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Boeing Unveils New NASA Spacesuits For Starliner Austronaut Taxi (space.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Space.com: The NASA astronauts who fly aboard Boeing's new spaceship will wear sleek, blue suits that are lighter, simpler and more comfortable than the bulky orange gear of the space shuttle era, company representatives said. Unveiled today (Jan. 25), the new "Boeing Blue" spacesuits for the Starliner capsule weigh about 20 lbs. (9 kilograms) each with all of their accessories, compared to 30 lbs. (13.6 kg) for the old space shuttle suits, NASA officials said. Other advances include touch-screen-sensitive gloves, more-flexible material and soft helmets that are incorporated into the suit (rather than the hard, detachable helmets of the shuttle era). The Boeing Blue suit, and the one that SpaceX develops, will help keep astronauts safe in the event of an emergency during trips to and from orbit. The suits are not designed for spacewalks; the large, bulky "extravehicular mobility units" that astronauts use for this latter purpose are already aboard the ISS. "The spacesuit acts as the emergency backup to the spacecraft's redundant life-support systems," Richard Watson, subsystem manager for spacesuits in NASA's Commercial Crew Program, said in the same statement. "If everything goes perfectly on a mission, then you don't need a spacesuit. It's like having a fire extinguisher close by in the cockpit. You need it to be effective if it is needed." You can view pictures of the spacesuits here.
Hey, they left the fly of of the men's suits.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
they look more like bio-hazard suits, are these capable of protecting us in a vacuum ?
Isn't an Austronaut someone visiting Austria? Are they planning on skiing?
Sources could not confirm whether taking the taxi would land you on an Alp meadow, or among the kangaroos.
Next time they might want to consider hiring a professional seamstress.
:T:R:A:N:S:
That guy is totally cosplaying Benny from The LEGO Movie
The soft helmets are a cool idea. But when they're unzipped, as you can see in the many photos with the helmets at that pose, there's a lot of stress at the zipper. That's going to be a failure point, just like it is on your luggage. I'm surprised that there isn't a better solution for that.
That said, it took me all of 10 seconds to see that, and the folks at Boeing aren't idiots, so I hope they have tested the hinging of their zippers!
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
Which of their aircraft have bad safety records?
The Starliner may not have any external systems that an astronaut could repair. And if the destination of the Starliner is always the ISS, the astronauts there can do EVAs while the vehicle is docked / nearby. There's probably no compelling reason for every taxi flight to the ISS to have its own EVA capability.
RETURN without GOSUB in line 1050
Xenia Seeberg's first full episode.
For a mini-series that was never really intended to be spun into a tv show I thought the social commentary was actually pretty good. Fire and water was the high point for that series but when they got stuck on earth I really started to tune out, it just wasn't as interesting I guess.
Benny!
To NOT Do List:
Check Slashdot for useless posts from anonymous yoyo's for cringe level engineering advice.
Get over yourself, dude.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Nasa used white suits in the Apollo era for two reasons: (1) that was the color of the flame-proof Beta Cloth and (b) it would reflect a lot of light (and thus heat) when exposed to direct sunlight in space. These Apollo suits were actually very complex pressure-holding garments with bellows at the joints and springs and cables etc and the white part of the suit we all saw on TV was just an outer garment that protected the actual functional layers. These suits were designed to not only be used in the spacecraft, but also to be used during multi-hour productive EVA and lunar surface activities.
The Orange suits of the Shuttle era were avery different thing. They started being used after the Challenger was lost and were derived from SR-71 pilot suits which are primarily there to safe a life if the cabin depressurizes. The orange color wasan international rescue color intended to make it easier to find crew members who might bail out of a crippled orbiter and might be bobbing in the sea. They were far less complex than the Apollo suits and were not suitable for EVA activities in space - they were there only as safety equipment and, when inflated, would have been very hard to work in.
These new Boeing suits are, like SpaceX's equivalents will be, like the Orange shuttle suits in that they are not generally going to be inflated and willbe there just to save lives should the vehicle be damaged and lose pressure. When inflated, they will keep the wearer alive but will not provide great mobility,and are not for spacewalks. There's little need for a 21st century suit to be any particular color, since modern tech will allow and fabrics used to be nearly any stylish color, and radio transponders to be on each astronaut.
When you inflate any structure, it becomes rigid and tries to assume whatever shape it has that provides maximum volume for the inflating gas. Any attempt to bend the inflated structure in a way that reduces the gas volume will require effort to overcome the pounds-per-square-inch of pressure, which means it takes serious work for an astronaut to bend an elbow or knee or finger in a space suit and that's why so much effort is put into designing a suit like the Apollo suit or an EVA suit for Shuttle or ISS that will be used to work in space. All that is not required for an emergency suit that will be designed to be rigid in the seated shape and will be used just for a leaky cabin event.
I'm not sure where your hanging out, but we're getting real close to sexbots right now.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds