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NASA's Space-Suit Drama Could Delay Our Trip To the Moon (thedailybeast.com)
Zorro quotes a report from The Daily Beast: After years of planning, NASA is finally launching a new effort to send astronauts back to the moon and then onward to Mars. But one important piece of technology is missing: a new space suit. Fifty-three years after astronaut Ed White stepped outside his Gemini 4 capsule on the first-ever spacewalk for an American, NASA is stuck using decades-old suits that critics say are too old, too bulky, too rigid, and too few in number for America's new era of space exploration.
Astronauts could need as many as three different kinds of space suits for a single mission. NASA has plenty of flight-suit options, but its extravehicular activity or EVA suits are old and dwindling in number. And the agency doesn't have any suits specifically for surface missions. Time is running out to make up the space suit shortfalls. NASA plans to launch Exploration Mission 1, the first test of Orion and its heavy rocket, as early as 2020. The Lunar Gateway station could be ready for use five or six years later. Despite these looming deadlines, NASA "remains years away from having a flight-ready space suit... suitable for use on future exploration missions," the agency's inspector general warned in a 2017 audit.
Astronauts could need as many as three different kinds of space suits for a single mission. NASA has plenty of flight-suit options, but its extravehicular activity or EVA suits are old and dwindling in number. And the agency doesn't have any suits specifically for surface missions. Time is running out to make up the space suit shortfalls. NASA plans to launch Exploration Mission 1, the first test of Orion and its heavy rocket, as early as 2020. The Lunar Gateway station could be ready for use five or six years later. Despite these looming deadlines, NASA "remains years away from having a flight-ready space suit... suitable for use on future exploration missions," the agency's inspector general warned in a 2017 audit.
The early explorers set off in unreliable vessels with limited supplies, on voyages that would take years to destinations that were unknown and as far as they knew might not support life at the other end, or even exist.
Now do you see the parallels?
Yes.
People are just as stupid today as they were back then.
I mean, look what all that exploration back then got us...the USA and President Trump!
It was a bad idea then and it's a bad idea now.
Unless you WANT to see a POTM (President Of The Moon) Elon (Spacenutter) Musk who will run his entire spacenutter "lunar nation" on US tax subsidies at our expense, for chrissakes!
The whole idea of people living and working in space or on the airless Moon is preposterous and unworkable. How the hell is a cop supposed to perform a "stop & frisk" on the airless surface of the Moon with everyone including himself sealed into spacesuits? It would be a Wild West up there without law enforcement, government regulators, inspectors, and agents! It's sure to become a lunar Alt-Right Nazi enclave from which they could launch space-based attacks on brown people and Progressives if exploration is allowed to proceed.
Thanks for the mental image of the crusty space prospector in his vacsuit make from poorly tanned beaver pelts and burlap.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff