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MIT Team Designs a New, Sleek, Skintight Spacesuit
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Mon Jul 16, 2007 04:46 PM
from the spandex-makes-a-comeback dept.
from the spandex-makes-a-comeback dept.
iamdrscience writes "MIT aeronautics professor Dava Newman has designed a new spacesuit along with her colleague, Jeff Hoffman and a group of students. This is far sleeker and lighter weight than the suits used by astronauts today, promising greater mobility than the traditional bulky suits of today which can weigh 300lbs or more. Instead of gas pressurization, the new prototype BioSuit employs "mechanical counter-pressure" in the form of skin-tight layers wrapped around the body."
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2007/biosuit-0716.html
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2007/biosuit-0716.html
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NASA Engineers Work on New Spacesuits 105 comments
NotCoward writes "In labs at Johnson Space Center, away from the buzz about NASA's new spaceship and its new missions to the moon and Mars, a group of engineers are plodding away at another piece of the puzzle: spacesuits. Astronaut apparel has evolved over the decades from Mercury's aluminum foil-looking outfits to the bulky, 275-pound whites now used on jaunts outside the space station. While it's too early in the process to know how the new space suits will look, the space agency is hoping to make new suits both high-tech and low-maintenance."
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But why .... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:But why .... (Score:5, Funny)
Somebody misread it as Thatcher, and just ran with it.
Parent
Re:But why .... (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:With the fist of an angry god! (Score:5, Funny)
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obligatory (Score:5, Funny)
Sci-Fi correlation (Score:3, Interesting)
NASA learns marketing from sci-fi (Score:4, Interesting)
Remember, we could be sending robots everywhere for the price of this. Science is not what NASA cares about. NASA cares about their budget. Going to Mars sells well. Going to Mars in skin-tight suits sells better.
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Re:Sci-Fi correlation (Score:5, Informative)
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The future is now! (Score:5, Funny)
PHYSICS: Why skin tight may be a bad idea (Score:4, Interesting)
I wonder how they dealt with that?
One speculation might be that they made the suit not stretchy but just a fixed size that EXACTLY fits you. This way you have no pressure until you expand into the suit which then applies a counter force.
However I cant' see that actually being possible, and having any flexibility. If You expand even slightly your blood pressure will drop. it would have to fit everywhere exactly, down to the gonads. cause you'd get enormous swelling in any place there was no counter-force.
Finally, I can't see how this works around your head. If the suit is not pressurized then how do you maintain 16psi pressure on the face? Sure you could have the person breath through a regulator. But the face itself would not have pressure on it.
Obviously I don't understand how this thing works or can work.
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:PHYSICS: Why skin tight may be a bad idea (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:PHYSICS: Why skin tight may be a bad idea (Score:4, Insightful)
Even if you survived the air space expansion, You'd basically have the Bends in few minutes from the dissolved gas release I believe. In addition to the painful pressure they cause, expanded gasses can also do fun stuff like kill nerves.
Parent
Re:PHYSICS: Why skin tight may be a bad idea (Score:5, Informative)
I think it's just that you don't understand how lungs work.
When you inhale you don't inflate your lungs by increasing their volume, like opening a bellows.
The way you inhale is by lowering the pressure in your chest cavity by means of the diaphragm, which contracts downwards, increasing chest volume. As the pressure in your chest (outside your lungs) decreases, air forces itself into your lungs and inflates them.
It seems to me that if this thing is mechanically applying 16 PSI in vacuum then it must apply 32 PSI when inside the capsule.
Yeah, but there's air inside your body pushing out, too, remember. That's what the 16 PSI is there for, in fact - to restrain the gases within your body. That's why the suit has to be pressurized - to push back on the pressures within your body that, normally, the atmosphere will push back against.
So, inside the capsule, you're facing 32 Psi minus the 16 psi pushing out from inside you, so you're only against the 16 psi tension of the suit. I imagine it's like breathing with an ace bandage (or, like, a bra) around your chest - more difficult but certainly not impossible.
And secondly even if you solved that, then you still have the problem of the 32 psi pressure making it harder to dissolve gas in your blood, so your cells cant get air or release CO2.
Higher PSI makes it easier, not harder, to dissolve gases in fluids.
Finally, I can't see how this works around your head. If the suit is not pressurized then how do you maintain 16psi pressure on the face?
Big bubble helmet pressurized to 16 psi, like always. I don't see the problem.
Parent
Re:PHYSICS: Why skin tight may be a bad idea (Score:5, Interesting)
The human body is fine at 0.2 atmospheres so long as it's getting enough oxygen. While in the spacecraft without a helmet, with 0.2 atm (less than 4 psi) being pressed against your chest might be uncomfortable, it's not going to kill you.
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300 lbs (Score:3, Insightful)
Masses 300lbs, weighs nothing, but still no friend of mobility.
Re:300 lbs (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:300 lbs (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:300 lbs (Score:5, Funny)
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Another plug for the metric system (Score:4, Interesting)
And on that note, how is having 300 lbs (or mass-equivalent) less gear going to keep you from hopping off the moon into outerspace forever? Didn't the extra mass come in handy to keep people from flying away?
Parent
Re:Another plug for the metric system (Score:5, Funny)
Sure, this seems like a good idea, but it's really not cool to play around with the Moon's emotions like that. No one has visited it in 35 years, and it is getting pretty desperate for attention.
Parent
Re:Another plug for the metric system (Score:5, Informative)
According to Wikipedia [wikipedia.org], "pounds" originally and still may refer to force (weight). However the "pound avoirdupois", avoirdupois being the system used in the United States, is defined to be a measure of mass.
And on that note, how is having 300 lbs (or mass-equivalent) less gear going to keep you from hopping off the moon into outerspace forever? Didn't the extra mass come in handy to keep people from flying away?
Escape velocity from the moon is 2.4 km/s. I don't think that merely weighing 1/6th as much as you do on earth would allow you to launch yourself at that speed. The astronauts would be able to leap even farther than they could in the bulky spacesuits, though.
Parent
Jumping with less mass (Score:3, Insightful)
Can you? Wouldn't you just land with whatever force you applied at the beginning of the jump? On Earth, I can jump a certain height unloaded and a lesser height while carrying a backpack full of rocks. I'll have farther to fall from the higher jump, but I'll have more mass getting attracted by gravity on the shorter jump. I think they would cancel each other out.
Or, actually, there might
Next challenge: (Score:5, Funny)
Two thoughts... (Score:5, Insightful)
Two, they talk about how its safer if it gets punctured because the hole can just be patched without affecting the rest of the suit. How are you going to puncture it in a way that doesn't puncture, you know... you? Even if the suit doesn't depressurize, it can't be good for your cardiovascular system to have a gaping wound exposed to vacuum or micropressures.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The main advantage of counter-pressure suits would be ditching the gas pressure that makes movement difficult. Additional layers could be added for radiation shielding and temperature/moisture control. As long as the additional layers did not inhibit movement as much as the traditional suit, it would still be a net gain development in the technology.
Even if the suit doesn't depressurize, it can't be good for your cardiovascular system to have a
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Astronauts run the same risk in today's suits. The difference is with traditional suits, a puncture leads to your blood boiling and a quick asphyxiation from lack of atmosphere. Boy-o.
Astronauts get into their spacesuits and decompress for quite awhile to a low pressure; about 3 psi if I remember correctly. A complete loss of pressure will not cause any decompression problems at this point. Even without decompression, your blood still would not boil if exposed to a vacuum. Your body maintains enough mech
More important.. (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
No it does NOT. (Score:5, Insightful)
No, it does NOT.
If it was the case, you would die from internal bleeding at the slightest shock that would burst the smallest blood vessel.
Contact to air is only 1 of the huge amount of conditions that can trigger cloting.
Pretty much anything that isn't healthy un-wounded endothelium (the thing that covers the walls inside of blood vessels) can trigger clotting (thus the problems that can be encountered with prosthetic cardiac valves, or people who have damaged blood vessel walls because of way too much high cholesterol, or additive that are put inside glass container for blood sample handling).
Bleeding in water is the only case where you don't clot easily. Not because water has some magical properties that prevents clotting, but just because the coagulation factors that are needed for clotting get diluted in the water.
Back to the case, TFA mentions that bandage should be applied over the suit breach. Some pro-coagulant substance coating the middle of the bandage, where it goes over the hole, should help make sure the wound clots well.
Parent
Oh No.... (Score:3, Funny)
The Millennial Project (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a really interesting book, talks about a lot of other technology, and seems pretty darn reasonable about most of it too.
http://www.amazon.com/Millennial-Project-Colonizi
Air Pressure (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
If that means "too cool" then a sweater or other insulation should be used. As long as it breaths. Gore-Tex is wonderful stuff.
It sure took a while (Score:5, Informative)
You also make it a lot less vulnerable to life-threatening damage.
Chalk up another one for the old Analog, right along with Giant Meteor Impact.
Old idea, new implementation (Score:3, Insightful)
Major problems I've heard of include joint mobility (imagine a tight spandex sleeve - now imagine flexing your arm at the elbow against the resistance of the material) and the sheer unbelievability of the idea for most people. Of course, most of us would look like crap in a tight spandex bodystocking anyway.
Thermal and radiation protection could be handled much as they are now except that it wouldn't be tied to the pressure vessel aspects of the suit. Imagine rather chunky overalls, for example. I suppose the good news is that the outer parts would then be much more universal, making them easier to manufacture and maintain. You could even store them outside the rather cramped airlock and put them on outside in, say, the shuttle bay.
Re:Old idea, new implementation (Score:5, Funny)
And therein is how I will repel the micro-meteorites. My ugly-ass body will scare them enough to deflect their path.
-nB
Parent
Stupid sexy astronauts... (Score:4, Funny)
Just a few, ahem, "challnges" (Score:3, Interesting)
If you do, then, sure, you can optimize the heck to meet your goals, at the expense of everything else. Whopee ding.
But in the real world, astronauts will be happy to trade off style for function. Especially life-saving functions.
These spandex suits may look keen, but you've traded away:
RTFA (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re:RTFA (Score:4, Insightful)
OK, you say, I'll just make sure to bring along some moisturizing lotion. There's another problem. A space suit of this type is basically a bottle of fixed volume. Suppose I take a 100-liter bottle and fill it with 95 liters of water plus a ziploc baggie containing 5 liters of air -- the 5 liters of air represents the astronaut's lung volume. Now, it's quite common for a hard-working person to lose a liter of water an hour through perspiration and respiration. Say we double that for the reasons given above. After an hour of hard work, the 100-liter bottle representing our space suit now holds 93 liters of water, and so must hold 7 liters of air. Uh-oh! our baggie can't hold that much air, and ruptures.
I'm overstating the case a little bit, but the point remains that in a constant-volume suit like this, with no air space, any change in body volume, via perspiration, drinking, urination or defacation, comes at the expense of lung volume. If you don't keep things perfectly balanced, you don't get to breathe. On the longer term, if the astronaut goes off his diet and gains say 5 pounds of fat, that's 2-3 fewer liters of lung volume, and again, the astronaut can't breathe. They always said those twinkies would kill ya...
Parent
Life imitates... anime o_O? (Score:4, Interesting)
Just a few weeks back there was some anime / subliminal propoganda [shishnet.org] sponsored by the japanese equivalent of NASA, and they had suits which looked just like that [shishnet.org] :O
(That series also introduced me to reverse polish calculators [shishnet.org], and it's true, I can no longer stand to use a regular calculator; RPN just seems so much more elegant...)
Re:Slashcode predicts ... (Score:5, Funny)
Turns out, it only works if you wear it in a robotic cat.
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Re:Slashcode predicts ... (Score:5, Funny)
Admittedly, this is just a first step to a world where all the women look like the covers of 50's pulp magazines, but really, how can that *not* improve society.
I for one welcome our new Amazonian over, um, overladies?
- Pug
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Re:head protection? (Score:5, Informative)
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Self-inflicted problems (Score:3, Informative)
Heat and cold you handle with a reflective cover (yup, silver foil! another SF tradition upheld.)
Heat especially is actually easier since human skin has built-in evaporative cooling. Can't beat vacuum for insulation. Most of the heating/cooling problems of current suits are self-inflicted by their bulky closed designs.
Radiation? Nothing shorter than UV is going to be s
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Stupid sexy Flanders... (Score:5, Funny)
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no problem (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:uh oh (Score:4, Funny)
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