Slashdot Mirror
NASA Testing Lighter Space Suits For Asteroid Work
Zothecula writes "Sometimes you have to take a step back to take a step forward. NASA is carrying out initial tests on a new, lighter spacesuit for use by the crew of the Orion spacecraft that is currently under development. The tests are being carried out in the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory near the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas on a modified version of the pumpkin orange suit normally worn by Space Shuttle crews during liftoff and re-entry and is a return to a space suit design of the 1960s."
lighter budgets
The harsh environment of deep space is no longer an excuse. There's an oblig. Simpsons reference I'm too lazy to look up.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Because nasa needs sexy to sell itself to congress!
Yep, NASA is all for a return to the 1960's. The Glory Days.
Spent money like water, came up with the shortest path to "beating them Ruskies"
They never learned to build infrastructure. They never wanted to launch a mission that had any risk. They apparently never read the proverb, "Those who refuse to face failure, need never worry about success."
C'mon, guys. Let's go back to a capsule, water landings, Big Disposable Boosters.
Maybe you should consider trying to reengineer an actual practical shuttle, and not let the military in to make it bigger-by-the-month, until it was just barely able to do it's thing. How about taking it in small steps, learn something at every step, and go on from there? Do you really have to make a Giant Pert Chart that lists the entire future of the NASA space mission, and then try to keep everything on schedule? Perhaps you should consider having pilots and scientists, instead of bureaucrats and accountants.
Don't take life too seriously; it isn't permanent.
For short space-walks (under 8 hours), why does the skin need air? Have a suit that's skin-tight (and air tight). It'd keep the pressure without having the bulk and weight of a large air-tight suit. Have cooling/heating lines run in the surface of the skin, like Tron. Then, all you'd need is a helmet attached to the skinsuit. Bonuses if the heating/cooling lines glow orange/red when heating and blue when cooling.
The current suits will last for as long as you have air, with waste disposal and food built in. But go back to basics. A suit that can be warn for longer, but you'd have to go back inside to take breaks for biological reasons should make the suit cheaper and much more maneuverable.
So why do we need a floating life-support capsule for a space suit? Am I missing something?
Learn to love Alaska
Said the military contractor to the gullible public.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Good. I hate 'The Simpsons', and any "obligatory" reference to any of its episodes (or even worse, Seinfeld) is an utter waste of electrons. /rant
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
You'll be downmodded for being an offtopic troll, dipshit. FOAD.
Citations are obligatory references on Slashdot. Citing your favorite comic strip for the umpteenth time isn't helpful. That's just the stuff people think of first, without the critical thought to post a real argument with proper citations. Think a bit and do the community a favor. You'll get more karma for it.
They basically had incredibly thin flexible suits which were sprayed on most of the body and dissolved chemically off of them afterwards.
Most of the body just needs pressure containment and protection from exposure.
You could put on a non pressurized heat protective layer on top of the pressure layer of the suit.
I think we have the fabrics to do this now- just not spray / dissolve.
But much simpler suits- not more complicated. Separate the heat/cold protection from the pressure layer. Two or more piece/layers.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
"They never learned to build infrastructure"
Um.... HUGE piles of cash spent in that era built INFRASTRUCTURE that NASA uses to this day: Johnson Space Center, Kennedy Space Center, The giant engine test stands at Stennis and at Edwards and the smaller engine facilities at WhiteSands, the space vac chambers at JSC and at Glenn, the Gantry at Langley, the manufacturing facilities at Michoud, the dynamic test stand at Marshall (big enough to shake and measure both a complete Saturn V stack and a complete Space Shuttle stack, etc. There are actually some serious people who complain annually that NASA built and tries to maintain too much infrastructure
"They never wanted to launch a mission that had any risk."
Crazy. Nearly every Pre-Shuttle mission carried huge risk. Apollo 8 (first manned Saturn V launch, where each preceding unmanned one had problems) went around the moon with no lunar module (Apollo 13 type failure would have meant DEATH). Apollo15 Lost one of its three parachutes on return to earth (NASA's long and not-always-happy experience with parachutes was a contributing factor in the decision to go from capsules to shuttles) had the failed main chute done more damage to, or become more entangled with, one of the other two the crew likely would have perished on live TV. NONE of the Mercury, Gemini, or Apollo flights had ANY possibility of rescue.... if things had gone wrong and some backup procedure or system had failed to fill-in crews would have been lost. Neil Armstrong's test pilot training and skill is the only reason he and Dave Scott survived their Gemini 8 mission...... twas quite possible somebody else would have been 1st on the moon.
Big disposable boosters guarantee space travel will always be a big expensive money hole and astronauts always government employees on rare and very expensive missions.... as would be true of intercontinental air travel if every flight carried only several people and threw away the airliner. Capsules under parachutes are similarly very limiting..... there's a limit to how much mass you can reliable land under redundant parachute systems (Military cargo drops will always have higher limits by not using redundant chutes needed for human safety).
Stop watching Star Trek and try getting an engineering degree..... or at least study some aerospace history.....
There's a much lighter, working space suit design that's been available for years, and has been repeatedly redesigned. It's called a "skin suit". Essentially a wetsuit with a helmet, the suit relies on the astronaut's own skin as part of its structure holding in the astronaut's body fluids. Air, or oxygen, released into the helmet passes down the suits structure and through the astronaut, themselves, and slowly leaks out the slightly porous material. This avoids the mechanical pressurizaiton problems of providing air at enough pressure to breathe, but dealing with the pressure throughout the enite surace of the suit. It also providing critical cooling for most space suit use. It does consume air or oxygen in use, but the mass lost in days of use is quite modest compared to the mass, difficulty of use, complexity, and mechanical fragility of the heavy and overbuilt modern space suits.
An example can be seen at http://spaceindustrynews.com/mits-next-mars-space-suit/, The technology has worked since the 1960's, when Paul Webb originally designed it.
NASA shares its woes with every new project, technology, or system coming out of a government organization: It requires budget approval from someone else, usually the U.S. Congress in their everlasting budget talks, and those budgets can be changed during the course of research. Until one of those conditions is changed, the progress coming from NASA, DARPA, and every other research organization in the country will be crippled beyond recognition by bureaucrats aiming to slash budgets. The Republicans do it because it looks good when they decrease government spending, and the Democrats do it because it looks good when they decrease defense spending. It's all too fitting that one of the few things both sides of the aisle can agree on is one that neither party understands.