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Next-Gen Spacesuits
ambermichelle writes "Outer space is a hostile environment for humans, characterized by an airless vacuum, thermal extremes, ionizing radiation and speeding micro meteoroids. Less well-known are the dangers posed by long-term exposure to microgravity or zero-g conditions, which over time severely saps the strength of astronauts' muscles and bones. Several researchers are working to develop new spacesuit designs that could help counteract these threats as well as avoid some of the familiar drawbacks of current spacesuit models such as bulk, weight and rigidity."
When astronauts start looking like Samus Aran, with or without the power armor, I expect interest in space travel will increase dramatically.
...when we resume manned space exploration. and develop a manned space vehicle to take us there again.
was contained in the bladder in one boot in the Apollo pressure-suit designs. I wonder what they'll do for these elastic suits.
I'm sure her ear rings will be permitted.
The next generation vehicles are almost ready, and we have a lot of new things in launch vehicles happening. A lot of the old Space Shuttle facilities are being refitted, and a lot of work couldn't be done until we were done using these resources on the shuttle. The time to develop a suit isn't after the vehicle is ready and it's time to start planning missions. It's good that we are pushing the next generation of suits forward. The United States is still #1 in space technology, and are the only ones working on anything really groundbreaking.
Sig: I stole this sig.
I'm not sure what percentage of the time the crew would need to wear these suits to prevent atrophy. I am sure it will be more than they are willing to put up with.
We are going to have to come up with solutions on a much grander scale to change the environment, not adapt to it. It's how we humans have taken over the planet and how we will take over space. But we won't do it till we spend a lot more time on earth doing the grunt work (engineering and thinking) instead of spending billions on half baked manned missions to nowhere worthwhile.
So the next generation spacesuit is a reworked version of the early 1970s space mobility suit design?
I suppose any patents must have expired.
Whatever. Both parties are going to talk out their asses about space while not letting NASA do anything that doesn't make them money from their contributors. This means no human space flights from home. Bipartisan bitches will blame the other party and fill the coffers of the same fucks that are killing them. Americans will still be too stupid to break from the two party system.
News at 11.
I've been hearing about the deleterious effects of weightlessness since I was 5, and that was before Apollo 11.
A bubble helmet... I can't believe she's wearing a bubble helmet.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
I had been watching some of the news and documentaries about the group doing the suits. They still had quite a few hurdles to overcome, as the squeeze suit had not been able to provide enough pressure to reach that critical 1/3rd of an atmosphere. The Article does not seem to indicate if they have tackled that, only "proven the technical feasibility", which sounds about where I heard they were last.
When I saw them plying a big length of rubber on the leg of someone, it looked like something ready to cut off someone's circulation if left on too long. It tripped a few skeptical alarms for me. Will these have to be custom fitted? What happens if someone gains or loses weight(ie: mass)? Will using them for any length of time be uncomfortable or dangerous to people? They seem pretty happy to wander around in public wearing what appears to be a prototype. It just worries me that it might be a lot of hot air.
The use of Gyros sounds a bit odd, perhaps I am not quite sure of the process in which bones lose density. I would have thought the loss of bone mass is from the lack of gravity bones are subjected to in the first place, not a lack of resistance to movement. Gravity pulls mostly uniformly on people, Gyros probably won't help too much for putting resistance on someone's spine or other bones in the center of one's mass. It might help some for muscle loss though. Has NASA agreed to ship some of these up to the ISS for some testing?
Its a shame without shuttle like services we might not be able to do too much testing of the technologies we want to use to survive the trip, live on, and return from Mars. There are many that would be a great help.
"Outer space is a hostile environment for humans, characterized by [...] speeding micro meteoroids."
The one scariest part of it all and the suit doesn't address it in any way.
The worst things about space are 1. lack of oxygen, and 2. radiation.
Space is not "cold". Coldness would mean that the particles move slowly. Meaning that if your own particles move fast, and there are many collisions, you will lose that movement/heat.
But they don't. They move very fast. There are only so few of them, that on average, there is very little going on. So there simply aren't any collisions that you could lose heat to. You'd have to lose it via radiation. Which you do all the time anyway, unless clothes transform it back to heat.
And you're vastly over-inflating the number of micro-meteoroids.
Zero g has nothing to do with space suits. You need them on the moon as well. Zero g is more a space station problem, and the solution still is making the thing rotate (and large enough).
It's like the 1980's all over again!
in low or zero g?
It isn't just for breakfast any more.
Is someone going to create a suit for a vacuum full of air? Or one for the wet oceans? Oh, wait...
Unfortunately it looks like the human species (and maybe most multicellular animals!) is just not suited for long duration space flight and maybe even habitation of other (lesser gravity) worlds.
http://io9.com/5881355/microgravity-screws-us-up-at-a-cellular-level
If this turns out to be true (I know they are using fruit flies but Drosphilia are a good proxy for humans for many things) then we're going to have very serious problems in doing anything other than "plant the flag" style missions. At what point is there "enough" gravity to allow the proper development of a human fetus? Half a gravity? A third? (Mars). A sixth? (the moon). That's why probably the single most important next step for manned space flight is probably the addition of a large (capable of handling mice, preferably primates) centrifuge to the ISS. I recall that it was once meant to be part of it but was cancelled. WE NEED THESE QUESTIONS ANSWERED.
And if the news is bad and humans can't go through a complete life cycle in anything appreciably less than one gee? Then it's time to hack the genome and (possibly) create a new species! While we're at it, we might as add ability to withstand brief (1-2 minutes?) exposure to vacuum (I understand that oxygen comes out of your blood quickly and you can't hold your breath because your lungs will burst. So you pass out in seconds). Also, radiation hardening would be good (some animals like tardigrads can take thousands of times more exposure). The ability to hibernate would be great and I'm sure there are a lot more abilities we could wish for.
In short maybe Homo Astra (or something like that, I don't know Latin).
Otherwise our robots will conquer the universe without us (or at least until we can download our minds into them).
Outer space is a hostile environment for humans, characterized by an airless vacuum, thermal extremes, ionizing radiation and speeding micro meteoroids.
Don't go there then.
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please look like a sci fi comic please look like a sci fi comic ple....yessss!
"Look- they need machines to fly!"
Thankfully Obama broke us of that weird insistance we had that [b]all[/b] space travel had to be done by a single monolithic government entity; we'll have private companies resupplying the space station within two years, and low orbit tourism within the decade. In the meantime, NASA has returned to pushing the envelope of bleeding-edge space technology, rather than spending the vast majority of its budget maintaining an over-engineered, under-preforming space dump-truck that was first built in the 70s.
Honey, does this spacesuit make me look fat?
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
airless vacuum
wow, must be damn low on oxygen that vacuum out there!
"Outer space is a hostile environment for humans, characterized by an airless vacuum, thermal extremes, ionizing radiation and speeding micro meteoroids."
Space Suit Vogue Designers should look at fashion trends in Europe right now . . . how are folks there dressing to survive the hostile environment outside theirs?
Less well-known are the dangers posed by long-term exposure to microgravity or zero-g conditions, which over time severely saps the strength of astronauts' muscles and bones.
Sound like they just need some couch potatoes as test subjects. Again, look to Europe for volunteers. During a cold spell, people would rather sit around on their fat, hairy asses, than go outside and freeze their fat, hairy asses.
Any volunteers to be a paid test subject? All you need to do is sit around for a long period of time, whilst wearing a new, trendy Space Suit.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
The idea of an unpressurized space suit is not entirely new. The Space activity suit has been developed in the late 1960s and was able to prove the concept. I'm glad it's on the table again. I've seen videos showing someone wearing an SAS running on a treadmill in a big vacuum chamber. However, I can't find it on the net.
How did Obama have anything to do with any of that? SpaceX managed their first orbital launch in 2008 when Bush was still in office. SpaceShipOne hit space back in 2004, had been in full time development since 2001, and began initial planning way back in 1994 and the early days of Clinton. Obama was still a state legislator in 2004, and wasn't even in politics in 1994. Bush announced the cancellation of the Shuttle program, several years before Obama took office. Bush announced the replacement Ares launch system, derived from existing Shuttle parts, as a means to go to the Moon and Mars. Again, this was several years before Obama took office.
Bush's eight years are up, Obama is voted in, and what happens? The Ares launch system is cancelled, but now we have the Shuttle Launch System, which is going to take us to Mars. It's the same god damned thing! It just has a different name, and now its Obama's space program.
we are brainwashed from a very young age to believe that things that come out of the enterprise of common people somehow leaks credit to the ruler in charge at the moment.
it is all part of the ideology that sustains the state i.e. our overlords.
There's nothing wrong with aiming to get back into that spot from way back in the pack but just sitting back and dreaming doesn't do it. It takes more effort than a bruised and bleeding NASA has been allowed to carry out.
It's a big world out there and NASA used to fund a lot of things wherever they were, and a lot of those groundbreaking things are now being funded by the countries in which they are based or other space agencies. The US military picked up the tab for some international former NASA stuff (eg. scramjet) but a lot of it has gone elsewhere.
as in: http://xkcd.com/123/
Outer space is a hostile environment for humans, characterized by an airless vacuum...
Let me tell you about the last time I saw a non-airless vacuum...
So long as command gets gold, science blue, and anyone the designers hate get red.
Did these folks ever consider reading some of the literature in the field? No matter, nobody ever does. Everybody thinks they're smarter than all the previous generations of workers in the field.
One might suspect, if one looked at the research in the field, that the idea of very tight spacesuits had been tried, and abandoned, for many reasons. One might suspect these include the difficulties in putting on a suit with 5 PSI of pressure per square inch, the discomforts of such a suit, issues with things like flexible joints, perspiration, and temperature control.
It is a good history of the technology in 21 chapters (like the 21 layers of the Apollo suit). What most don't know is they were made by the Playtex corporation. The book is less technical than it could be but is a very good read.
Sooo... Weight of the spacesuit is a problem in "microgravity or zero-g conditions", curious.