MIT Team Designs a New, Sleek, Skintight Spacesuit

iamdrscience writes "MIT aeronautics professor Dava Newman has designed a new spacesuit along with her colleague, Jeff Hoffman and a group of students. This is far sleeker and lighter weight than the suits used by astronauts today, promising greater mobility than the traditional bulky suits of today which can weigh 300lbs or more. Instead of gas pressurization, the new prototype BioSuit employs "mechanical counter-pressure" in the form of skin-tight layers wrapped around the body."
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2007/biosuit-0716.html

Comments

Another plug for the metric system

[A non-mouse Coward]

Masses 300 lbs, weighs nothing, but still no friend of mobility.

Somebody who does this for a living will have to back me up (or shut me up), but isn't pounds (as in lbs.) a measurement of weight, as in the English-system unit of mass times the earth's gravitational acceleration, unlike the metric unit, grams, which is strictly-speakly a measurement of mass-only (as in free of gravitational acceleration)?

And on that note, how is having 300 lbs (or mass-equivalent) less gear going to keep you from hopping off the moon into outerspace forever? Didn't the extra mass come in handy to keep people from flying away?

Re:PHYSICS: Why skin tight may be a bad idea

[Alioth]

Well, ignoring for now that atmospheric pressure is 14.7 psi, not 16 psi - there's no need for the suit or the occupant to actually be at sea level atmospheric pressure. In fact, it may be undesirable, as it means you need more powerful life support systems - more weight, more complexity.

The human body is fine at 0.2 atmospheres so long as it's getting enough oxygen. While in the spacecraft without a helmet, with 0.2 atm (less than 4 psi) being pressed against your chest might be uncomfortable, it's not going to kill you.