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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."
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!
The problem is the money wasted every time they move the goalposts to "save money." This happens constantly at NASA. I wonder how much cheaper it would be to actually finish some projects as planed, instead of redesigning to cut costs halfway through each time?
Nah think bigger picture. NASA needs to start filming and selling zero-g porn. They'll have a virtual monopoly on the stuff and the adult industry is worth $10+ billion a year. That's twice what NASA spent on space operations in 2011.
And in case you think it's a joke, and not a commentary on how sad it is people would rather invest in seeing money shots than real science, I haz links :
http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/659660main_NASA_FY13_Budget_Estimates-508-rev.pdf
http://www.forbes.com/2001/05/25/0524porn.html
(although it is cheering to know that the entire NASA budget is bigger than the porn industry, although I must admit I was a little surprised by the 3 billion spent on "cross agency support" -- what's that about?)
It's probably where they hide the money for the *really* secret projects.
The problem is the projects take far longer than politicians are in power for - you're looking at easily a decade from conception, design, test and launch. The Mars rovers are an anomaly as they're generally done "on the cheap" just to see what was possible, but it still took a long time to actually plan out and do it all.
And with NASA's budget and goals being at the whim and fart of politicians, well, it can't be helped.
If you ever wonder why NASA spends so much on public relations, that's probably the only thing keeping base funding alive - just having public awareness they exist and that space is interesting means they get some funding.
First zero g porn was shot on a private vomit comet. Don't recall the name.
It had to suck, being made up of 22 second zero g shots edited together.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Do you really have to make a Giant Pert Chart that lists the entire future of the NASA space mission,
1. Walk on the moon
2. ???
3. Profit!
NASA might have been expensive, but they pioneered a lot of things that are used every day, and not just Tang.
One can list hundreds of things that have come from NASA's moon launches and are used in common products these days. LEDs, airplane de-icing systems, fire-resistant materials, and non-destructive stress testing are just starters.
Of course, NASA has become the political whipping boy because it doesn't have immediate ROI. No, sending a robot to Mars might not have dollars rolling in, but the technological hurdles overcome to do the missions are things learned and can be used in the private sector.
The profit is coming. Companies will mine resources and manufacture items in earth orbit / elsewhere and then sell/use the items to do more mining and more exploring and more expansion. The profit will come. The excitement will come. And the investment bubble put the 1999-2000 tech bubble to shame. :-)
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
You have a really good point. These programs are complex. It is difficult to determine how a change to one part will affect the others. The article discussed the compromises that are needed because of the constraints of the Orion program. I truly hope they can develop a multipurpose product, rather than a crippled one that makes simple tasks more tedious. There is a reason we have both a screwdriver and a hammer in our toolbox.
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
"They never learned to build infrastructure. They never wanted to launch a mission that had any risk." It's hard to tell what NASA you are talking about here, NASA in the '60s or NASA in the 2000's? If it was NASA in the 60's then you are wrong. NASA in the 60's was all about risky missions. I personally heard Frank Borman at a conference a few years ago state that when he launched on Apollo 8 he figured that he had a 50% chance of coming back. For lasting infrastructure, the Vehicle Assembly Building and the crawler-transporter at Kennedy were built for the first Saturn V then used through the Space Shuttle program with plans for use by SLS. Same for the engine test stands at Stennis in Mississippi. On the pert charts -- one of the acknowledged major accomplishments of the Apollo Program was the development of a management process to successfully pull off such a gigantic and fast moving program.
FTR, tang was NOT made by NASA it was just used by NASA and therefore marketed as the drink astronauts drink! and since astronauts were like rockstars in that era, everyone started drinking tang
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Spent money like water, came up with the shortest path to "beating them Ruskies"
Spend money like Wall Street, come up with the shortest path to "bankrupt the Nation".
That sounds similar to what the government is doing now . . . except we don't have anything to show off for it . . .
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
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
A lot of that "cross agency support" is NASA picking up the tab for military projects. Yeah, the bottomless money pit of the Pentagon also sucks money out of National Institute of Health, National Science Institute, NOAA, National Weather Service, even the National Park Service.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
Nah think bigger picture. NASA needs to start filming and selling zero-g porn. They'll have a virtual monopoly on the stuff and the adult industry is worth $10+ billion a year. That's twice what NASA spent on space operations in 2011.
And in case you think it's a joke, and not a commentary on how sad it is people would rather invest in seeing money shots than real science, I haz links :
http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/659660main_NASA_FY13_Budget_Estimates-508-rev.pdf
http://www.forbes.com/2001/05/25/0524porn.html
(although it is cheering to know that the entire NASA budget is bigger than the porn industry, although I must admit I was a little surprised by the 3 billion spent on "cross agency support" -- what's that about?)
Nah. Russian zero-g porn!
I was a little surprised by the 3 billion spent on "cross agency support" -- what's that about?)
Probably the layers upon layers of dysfunctional management we are always hearing about. A bigger question is how you spend $600+ on a dead program- The last shuttle flight was in July 2011 but funding continued to 2013. I can understand there will be some costs but you don't need gold-plated tarps to cover a machine that will never fly again.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
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.
I wonder how much cheaper it would be to actually finish some projects as planed
Maybe they can get help from google? I can see it now, NASA labs.
"Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." -- Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
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.
Cheapest might be to learn from the Soviet example where several competing departments tried to come up with an idea or implementation and more optimum solution sort of came out naturally as a result. Given the number of firsts the Soviets had of the USA it might be much faster as well. Funny how the USA has had an almost authoritarian system in place for managing projects in space since the start of NASA and they don't embrace a more free-market approach.
links or it didn't happen ! ;P