MIT Team Designs a New, Sleek, Skintight Spacesuit 383
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
Slashcode predicts ... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Slashcode predicts ... (Score:5, Funny)
Turns out, it only works if you wear it in a robotic cat.
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So tell me again what you get when you take 5 grad students with a Lance Armstrong fetish and an affection for NASA, and how does it better society?
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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But why .... (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:But why .... (Score:4, Interesting)
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With the fist of an angry god! (Score:2, Funny)
What more could a nerd ask for. I mean really, she designs
space suits.
Re:With the fist of an angry god! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:But why .... (Score:5, Funny)
Somebody misread it as Thatcher, and just ran with it.
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uh oh (Score:2, Funny)
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- I seriously doubt you're going to space.
- This will likely be the bottom most layer in a series of materials while spacewalking.
- When NOT spacewalking, people would likely wear uniforms or other apparel over this.
Sorry to destroy hundreds of nerds' dreams.Re:uh oh (Score:4, Funny)
no problem (Score:4, Funny)
Neat... (Score:2, Insightful)
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I mean, haven't you seen Wrath of Khan? That guy was bad-ass.
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Humanity has, effectively, radically altered it's evolution. We are no longer selecting for the fittest in quite the same way as was done while we were evolving. Now it's more like survival of the richest and most prolific. It's hard to say what effect that will have over the long haul. Back in the first part of the last century, this was a huge worry that gave rise to the ideas that lead to Hitler's genocidal campaigns. Most people don't realize
obligatory (Score:5, Funny)
Sci-Fi correlation (Score:3, Interesting)
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Well at least there is something to see here, but move along anyway...
Re:Sci-Fi correlation (Score:5, Informative)
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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The future is now! (Score:5, Funny)
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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: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.
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This gets at my question, which is why pressurization is needed at all. Diving from 1 to 2 atmospheres is no big deal. Why is going from 1 to 0 such a problem?
One really big issue is breathing. With atmospheric pressure of 0, there's nothing in your lungs. To survive, you need a minimum of about 0.05 ppO2[*], which means that even if you're breathing pure O2 you have to have at least 1/20th of an atmosphere of pressure, or you'll die of oxygen deprivation. You need more than that if you're going to do any useful work, because the rate of O2 perfusion is proportional to the ppO2 that you're breathing. According to the article, the expected minimum level is
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The body sized hickey.
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.
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Yeah, but it's not from a failure to operate your diaphragm; it's from the fact that 14.7 psi of air pressure (from the open end of the tube) is less than the 19 psi pushing in on your lungs. They can't inflate because the air you're breathing in doesn't have enough pressure to inflate them.
Wrong. THere's a 16 pound difference you can't over come with your lungs. See above answer.
And, ye
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Just speculatin'...
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.
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)
Re:300 lbs (Score:5, Funny)
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?
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.
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.
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Mass "becomes" weight in presence of another mass, due to gravity. And would be measured in kilopond (kp) [wikipedia.org]. But ever heard anyone say that? I mean, outside a physics lab?
So you can imagine how tired I am lately. That friggin' huge lump that Earth is surely weighs me down.
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
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I don't remember the exact costs, but isn't payload charged something like $20,000/pound?
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.
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Particularly since coagulation requires the presence of air in order to occur. Your wound wouldn't clot.
Though, the puncture they might be worried about would be pinpoint-sized, small enough to get through the suit but losing enough energy to be embedded in it. OTOH, if you're wearing an ultra-light pressure garment, you could wear a flak jacket and you would get your durability back while keeping a mass STILL smaller than that of current suits.
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.
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Blood has clotted in space before (Score:3, Informative)
While this isn't the best scenario, it's not as scary as you would think.
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As far as wounds, I'd think that anything characterized as a gaping wound would pose a more immediate hazard then exposure of said wound to microgravity though perhaps the reinforcing strips could serve as attachment points for light tourniquets.
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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
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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
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That's just one thing that the advocates of skinsuits would rather you didn't think about.
That's another thing they don't want you to think too hard about.
The fact is, the actual pressure bladder is a fairly sm
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More important.. (Score:5, Funny)
Oh No.... (Score:3, Funny)
Great, commercialize it (Score:2)
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
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Air Pressure (Score:3, Interesting)
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If that means "too cool" then a sweater or other insulation should be used. As long as it breaths. Gore-Tex is wonderful stuff.
Hoopy Froods (Score:2)
Of course, this development will open the way for space fashion. Designers will now be able to dress up the outside of astronauts, without it looking like a 1950s monster movie. Superfluous garments that don't constrain us will now be possible, and we'll start competing with them out on the space cameras.
It'll finally look a lot more like the SF movies that have inspired most of us to care about humans in spac
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Yes, you can see the shape of her butt. I predict this will get near-unanimous approval.
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.
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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
head protection? (Score:2)
Re:head protection? (Score:5, Informative)
This is good news. (Score:2)
Yes, call me a troll. After all, US foreign policy has done so much for world peace in the past few years. Those billions were well spent, boys.
How do you put it on? (Score:2)
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it won't hurt it will just feel snug.
Reminds me of Traveler (Score:2)
Same principle was used on Mars in Heinlein's Red Planet.
Is the pressure the only thing? (Score:2)
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
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)
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...
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...)
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The HP-35 calculator: The calculator NO ONE borrows more than once!
"Hey, where's the EQUALS key?"
Right now, to the left of my keyboard, is my HP-45 calculator, the follow on to the classic HP-35.
It's about 35 years old and still works like new.
feels like i'm wearing... (Score:3, Funny)
Stupid sexy Flanders!
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Stupid sexy Flanders... (Score:5, Funny)
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Dr Seuss wrote sci-fi?