NASA Engineers Work on New Spacesuits

NotCoward writes "In labs at Johnson Space Center, away from the buzz about NASA's new spaceship and its new missions to the moon and Mars, a group of engineers are plodding away at another piece of the puzzle: spacesuits. Astronaut apparel has evolved over the decades from Mercury's aluminum foil-looking outfits to the bulky, 275-pound whites now used on jaunts outside the space station. While it's too early in the process to know how the new space suits will look, the space agency is hoping to make new suits both high-tech and low-maintenance."

Comments

Fishbowl helmets yet?

[Anonymous Coward]

We won't feel that we're living in the future and its a wonderful time to be alive until they introduce fishbowl helmets like in golden age-style sci-fi cover art (e.g. Flynn's Lodestar ). This nonsense about a white helmet with just a gold visor is making millions of children apathetic to the space program.

Re:Fishbowl helmets yet?

[hey!]

My first reaction to the suit pictured in TFA was "don't astronauts ever need peripheral vision?" Especially as the helmet does not turn with their head.

I suppose current generation astronauts just need to see whatever they working on, which is right in front of them. But I'd think that it would be psychologically uncomfortable to have your awareness of what is going on to either side cut off for long periods at a time. What if some evil, tentacled creature crawled out of a crater and was heading right for you? You'd never see it.

Not to mention the risk of getting run over by a moon buggy while you are crossing the grounds of your base.

Re:Fishbowl helmets yet?

[Rei]

Some designs under consideration are very sci-fi like. Even retro sci-fi. Currently, we use pressure suits. These are suits with an inner bladder that contains the air, and an outer layer that helps retain the bladder and conform it to the right shape. While they're designed to make it so that the suit is constant volume (because changing the volume takes extra work), you still waste a lot of energy bending the suit. There are two radical departures from this.

1) Hard shell: These suits look like sci-fi powered armor, minus the power. There's already a few suits like this used for deep-sea diving. A hard shell suit is a rigid exoskeleton with smooth-sliding ball joints. The joints are the hardest point of the design, as you can't afford for them to leak, but you can't afford for them to resist your motion much, either. It takes many joints for a good suit to not constrain the wearers' motion too heavily.

2) Skintight: Like in retro sci-fi where everyone walks around in spandex, this is actually a serious design. The tight suit itself provides direct pressure on the body. Even better, the fabric is slightly porous so that you can sweat into the vaccuum of space, so you don't need cooling. There's one big downside that has prevented widespread adoption of such suits: they're currently almost impossible to get on or off. Such a suit, to be practical, would need to be made of a fabric that can change size when exposed to a certain stimulus (electricity, air pressure, etc).

Re:Fishbowl helmets yet?

[CrazedWalrus]

outer layer that helps retain the bladder

Speaking of retaining the bladder, will new designs incorporate strategically-located zippers? Or are we still going the Depends (tm) route? There's just something non-sexy about being a pee-pee-pants in space.

Re:Fishbowl helmets yet?

[Catbeller]

I've always thought the skintight model was the way to go, if you really wanted to colonize zero g or any of the planets. The hardshell suit is just too complex and expensive. I wish NASA had the money to spend on some engineering studies again. Or that we had any imaginative engineers left in that field. NASA has been a trucking company for too long.

I dunno about the actual work done on the skintight suits. Divers wear pretty tight outfits, and they manage somehow. Has any engineering been done in the last twenty years? As you say, new material are available.

With a skintight suit, you could throw on a "parka" in the freezing shade, or wear a beadouin's cloak in the harsh sunlight. On Mars, you could toss on a really well insulated snowsuit and some good boots. In contruction zones in zero g or the moon, you could wear some sports armor to guard your knees and elbows.

A skintight would be a lot less fatiguing to wear, be lighter to carry, leaks aren't the spectacular death that hardshell wearers worry over, and importantly, you can turn yor head. And if it were comfortable enough to wear full time, explosive decompression of the ship or habitat would be handled by slapping down your visor rather than, oh, dying 'cause it takes 90 minutes to suit up.

Liquid Oxygen

[MichaelSmith]

The apollo suits used two tanks of gaseous oxygen. The main tank at just over 1000 psi and the OPS backup tank at 6000 psi. The main tank was filled from a hose inside the LM. The OPS tank was filled once only on the ground.

EVA time was limited first by the quantity of water for the sublimators and second by oxygen quantity. The battery life was also a limiting factor, but I think it came third by a long margin.

Its not hard to carry more water for cooling. The reason it was in short supply on the moon was that the original designs for the PLSS didn't allow enough space.

But those high pressure oxygen tanks are a real pain. The structure contributes to the overall mass. The volume pushes the mass up because it takes space. Temperature is a problem anyway because it increases gas pressure and reduces density.

So if we are designing new suits I think we should find ways of stocking them with LOX. Probably in something like a vacuum flask. Maybe that is the next big step.

FTFA...

[Mizled]

From the article...

At the top of the list is making the next spacesuit smaller and lighter - engineers are hoping to halve the 200-pound weight of the suit and life support backpack that Apollo astronauts lugged around.

It will be interesting to see what type of designs they come up with and how they will strip the suits of a good 125-130 pounds. It would be funny to see them go back to something more retro looking like the new Spaceshuttle they're building. =p

Sound advice...

[tygerstripes]

To quote the tragically-underexposed '80s BBC film-noir-in-space show Star Cops, regarding space:

"Anything you forget to take with you will kill you; anything you do remember to bring but that doesn't work will kill you; and if you're in any doubt, assume everything will kill you."

Sound advice, although I suspect the missus takes it to heart whenever we go on holiday for a weekend.

Yes but . . .

[scottennis]

Will they come with a knife, rubber mallet, bb gun, tubing and pepper spray?
You never know when an astronaut might need those things.
(I'm assuming the diapers will still be included.)

Re:Mars hyperbole

[Gruturo]

Are you joking?

Mars' atmosphere is a lot thinner than Earth's, and the pressure at surface level is only 0.6% of Earth's. Even if supplied with breathable air, and heating, you wouldn't survive in the martian environment due to the extremely low pressure. The suits *have* to be airtight.

Who needs new shuttles?

[AndroidCat]

1. Have spacesuit
2. Wander around on Earth until ETs pick them up
3. Will travel!

Re:Mars hyperbole

[First Person]

The suits *have* to be airtight.

You might be surprised to learn that this is not the case. Human skin is fairly resistant to vacuum. Abrasion, radiation protection, thermal insulation are more important considerations. Please read this article on space activity suits.