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Space Science

NASA's Astronaut Glove Design Competition 149

Posted by Zonk from the build-a-better-glove-and-the-world-will-beat-a-path-to-your-door dept.
FleaPlus writes "NASA's Centennial Challenges program has announced its latest prize contest, the Astronaut Glove Challenge. The competition, a collaboration between NASA and the non-profit Volanz Aerospace, will be held in late 2006 and will award $250K to the team which produces the best-performing glove within contest parameters. The basic idea was originally proposed last year on Rand Simberg's Transterrestrial Musings blog to improve on current gloves, which have difficulties with remaining flexible while maintaining constant internal pressure in the vacuum of space. Previously-announced competitions include prizes for superstrong tethers, beaming power, and extracting oxygen from lunar regolith. These prizes are intended to lay the groundwork for larger competitions to further NASA's Vision for Space Exploration, possibly including 'an eight-figure prize for the first privately developed robotic moon lander.'"
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NASA's Astronaut Glove Design Competition More

NASA's Astronaut Glove Design Competition

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  • ...who now will have a way to keep his thoughts clean by occupying himself designing this glove. He'll just have to get it straight that an astronaut needs both gloves.
  • ...like OJ Simpson's?
  • Do away with a full suit and go with a tank top and shorts suit complete with space flip flops? I always like using my bare hands anyway.
    • Do away with a full suit and go with a tank top and shorts suit complete with space flip flops?

      They can't quite do that, but they can get pretty darn close. The Space Activity Suit [wikipedia.org] (aka: skinsuit) was a project to produce a spacesuit that was exposed to hard vacuum. The idea was that the human body is actually pretty good at maintaining its shape, so all you need is a bit of tight spandex to apply a pressure to the wearer, and a helmet to provide eye protection and a breathing apparatus. The suit itself would have pores in it, allowing the astronaut to actually *feel* what he's working on.

      Sadly, the idea wasn't pursued despite encouraging results. :-(
      • If the suit was porous, wouldn't water and chemicals seep out of the body and into space through osmosis and diffusion respectively since the concentration was lower outside the body (and suit)?
      • I don't know... it seemed to have some major issues. For one, the body isn't grown to deal with the temperature swings found in space. I'd also imagine that the wearer would develop bruising over the entire surface of thier body due to a lack of counterpressure on pores. Then there's the little problem of the astronaut getting a paper cut when he goes to 'feel' something. How much would it suck (pun intended) to have all your blood flow out through a paper cut. This is also ignoring that we'd need another
      • Frankly, I'm for the *space naked* movement myself. -Mind...
      • This was the idea in Marshall Savage's The Millennial Project: Colonizing the Galaxy in Eight Easy Steps [amazon.com].

        I suspect that custom molded composite/elastic gloves would be a good idea to try.
      • but just for the inner glove. Have a heavy-duty sort of spandex inner glove which runs all the way up the arm inside the suit wher it attahces at the shoulder region. Then attach the outer glove at the wrist as normal but leave it unpressurized. That could improve dexterity somewhat.

        The thing i'm wondering about is heat loss. The outer glove would still be insulated, just not built to maintain pressure. But a vaccuum isn't going to be the best thing to help with that insulation, i would imagine.

        Anyone und
        • There's only one way to directly lose heat in a vaccuum: Infrared

          The object has to get hot enough to convert some of the heat into photons. You can see heat dissapation in the visible spectrum with *really* hot objects. e.g. Lava glows, as does metal being fire tempered.

          The truth is that vaccuum is the perfect insulator because there's nothing to transfer the molecular motion to. (i.e. Heat is just the molecules bouncing very quickly.) Thankfully, humans have an inborn solution to this problem. Our skin s
      • won't that suit interfere with the "sexperiments" sometimes carried out?

        The helmet cannot be Space Balls big or they might smash them together at that moment of truth...

        In the (near-vacuum) of space (pretty much) no one can hear you scream (unless your microphone is on or you scream your last gasping breath against their naked ear...), but maybe they can feel your thing...

        Minimal... anti-script image...

        Yeh, minimalist space suit... Explore space in your birthday suit and it might become your deathday su
      • the uro-genital area? I've seen the "skinsuit" pop up in science fiction on a regular basis and I've looked at the scientific papers but I've never seen anything addressing that. On men the penis and scrotum are a complex shape that would be hard to cover with skin tight fabric. For women the area under the breasts might be a little hard to fill in. For both sexes the anus is problematic. Oh, and the skin suit design assumes that the wearer is not obese.

        One could imagine a hard suit area that goes ar
      • Kinda the same theory as a wet suit.

        Rather than try to keep water out of the suit (like a dry suit), wet suits purposefully allow water to seep in at all the joints. The tension on the suit keeps the water down to a film that the body heats up. This warm water trapped in the suit keeps the diver's body warm. I've been in one in 34F degree water. (2 degrees colder and the water would freeze.) Sure it's cold, but I was actually colder on the surface out of the suit.

        Getting back to the story at hand, you

    • As we all know they filmed all the "moon shots" in the desert. You'd fry out there without proper clothing.

  • Reverse Engineer one from the Aliens (Score:3, Funny)

    by asscroft ( 610290 ) on Sunday July 24, 2005 @09:02PM (#13152854)
    Why don't they just reverse engineer one from the aliens?!? :)

  • Having just watched The Wizard (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Fred Savage's Power Glove [wikipedia.org] looks to me to be pretty awesome.
  • Back in 1989? [retrogoodness.com]

  • I would image a robotic glove. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Jeet81 ( 613099 ) on Sunday July 24, 2005 @09:14PM (#13152903)
    It's a great challenge to maintain the internal pressure and allow free movement of the hand/fingers.

    One of the solutions to this is building a robotic glove that helps muscle movement using signals detected from nerves (previosly posted on slashdot for the whole body).

    • Another solution may be to compleatly get rid of the gloves, and extened the sleves beyond the hand to have an 'nub' of sorts. This could have some sort of edge connectors that would allow attachments to the suit, which are controlled by buttons, switches, sensors, etc. inside of the extended sleve. Attachments could be anything from robotic hands, to welding torches, to high-pressure grip claws.

      Or, you could slap a chainsaw on the end and go Bruce Campbell style at 300 miles up.
    • I agree.. Take a page from Aircraft design like the auto industry. First you have Fly by wire, which spawned Drive by wire... So make a gloves thats grip By Wire.

      Like the sibling post says, all you need is to extend the sleeve to cover the whole arm to keep it contained, then have a glove with sensors that can map all the finger joints and provide force feedback..

      • Like the sibling post says, all you need is to extend the sleeve to cover the whole arm to keep it contained, then have a glove with sensors that can map all the finger joints and provide force feedback..

        I think if they already had the technology for a remote-manipulator hand with the same range of motion and sensitivity as a gloved human hand can do, we wouldn't be having this discussion.

        For instance, I think we should just use anti-gravity to lift the shuttle gently into orbit without any risk to huma

  • Commercialization becomes essential (Score:5, Informative)

    by FleaPlus ( 6935 ) on Sunday July 24, 2005 @09:19PM (#13152929) Journal
    After I made the submission, I came across the following bit on Space Politics [spacepolitics.com], which I think gives a better context for the competition:

    Since Michael Griffin became NASA administrator a few months ago we have seen a gradual change in the agency's position on the role of commercial entities in carrying out the VSE. Griffin initially said he was open to it, but noted in early May that he did not want to get into a position where the agency had to rely on commercial contracts to carry out the vision: "I cannot put public money at risk depending on a commercial provider to be in my critical path." Last month, Griffin said he wanted to press ahead with commercial ISS resupply services--cargo initially, later extending to crews--to free up resources elsewhere.

    Yesterday, though, NASA raised its commitment to commercialization even higher. Speaking at the Return to the Moon conference, NASA's Chris Shank made it very clear: "We've run the budget and we can't afford to do this with a traditional approach." A non-traditional approach, he explained, will put a far greater emphasis on commercialization, including ISS crew and cargo and perhaps other opportunities, such as purchasing launch services for the CEV. Later in the day, NASA's Brant Sponberg unveiled the agency's new Innovative Programs effort, which includes a mix of service procurements, other transaction authority, and prize competitions.

    I also rather liked this bit on Clark Lindsey's RLV News [hobbyspace.com]:

    Jim Muncy gave a brief but interesting summary yesterday of how he sees the situation with US space policy. He saw Shank's presentation as an indication that the long battle by the entrepreneurial space community to get commercial spaceflight companies welcomed as partners in space development has been won. However, winning a battle can actually mean tougher consequences than losing since now comes the challenge is to fulfill that partnership successfully.

    Getting another "big idea" accepted is also making progress. Large scale space settlement must become the primary goal of the space program. No Antarctica-like outposts on the Moon but Las Vegas-es instead. Griffin, in fact, stated in testimony to Congress that human expansion into the solar system is his long term vision for space policy. However, this big idea is still foreign to many at NASA, in Congress, the press and the general public.
    • Commercialization, done this way, could be good. For instance, many of the problems of NASA are due to the ebb and flow of politicians in washington. If they use lots of government money to encourage a private space industry(beyond sattelites), then there's a chance of innovative business models to spring up and expand the space sector in new ways, such as the suggested space tourism. But it could go beyond that, from rich cults wanting to relocate off of earth, to space minning etc, all things that a gover
    • Griffin stated that human expansion into the solar system is his long term vision for space policy.

      Question: is space worth it? I mean, sure, I would love for humans to colonize the solar system, but the vastness of intrasolar distances, the lack of available raw materials, and the cost of moving thing out of Earth's gravity well makes it so... pointless? It's like splurging your life's savings on collecting Pez dispensers...

      Speculation: what we're really going to need is a dozen or so decades of advan

    • ...did not want to get into a position where the agency had to rely on commercial contracts to carry out the vision

      Translation:

      Space entrepreneurs! I'd really like to be a customer for your services, but just in case, I'll also be your government-subsidized competition.

      P.S. Tell that to your investors. I'm sure they'll get reall excited!

  • Low and behold (Score:4, Funny)

    by chriswaclawik ( 859112 ) on Sunday July 24, 2005 @09:21PM (#13152944)
    Here's my design. [bigshocker.com] Comment on it at will.
    • FYI, anyone who has actually tried the "shocker" knows that there's not enough space between the two holes for the knuckle of the ring finger. To get it to work effectively, you must use the index, middle and ring fingers. That is if you're going to limit yourself to the three-finger variation...

  • tripod? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by dotpavan ( 829804 ) on Sunday July 24, 2005 @09:21PM (#13152945) Homepage
    offtopic maybe but why did they host the pages on tripod rather than on a NASA server? fear of slashdotting ;)

  • Gloves? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Renraku ( 518261 ) on Sunday July 24, 2005 @09:22PM (#13152946) Homepage
    They could separate the head and the body unit from each other and just pump fresh oxygen into the head. The suit could possibly have recycled oxygen that's cooled for temperature control.

    That way the hands could be a bit easier to move due to the lower pressure. The suit could also be just a touch baggy.
  • [Example - superstrong tether: SpyDerMan]
    Power Glove
    Beaming Power
    Extracting oxygen from lunar regolith
    Robotic Moon lander
    *uninformative, interesting*
    *entries must be postmarked by 7/23 to qualify for free ipod drawing*

  • Glove, what glove? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by cy_a253 ( 713262 ) on Sunday July 24, 2005 @09:28PM (#13152977)
    Honestly, what would happen if an astronaut just stuck his naked arm out from an airlock into outer space?

    A common misbelief is that it would either instantly freeze or explode.

    Space is a complete vaccuum, just like the kind in thermos bottles, and it's a VERY good thermal insulant. If your arm is at 37C, and you stick it in the best insulant possible, it will remain at 37C.

    Now, the pressure inside your arm is one atmosphere, and the pressure outside is zero, so gases would begin to want to exit your arm, liquids will slowly turn to gases, tissues would expand, yes, but NOT EXPLOSIVELY.

    Have you seen 2001: A Space Odyssey? At one point an astronaut jumps from a repair pod to an airlock without an helmet and survives just fine, which is perfectly realistic. The greatest worry is actually all the radiation that outer space is bathed in.

    So for the glove design, a basic glove would an impermable layer and on top of that a metallic layer to block the radiations. It would, however, get hot very quick, so a cooling system becomes necessary for extended work outside. But a basic glove can be paper thin, because vaccuum is more harmless than you might think.
    • The problem is - you need a tight, stiff glove to prevent the hand from swelling. Once you build that, you realise that you cant bend your fingers anymore....

    • Re:Glove, what glove? (Score:5, Informative)

      by dougmc ( 70836 ) <dougmc+slashdot@frenzied.us> on Sunday July 24, 2005 @09:59PM (#13153159) Homepage
      Now, the pressure inside your arm is one atmosphere
      Actually, most space ships are filled with roughly 100% oxygen, but with the parital pressure of oxygen set to the be the same as it is at sea level, so the actual pressure would be about 1/5 atmosphere. Your body would get the same amount of oxygen per breath -- what you'd be giving up is the mostly unused nitrogen, which makes up about 78% of the atmosphere down here on Earth.

      (Of course, all figures quoted are approximate.)

      By reducing the pressure, they reduce the stress on the craft, the effects of an explosive decompression, they don't need to carry nitrogen with them, etc.

      The Apollo 1 astronauts were killed by this, sort of. During the test, the capsule was filled with 100% oxygen as is customary, but they left it at full pressure. So the partial pressure of oxygen was 5x normal, which was high enough to make velcro burn very quickly ...

      In any event, since we'd assume that their bodies would have acclimated to the reduced pressure, the pressure inside your arm would also be 1/5 atmosphere before you stuck it out in space.

      I don't know how the body would react to going from 0.2 atmospheres to 0 atmospheres, but it would certainly be a lot less dramatic than going from 1 to 0.

      I imagine that the effect would be like getting a hickey (but all over your body), at least with a 0.5 or so atmosphere difference. With a 0.2 atmosphere difference, the effect may be even smaller. I recall once giving a hickey and getting blood out, which really surprised me. But yet I didn't actually break the skin. I don't know how much of a vacuum I could create, but it wouldn't surprise me if blood and other fluids could start seeping out of somebody all over their body suddenly dropped from 1 to 0 atmospheres. Not explosive, but it could become life threatening very quickly if it happened body-wide. (Or maybe your body's pressure would quickly adjust and the blood/fluids loss would be small.)

      At one point an astronaut jumps from a repair pod to an airlock without an helmet and survives just fine, which is perfectly realistic. The greatest worry is actually all the radiation that outer space is bathed in.
      Actually, I'd expect the greatest dangers to be 1) lack of oxygen, and 2) if you didn't let all of the air out of your lungs first, they'd expand and could very well be damaged by the difference in pressure. Radiation is indeed a danger, but unless it's extremely severe, it won't kill you in minutes, like lack of oxygen can.

      • Re:Glove, what glove? (Score:3, Informative)

        by redelm ( 54142 )
        AFAIK, US spacecraft stopped being 5psia 100% oxygen after the Apollo One fire. The nitrogen in air is needed to quench the adiabatic flame temperature. Otherwise, switches (aluminum & plastic) ignite. Pressure dones't matter (although it increases reaction rate). Concentration does.

        An unanswered question is what low levels of HALON would do. These quench the free-radical combustion mechanism at relatively low levels. But are now banned as suspected Ozone depletors.

        • AFAIK, US spacecraft stopped being 5psia 100% oxygen

          True, except for the really small class of spacecraft known as a "space suit". They still use low pressure pure oxygen because higher internal pressure would make them too rigid.

          Before moving from high pressure oxygen+nitrogen to low pressure oxygen the astronauts need a lengthy pre-breathe to get the nitrogen out of their systems. If they don't do that they'll get the bends, just like divers that go up too quickly.
      • Vacuum is also dangerous to the eyes. They are a sealed unit that doesn't react well to dramatic changes in outside pressure.

        I'm trying to remember the movie that demonstrated this effect... something about an area about to become depressurized, and one of the main characters (woman) is giving instructions to her daughter, to close her eyes very tightly and exhale.

        The worst depiction of this was, oddly enough, in a Star Trek (TNG) episode. Geordi and Crusher were in a docking bay and had to depressurize

      • what you'd be giving up is the mostly unused nitrogen, which makes up about 78% of the atmosphere down here on Earth

        http://www.uigi.com/nitrogen.html [uigi.com]

        • what you'd be giving up is the mostly unused nitrogen, which makes up about 78% of the atmosphere down here on Earth

          http://www.uigi.com/nitrogen.html [uigi.com]

          I didn't mean that nitrogen was useless. I meant it's mostly unused by our bodies -- we certainly don't do much with the nitrogen in the air. (Your page does say it's valued for it's inertness, after all.)

          Certainly, our bodies can do without breathing nitrogen for a while. Deep divers sometimes use breathing gases like heliox [wikipedia.org] with little or no n


          • Thanks for the reply. I wasn't criticizing (sheesh, I had to actually look up the correct spelling for that word), just pointing out a great page. I've done my share of work in the design of cryo oxygen and nitrogen plants, so it's a bit of a pet subject of mine.
      • Most spacecraft are certainly not 100% oxygen.

        I suggest you look up "Apollo 1" as to why that is.

        Space Shuttle, as an example, is 20% oxygen, 80% nitrogen, much like earth.

        • I suggest you look up "Apollo 1" as to why that is.

          Read my post again. I explicitly mentioned Apollo 1.

          As I understand it, the big problem with Apollo 1 was that it had 100% oxygen ... at over one atmosphere [wikipedia.org]. Had they used 100% oxygen and 1/4 or so atmosphere, like used in space, the fire would not have burned out of control like that.

          Space Shuttle, as an example, is 20% oxygen, 80% nitrogen, much like earth.

          Looks like you're right [msn.com] but the space suits [pbs.org] certainly don't. (I guess overpressure

      • indeed, the biggest danger would be the bends and lung expansion.
        Nasa got some info about it here [nasa.gov]

      • Re:Glove, what glove? (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Kelbear ( 870538 )
        IANA (I am not anything), and I'm not asking this to be a smart-ass. Just want to be clear since the internet can obscure meaning in text. I'm actually curious and this is kind of a basic question the rest of us "not anythings" will want to know.

        What are the advantages of putting a human outside the ship rather than a robot with various tools and sensors/cameras?

        It seems like this problem of keeping the human alive and capable outside the ship is difficult. How much would we stand to lose by using a robot

    • Re:Glove, what glove? (Score:4, Informative)

      by corngrower ( 738661 ) on Sunday July 24, 2005 @10:02PM (#13153167) Journal
      Although space is indeed a vacuum, this doesn't mean that an uncovered hand won't either gain or lose heat. Heat is also gained and lost through radiation. The side of your hand facing the sun will over a few minutes get very very warm, while the side not facing the sun will get very very cold. A thin reflective coating solves most of this problem. (That's why the glass liner in thermos bottles is reflectively coated.)


      Now, the thing with the vacuum. Ever give someone a hickey, or been given a hickey? If you're planning to be out in that vacuum for more than a minute or two, I'ld suggest some kind of pressure suit. It doesn't have to be at one atmosphere, probably 2/3 or 1/2 atmosphere pressure would be ok. The trick is to design a glove so that the fingers don't want to pop straight because of the pressure inside. You want to be able to move your fingers with not too much difficulty. So basically you want a glove that fits snugly around the fingers, and such that when a finger is bent, the glove does not change much in volume.

    • Anybody else smell a Mythbusters episode in the works? We all know how well Adam does with vacuums.

    • Re:Glove, what glove? (Score:4, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 24, 2005 @10:39PM (#13153323)
      Now, the pressure inside your arm is one atmosphere, and the pressure outside is zero, so gases would begin to want to exit your arm, liquids will slowly turn to gases, tissues would expand, yes, but NOT EXPLOSIVELY.

      In another forum, a long, long time ago, I recall someone talking about an experiment at a university on the effect of vacuum on exposed skin. I believe they were doing some research on low-pressure space suits.

      They built a small vacuum chamber with an arm-sized hole surrounded by a pressure cuff. Someone put their arm through the hole, the cuff was expanded to seal around their arm and the chamber was pumped down to a reasonable vacuum.

      The result was basically nothing. No pain, no significant swelling, nothing.

      IIRC, they stopped after about 15 minutes because nothing was happening.

      The conclusion was that undamaged skin makes a decent air-tight, water-tight, ummm, skin.

      Seems like a pretty simple experiment if anyone was interested in replicating it.

    • Now, the pressure inside your arm is one atmosphere, and the pressure outside is zero, so gases would begin to want to exit your arm, liquids will slowly turn to gases, tissues would expand, yes, but NOT EXPLOSIVELY.

      Isn't this the exact situation that divers face with decompression sickness? Okay, so your arm wouldn't explode, but getting the bends isn't much fun either. Wouldn't the nitrogen in your bloodstream start bubbling?

      • No, as you dive deeper and have more pressure exerted on you, your body stores more nitrogen in your blood to counteract this. Unfortunately, as you surface, your body cant get rid of this as fast as you can surface, so you need to decompress to allow the nitrogen to be scrubbed from your blood and breathed out. If you are at standard pressure to start with, you dont have this extra nitrogen to begin with, and end up with very little in your blood.
    • Fighter pilots are exposed to very low ambient pressure (hence need to breath 100% oxygen). I think they use the concept of a skinsuit -- heavy duty tight spandex to reinforce skin and reduce moisture loss.

      I see this as particularly suitable for small diameter closures like gloves -- not much force to hold in. Gloves generating 5 psia hoop stress would only need 5-10 lb force per running inch. Not like keeping a blasted helmet on that might take 500 lb! Or waist closure that is even more (they must have

      • Umm their suits are designed to keep blood from pooling in their limbs, not to deal with low air pressure.
        • Yes, fighter pilot Gee suits also have constrictors. I believe these are pneumatically operated, relatively high pressure and uncomfortable even for the short periods of activation.

    • Space is a complete vaccuum, just like the kind in thermos bottles, and it's a VERY good thermal insulant. If your arm is at 37C, and you stick it in the best insulant possible, it will remain at 37C.

      Heat is also gained and lost through radiation - so any skin exposed to the sun will rapidly be burned (because of the unfiltered UV) while getting heating. Any skin in shadow will lose heat by radiation.

      In addition, the moisture in the upper layers of skin will be boiling away - carrying away more heat.

    • Space is a complete vaccuum, just like the kind in thermos bottles, and it's a VERY good thermal insulant. If your arm is at 37C, and you stick it in the best insulant possible, it will remain at 37C.

      Vacuum prevents heat from being conducted away. It doesn't prevent heat from being radiated away. (And a good thing too, if you consider the Sun an important heat source.) That's why thermoses have silver insides. I don't remember enough physics to calculate how much heat a bare arm radiates, but it's certa

    • Re:Glove, what glove? (Score:3, Informative)

      by dougmc ( 70836 )

      Honestly, what would happen if an astronaut just stuck his naked arm out from an airlock into outer space?

      To comment on this again, what would happen to his had is probably going to be similar to what happened to Joseph Kittinger [wikipedia.org]'s hand when the pressure seal on his glove failed at 102,000 feet. He lost the use of his hand after a short period of near vacuum, and it hurt, but it did recover once he made it back down on the ground.

      More on the story here [rb-29.net], and google will find you more if you search

  • They really... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 24, 2005 @09:29PM (#13152989)
    I see NASA has really thrown down the gauntlet with this challenge!

  • Why Bother? (Score:2, Funny)

    by Dausha ( 546002 )
    I have it on good authority that it really isn't that cold in space. I IM with a fellow who was recently involved in penetrating DoD networks using 3l3t skillz who said they have conclusive data that the average temperature in space is 68 degrees Fahrenheit. Mind you, it's a little colder in winter and a little warmer in summer. I figure a pair of shorts and a Hawaiian shirt should suffice for most days.

    So, why not just use the same leather work gloves we use on Earth? Or, is this just another way for NASA

  • If air is the problem... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    It seems like the big problem with the gloves is maintaining ability to move easily and with dexterity while containing air against the vacuum of space. Would it be possible to make a glove that has no air between the glove and the skin, and therefore doesn't need pressure containment? The glove would need to provide insulation against cold. To do that it could have a closed-cell insulator that's vacuum-capable, or it could even have some active electric heating. The glove also has to provide a barrier
    • That sounds like an excellent idea! I'm no scientist, but I'm sure that a fluid with even a low viscocity would hold itself together in a vacuum much better than air. Somebody correct me if I'm wrong (please!) but I think you have a great idea there and maybe you should follow up on it or contact somebody or something. Too bad you posted as AC =P.

  • $250k? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by JanneM ( 7445 ) on Sunday July 24, 2005 @09:52PM (#13153124) Homepage
    How about designing a really good glove solving all the current issues, patent every aspect of the design to h*ll and back, and then sell the exclusive patent rights to a Chinese conglomerate for at least ten times those $250k?

    Hey, if the patent system wasn't meant to be used in that way, it wouldn't have been designed to allow it, right?
    • Very simple. The government cannot be held liable for the tort of patent infringement. Instead, the infringement is treated as an eminent domain taking and you are entitled to just compensation for the use and/or manufacturing rights confiscated by the government under 28 USC 1498 [cornell.edu]. In this case, since the government is both the abrogator and the only potential customer that they are confiscating, you are thus entitled to be compensated a fair market value for the products that they use; and since the sol

  • I don't know about you guys (Score:4, Funny)

    by squarefish ( 561836 ) * on Sunday July 24, 2005 @09:52PM (#13153127)
    but it get's lonely up there I'd definitely need a build-in lotion dispenser.
    -:)

  • glove smovve (Score:4, Insightful)

    by djupedal ( 584558 ) on Sunday July 24, 2005 @10:05PM (#13153182)
    Forget gloves...put the arm and hand into a hardened waldo and let a full synthetic appendage do the work.

    Having something as fragile as the human hand, inside something as complicated as what is being proposed, isn't a solution.
    • I think the kind of apparatus you're talking about exists already in one-man extreme depth suits (the kind of things which are machined from a block of aluminum). The "hands" of the suit are one-thumb/two fingers waldos (essentially a mechanical translation rig inside the suit). It gives an approximation of the movement and dexterity of the users hands. And like other deep-sea dexterity instruments it uses a sound with a variable pitch and volume to represent the amount of pressure the user is applying. An

    • Re:glove smovve (Score:4, Insightful)

      by DerekLyons ( 302214 ) <fairwater@@@gmail...com> on Monday July 25, 2005 @05:04AM (#13154588) Homepage
      Forget gloves...put the arm and hand into a hardened waldo and let a full synthetic appendage do the work.
      If there was a waldo as nimble and versatile as the human hand, along with the appropriate tactile feedback system - that would be a damm fine idea.

      But there isn't.

  • What I would really be excited about is some competition for a replacement for the shuttle fleet (before you get started, I understand that lots of hard science has gone on in the shuttle missions) so we can get out from the earths shadow. Get people fascinated in space again.

  • NASA's strategy for development (Score:4, Insightful)

    by mark_hill97 ( 897586 ) <{masterofshadows} {at} {gmail.com}> on Sunday July 24, 2005 @10:15PM (#13153232)
    Lately I'm finding myself enjoying NASA's strategy for developing technology. By rewarding the "discoverer" they get top quality product, for minimal investment and risk of shady contractors. I wish more of our government branches would do this.
  • The worlds largest compiler of space age materials!

  • Look at motorcycle gloves. (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    As far as protection and flexibility go, these are problems that have been faced here in Earth with motorcycle gloves. Two of the more extreme "gauntlet" style product families are from Icon [rideicon.com] and the Teknic [teknicgear.com].

    The design requirements here are, of course, to allow the rider the agility to operate motorcycle controls - and to protect the hand and fingers against hitting the road at high speed.

    In space it's more about protection from heat extremes and against handling sharp objects (possibly exposed metal edges)
  • I give you the Mickey-inspired soluting glove:
    http://www.ebaumsworld.com/nicepark.html [ebaumsworld.com]

  • Regolith (Score:2, Funny)

    by pete-classic ( 75983 )
    I've been looking for a three syllable word for "dirt". Thanks FleaPlus!

    -Peter

  • why glove (Score:5, Interesting)

    by mattr ( 78516 ) <mattr&telebody,com> on Sunday July 24, 2005 @11:04PM (#13153445) Homepage Journal
    At the risk of sounding silly and with my hubris level ratched up real high? I'd like to suggest a couple alternatives which might be combined.

    1. Mittens (less work I think per finger, more room for heating/cooling lines, less fabric and surface area). Also, enough surface area to be able to bind magnetically to tools maybe, and everyone knows mittens are warmer.

    2. Robotic waldo claws, titanium and plastic hand simulacra and radical tentacles (as another poster also recommended waldos). Keeping the hand inside the end of the arm with a metal/rubber waldo attached to the outside (making your arms a bit longer basically) would have some definite advantages. First, you don't have to worry about puncturing your glove, you can get more strength into the waldo than your muscles provide, no pressure to work against, could be controlled by someone else, you could have more than two waldos coming out of your suit (either you multitask between them or you get someone to operate others), they could be shaped like tentacles or wrenches or whatever is best for space work, you can use materials best for space work without having to worry about bendability, temperature, or radiation protection, and you can use very thin or tiny waldo elements scaled down from your hand for tiny places, with mechanical aids adding precision (i.e. lock to an axis, etc.). Finally, consider that while you could just imagine having a single metal hand stuck at the end of a lengthened arm, looking like a deep sea diver's suit, it is also possible to imagine a plasticine hand virtually identical to that of man, but made with titanium bones and superplastic muscles. Considering that evolution and our brains have gotten this far with the current design, it may be best to simply use the same design but beef it up for outer space. If well integrated with the astronaut with advanced haptics technology, it could become like a "ghost hand" and very intuitive to use with fine control. Lastly, about those tentacles. Well yes, space anime does make good use of tentacles, and Doctor Octopus likes them, but I'm thinking that outer space might indeed be like the deep sea in that a large number of highly deformable tentacles could be extremely useful, if the mental barriers to efficient control can be overcome. Certainly it could be possible to mimic a hand with a bundle of fine tentacles, but I am mainly thinking about being able to grip and hold in place multiple large objects, hold oneself down so you don't float away when you try to screw something down, etc. If you could imagine yourself to be more of a fanciful creature from the undersea world than a landlubber biped, you might be able to imagine some improvements. Personally I like the idea of a utility tentacle that will grab onto secured parts to steady you when you are about to float away, and perhaps a couple additional ones that you can use to orient one or two parts in relation to your body while you are working on them.

    3. muscle magnification. As someone said was posted earlier which I didn't know. If you have motors in your gloves they could detect where your are trying to move it and then supply more strength. Apparently the original post mentioned nerve signal sensing though I don't know if that's necessary. Also, use of memory metal and other active materials might be useful, and maybe a glove that makes it easier to (ratchet) close than open might be possible.

    A combination of the above ideas might be useful, for example if you have a mitten and pull out the area between thumb and fingers to make it a convex box (maybe narrowing wrist to maintain pressure), you can then freely move your fingers and wrist to control a waldo. The movement of the hand could in fact be sensed by laser scanners built into the glove interior, possibly augmented if needed for precision work by having the astronaut first put on a silk glove with barcode-like patterns all over it and a non-slip interior coating. For manhandling big heavy things, coping with tiny things, or makin
  • I was just reading "Man on the Moon" which seems to be the book that the "From Earth To Moon" miniseries. I was surprised to read accounts of how the astronauts had problems continual pinching of their fingers in the spacesuit gloves, they said their fingers got bruised so badly that prolonged EVA caused them to turn black. Now that sounded horrible.
  • What about this [retrogoodness.com] glove?
  • http://www.shadow.org.uk/index.shtml [shadow.org.uk] ? Of course this thing is pneumatic and not gonna work in deep space out of the box.
  • This competition is exactly the way the government should sponsor R&D. By funding only the winner of a competition, maybe with bonuses awarded for other "valuable" contributions that don't win. Which are purchased by the government after passing the publicly spec'ed test, including beating the other competitors. In public view. That way, the people (represented by the government) get to pick a winner, rather than just subsidize a bunch of corporations, mocking both capitalism and the republic.

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