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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
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2007/biosuit-0716.html
is Margaret Thatcher modelling it?
They're waiting for you, Gordon. In the Test Chamber.
Is it just me, or does this sound like something out of Sci-Fi? Sleek, skintight, spacesuits? Anyway... Finally! A redesign of the spacesuits. This has been coming for a while, and most people probably should have forseen a new design. What amazes me is how futuristic and sci-fi this sounds... or is it just progress? What ever the case, this is real progress and innovation.
All these skintight spacesuits on attractive women in science fiction movies are finally reality!
I think we can keep recursing like this until someone returns 1
Exclusive pictures.
Turns out, it only works if you wear it in a robotic cat.
libertarian: (n) socially liberal, financially conservative; neither left, nor right.
Masses 300lbs, weighs nothing, but still no friend of mobility.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
The next thing they have to make is a chain metal bikini that can give Elven Warrior Maidens the protection from dragon fire they need.
Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.
One, how are they going to keep the astronaut warm/cool in it.
Two, they talk about how its safer if it gets punctured because the hole can just be patched without affecting the rest of the suit. How are you going to puncture it in a way that doesn't puncture, you know... you? Even if the suit doesn't depressurize, it can't be good for your cardiovascular system to have a gaping wound exposed to vacuum or micropressures.
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?
libertarian: (n) socially liberal, financially conservative; neither left, nor right.
A book called The Millennial project was released several years ago that describes skin-tight space suits in very clear and specific terms, dicussing how a tight material is sufficient to handle the pressure, and how just a chest plate might be useful to provide radiation protection and protection from micrometeors and the like. I believe it described the use of tungsten..
n g-Galaxy-Eight/dp/0316771635
It's a really interesting book, talks about a lot of other technology, and seems pretty darn reasonable about most of it too.
http://www.amazon.com/Millennial-Project-Colonizi
ìì!
You also make it a lot less vulnerable to life-threatening damage.
Chalk up another one for the old Analog, right along with Giant Meteor Impact.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
The idea of using mechanical pressure instead of air pressure is not new; quite aside from the fantasies of SF writers through the years there have been serious attempts to make 'spandex spacesuits' before.
Major problems I've heard of include joint mobility (imagine a tight spandex sleeve - now imagine flexing your arm at the elbow against the resistance of the material) and the sheer unbelievability of the idea for most people. Of course, most of us would look like crap in a tight spandex bodystocking anyway.
Thermal and radiation protection could be handled much as they are now except that it wouldn't be tied to the pressure vessel aspects of the suit. Imagine rather chunky overalls, for example. I suppose the good news is that the outer parts would then be much more universal, making them easier to manufacture and maintain. You could even store them outside the rather cramped airlock and put them on outside in, say, the shuttle bay.
Her right ear looks to be 1/4" lower than the right. Deal breaker, that is.
I drank what? -- Socrates
I'm thinking this has some inherent drawbacks. With gas pressure regulation, the pressure inside the suite is the same regardless of whether you are inside the space capsule (at 16psi ambient pressure) or outside (at zero PSI ambient). It seems to me that if this thing is mechanically applying 16 PSI in vacuum then it must apply 32 PSI when inside the capsule. That's going to raise your blood pressure. Not by enough to be harmful, (after all scuba divers have the same). But more importantly, if you take our helmet off now you suffocate inside the space capusle. You suffocate first because you cannot physcally open your lungs with 32 PSI pressing on them in a 16psi atmosphere. And secondly even if you solved that, then you still have the problem of the 32 psi pressure making it harder to dissolve gas in your blood, so your cells cant get air or release CO2. And finally, if you took your kemet off then you have the extra 16 psi in your bloodstream pushing against the back of your eye-balls.
I wonder how they dealt with that?
One speculation might be that they made the suit not stretchy but just a fixed size that EXACTLY fits you. This way you have no pressure until you expand into the suit which then applies a counter force.
However I cant' see that actually being possible, and having any flexibility. If You expand even slightly your blood pressure will drop. it would have to fit everywhere exactly, down to the gonads. cause you'd get enormous swelling in any place there was no counter-force.
Finally, I can't see how this works around your head. If the suit is not pressurized then how do you maintain 16psi pressure on the face? Sure you could have the person breath through a regulator. But the face itself would not have pressure on it.
Obviously I don't understand how this thing works or can work.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
You've seen too many bad movies. A hole would result in some localized swelling of the exposed tissue. I'd be more concerned about severe sunburn, which can happen quickly in space.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
"Feels like I'm wearing nothing at all... Nothing at all... Nothing at all..."
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
won't people see the diaper?
How we know is more important than what we know.
No, it does NOT.
If it was the case, you would die from internal bleeding at the slightest shock that would burst the smallest blood vessel.
Contact to air is only 1 of the huge amount of conditions that can trigger cloting.
Pretty much anything that isn't healthy un-wounded endothelium (the thing that covers the walls inside of blood vessels) can trigger clotting (thus the problems that can be encountered with prosthetic cardiac valves, or people who have damaged blood vessel walls because of way too much high cholesterol, or additive that are put inside glass container for blood sample handling).
Bleeding in water is the only case where you don't clot easily. Not because water has some magical properties that prevents clotting, but just because the coagulation factors that are needed for clotting get diluted in the water.
Back to the case, TFA mentions that bandage should be applied over the suit breach. Some pro-coagulant substance coating the middle of the bandage, where it goes over the hole, should help make sure the wound clots well.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
n/t
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
Just a few weeks back there was some anime / subliminal propoganda sponsored by the japanese equivalent of NASA, and they had suits which looked just like that :O
(That series also introduced me to reverse polish calculators, and it's true, I can no longer stand to use a regular calculator; RPN just seems so much more elegant...)
I mod down anyone who says "I will be modded down for this", regardless of the rest of their comment
It gives us a tight, form-fitting suit to be worn by fit women going into space.
Admittedly, this is just a first step to a world where all the women look like the covers of 50's pulp magazines, but really, how can that *not* improve society.
I for one welcome our new Amazonian over, um, overladies?
- Pug
An Invisible Entity of Vast Power whose existence must be taken on faith alone: Liberal Media
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
You forgot, "4. I doubt you have a giant boner."
The suit's pressure takes care of that. Everyone's dick looks the same, a paper thin wrap around your entire torso.
It's sex appeal.
Remember, we could be sending robots everywhere for the price of this. Science is not what NASA cares about. NASA cares about their budget. Going to Mars sells well. Going to Mars in skin-tight suits sells better.