Actually, Ham Sund does alot of work on the Russian suit now. There have been several occasions when I've walked into the lab area and seen a US and Russian suit side by side being worked on. The actual company is Space Systems Internation and our web page is here.
Here's a picture of the employee lobby which shows from right to left: Apollo moon suit, I believe a mercury suit, gemini suit, current shuttle eva suit, and then a mars prototype suit.
You'll see to the right of the mars suit is a little rover. The idea being that the rover would follow the atronaught around, carrying any tools, oxygen, etc, etc for him. Something like this will probably be needed because the different in gravity between the moon and mars is enough that the weight of the suit needs to be reduced in order to increase the endurance of the astronaut.
I can tell you that there will only be one replacement suit that everyone in the world will use (Except maybe the chineese, who can tell about them). There is a major drive in the industry for consolidation.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, Ham Sund does alot of work on the Russian suit now. There have been several occasions when I've walked into the lab area and seen a US and Russian suit side by side being worked on. The actual company is Space Systems Internation and our web page is here.
Here's a picture of the employee lobby which shows from right to left: Apollo moon suit, I believe a mercury suit, gemini suit, current shuttle eva suit, and then a mars prototype suit.
You'll see to the right of the mars suit is a little rover. The idea being that the rover would follow the atronaught around, carrying any tools, oxygen, etc, etc for him. Something like this will probably be needed because the different in gravity between the moon and mars is enough that the weight of the suit needs to be reduced in order to increase the endurance of the astronaut.
I can tell you that there will only be one replacement suit that everyone in the world will use (Except maybe the chineese, who can tell about them). There is a major drive in the industry for consolidation.