon walkers tend to be that engineers today are trying to solve the wrong problems. People assume that the apollo suits were not mobile enough, in fact they were, but the joints in suits were a maintenance nightmare. So if a future suit is more complex because of this supposed moblity requirement then it will be harder to keep it working for a month on Mars.
TFA doesn't say how they plan to improve mobility. They are only pressurising this suit to 1 PSI, about a quarter of what is required. I would like to see them work on the PLSS system as well. Lunar suits were limited to seven hours outside, but the tanks in the back pack were filled by high pressure tanks in the LM descent stage. If oxygen is to be extracted from water during the mission a lot of energy will have to be put into pressurising the PLSS tanks (to 1000 PSI, more would be better) while on the surface.
One of the limiting factors in EVA time will be electrical power. Energy is going to be needed to heat the hands and feet while outside. If a way can be found to distribute heat between to torso and the extremities while outside then power won't be needed for this. Perhaps a liquid cooled garment can be used to distribute heat to cold parts of the body.
Its good to see people working on this kind of thing. Its a pity that there aren't going to be any rides to mars in the forseeable future.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
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.
No, the gag is that people are invited on May 6th, but this wasn't posted until the 7th...
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.
--
BMO
I think they should test it in Antartica, not in North Dakota. Mars is NOT a hot desert but a cold one (mean surface temperature: 210 Kelvin). And I remember some images of a place in Antartica that were just like Mars except for the atmosphere.
why anyone would take a space suit to court. Let alone in North Dakota! Or maybe someone is suing the Space around Mars, hence "space suit".
The human body needs pressure to prevent liquids from boiling, gasses coming out out solution in the blood (the bends), etc.
The pressure on Mars is effectively zero.
"very few are from exposure (hypothermia)"
i ving.php
Really?
(This one has the same data, roughly, but it's organized better for counting)
http://www.mountwashington.org/about/visitor/surv
Falls: 41
Hypothermia: 29
"Natural Causes" i.e., heart attacks and other distress: 17
Avalanches: 11
Aircraft deaths: 10
Rail (ALL) related: 9
Falling ice: 5
Slideboards: 4 (Prohibited after 1919)
"Carriages" horse-drawn and auto: 2
Disappearances: 1
(on original page) Murder: 1
(on original page -since 2002-) 2 falls, one hypothermia.
I don't know about you but I count hypothermia being second to falls. That doesn't seem like "very few" to me. Very few to me comes under "slideboards" "carriages" and murders.
--
BMO
To me this makes perfect sense, as they only have to really be sure the suit will work at the location that the landing will be filmed at.
"To lead the people, you must walk behind them"
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.
Is anyone struck by how inexpensive $100,000 seems for a space suit
Gas pressure isn't the only way to provide the pressure to the human body.
That pressure can also be applied mechanically, by tensioned materials.
Check out the Bio-suit research at MIT.
Exactly. Mod parent up. A suit can provide pressure via tension all over the body. A full helmet or scuba-like breathing apparatus can provide oxygen. There is no need to pressurize the entire suit, its just a waste of energy and makes things needlessly difficult (less flexible, worrying about tears, etc etc).
Assuming a person did get a small tear on a 'tension suit', the worst that would happen is very bad bruising. The ripped area would be exposed to the environment (low pressure) which would pull the flesh a fair amount outside the suit. Nasty bruising, but not fatal at all and confined to the ripped portion of suit.
Of course, as anyone with any real interest in the topic would quickly find out, it's not in any way, shape, or form, a mission-stopper.
There's so much research out there about this! Even NASA - sensibly conservative and cranking up the "danger" to manufacture a mission for the ISS ("Seeing what radiation in space does" as if we don't know from 30+ years of space flight) - isn't as strident as some people who should search before they post.
I guess if the New York Times can get "space radiation" wrong, as they did in 2003, then Slashdot denizens can too, but I foolishly expect more tech-aware people here. Here's the real deal on Mars Mission radiation from the Mars Society based on real science, not on half-remembered sci-fi movies.
To the second point, "bone and muscle degeneration", there are two sets of data on this. First, the very real bone and muscle degeneration experienced by long-term Soviet Mir-jockeys, who simply didn't do their exercises, and second, the remarkable amelioration of these "effects" by all long-term US astronauts, who did do their exercises.
I guess we'll have to recruit the Mars crews from the pool of "following the doctor's orders" astronauts rather than the "ignoring sensible medical advice" group.
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 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
Well first off, I only skimmed the article, but I have a classmate working on part of the project at NDSU here. My first thought, though, is that it's a space suit... it doesn't rain in space, it just has to withstand the pressure and the occasional impact by high volecity objects. It also doesn't rain water on Mars, but with the atmosphere there could be something similar to look out for, I don't know. That brings me to my second thought.
This is a very early prototype. The last line in the article even says that the project isn't nessicarly to create a final project, but to "train the new generation of space studies students." Really they just have to show the fundamental goals are reachable within the budget requirements for an individual suit, but it doesn't have to be finished and polished. Making it waterproof is relatively easy compared to some of the other design requirements, I'm sure. Regardless, you don't go build a prototype for a parachute and immediately jump out of an airplane; you test the materials strengths, etc first and then gradually put it into conditions that may harm it, even if those conditions are expected, normal circumstances.
For the final disclaimer, my friend is an electrical engineering student working on the health monitoring system. That said, I know little of the design requirements or stage of the project beyond the little I know of what my friend is doing. I've never seen the suit, just some sensors and circuit boards.
Finally, congratulations John, you guys made slashdot!
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)
It's a hoax! They're actually really on Mars and trying to pretend they're in North Dakota. It's easy to tell because of the shadows and when he hit the golfball it so obviouly was in a lighter gravity. And one could tell that they used filters to make the lighting look earthlike ...
I have a very small mind and must live with it.
-- E. Dijkstra
Horror movies are not a good source for scientific information.
Have a look at this page about vacuum exposure.