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NASA

NASA's Commercial Spacesuit Program Just Hit a Major Snag (arstechnica.com) 83

Posted by EditorDavid from the what-not-to-wear dept.
Slashdot reader Required Snark shared this article from Ars Technica: Almost exactly two years ago, as it prepared for the next generation of human spaceflight, NASA chose a pair of private companies to design and develop new spacesuits. These were to be new spacesuits that would allow astronauts to both perform spacewalks outside the International Space Station as well as walk on the Moon as part of the Artemis program. Now, that plan appears to be in trouble, with one of the spacesuit providers — Collins Aerospace — expected to back out, Ars has learned. It's a blow for NASA, because the space agency really needs modern spacesuits.

NASA's Apollo-era suits have long been retired. The current suits used for spacewalks in low-Earth orbit are four decades old. "These new capabilities will allow us to continue on the International Space Station and allows us to do the Artemis program and continue on to Mars," said the director of Johnson Space Center, Vanessa Wyche, during a celebratory news conference in Houston two years ago. The two winning teams were led by Collins Aerospace and Axiom Space, respectively. They were eligible for task orders worth up to $3.5 billion — in essence NASA would rent the use of these suits for a couple of decades. Since then, NASA has designated Axiom to work primarily on a suit for the Moon and the Artemis Program, and Collins with developing a suit for operations in-orbit, such as space station servicing...

The agency has been experiencing periodic problems with the maintenance of the suits built decades ago, known as the Extravehicular Mobility Unit, which made its debut in the 1980s. NASA has acknowledged the suit has exceeded its planned design lifetime. Just this Monday, the agency had to halt a spacewalk after the airlock had been de-pressurized and the hatch opened due to a water leak in the service and cooling umbilical unit of Tracy Dyson's spacesuit. As a result of this problem, NASA will likely only be able to conduct a single spacewalk this summer, after initially planning three, to complete work outside the International Space Station.
Collins designed the original Apollo suits, according to the article. But a person familiar with the situation told Ars Technica that "Collins has admitted they have drastically underperformed and have overspent" on their work, "culminating in a request to be taken off the contract or renegotiate the scope and their budget."

Ironically, the company's top's post on their account on Twitter/X is still a repost of NASA's February announcement that they're "getting a nextx-generation spacesuit" developed by Collins Aerospace, and saying that the company "recently completed a key NASA design milestone aboard a commercial microgravity aircraft."

NASA's post said they needed the suit "In order to advance NASA's spacewalking capabilities in low Earth orbit and to support continued maintenance and operations at the Space Station."
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NASA's Commercial Spacesuit Program Just Hit a Major Snag More

NASA's Commercial Spacesuit Program Just Hit a Major Snag

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  • They can manage without a suit, it's not like they can't rely on the safety of a fully functional return capsule built by our most competent aerospace company.

  • Put some research dollars into this... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Todd Knarr ( 15451 ) on Sunday June 30, 2024 @03:27AM (#64589449) Homepage
    MIT BioSuit [mit.edu]

    • I don't disagree with this but I wish to note that it is still in the early prototyping phase. Even if research began today, it's still a decade off at best.

      • It's been under development for a decade or more now, so a lot of the research is already on the books. They've got a working prototype showing that it works as far as mobility and maintaining pressure goes.

        • Well I certainly doubt that NASA is ignoring the spin-off companies because it secretly doesn't want a good space suit.

  • Of America's decline.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by 2TecTom ( 311314 )

      not just America, our global civilization

      classism and corruption are worldwide

  • At least they were honest (Score:5, Interesting)

    by quonset ( 4839537 ) on Sunday June 30, 2024 @05:36AM (#64589543)

    "Collins has admitted they have drastically underperformed and have overspent" on their work, "culminating in a request to be taken off the contract or renegotiate the scope and their budget."

    While disappointing, at least they admitted they're not performing as expected and rather than keep taking taxpayer money, stopped the bleeding.

    • I think you're being generous here. I read it as they are bleeding but are worried they won't get paid for continuing to bleed.

  • Is SpaceX's suit worthy?

    • 'Is SpaceX's suit worthy?'

      It's not expensive enough, tax-dollars have to be spread amongst many senators.

    • It's as worthy as any other untested 3D rendering or marketing poster.

      It has a long way to go.

      • The suits do exist. Here's a photo [cnn.com] of them being worn in space, albeit inside the ship.

        The first space walks with the suit may be as early as next month [observer.com] (July 2024):

        These suits will make their debut during the first of three Polaris missions - Polaris Dawn - scheduled to take place this summer (at the earliest). This mission will be commanded by Isaacman and will see a Crew Dragon launched from Launch Complex 39A atop a Falcon 9 rocket. The crew will spend five days in orbit and attempt to reach the high

        • Thing is, their suit right now is umbilical based - a line carrying the oxygen and taking the CO2 back to the Dragon. The space walk planned is basically stick your head out and look around. Question is in terms of having the ability to go further afield where that doesn't work and you need those systems self contained, and, what the endurance of these is if you are actually doing work outside the ship vs taking in the views (both standing up to the wear and tear, and time you can be out of the ship and o

          • KISS - keep it straight and simple. Umbilicals are simple. It is essentially just a fan to send station air to the suit and back.

            • That's how the other spacesuits were developed: first a suit with an umbilical; then the umbilical leads to a backpack instead of the ship.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by necro81 ( 917438 )
          The photo [cnn.com] you linked to shows people in flight suits. These aren't that different than the orange flight suits [google.com] worn by Shuttle astronauts. They exist in case of a pressurization failure during liftoff or return, and some survivability out in the water.

          That's very different than a suit meant to be worn outside the spacecraft. The upcoming Polaris mission will test that. It differs from the flight suit by, for instance, having some rigid structures (like flexible ball bearings) through the joints, and
          • Perhaps the observer article I linked is stretching the definition of "evolution" because it says:

            According to the companyâ(TM)s press statement, the new suits are an evolution of the Intravehicular Activity (IVA) suit currently used by Dragon crews. This included the crew of the Demo-2 mission, which validated the flight system and was the first crewed mission to take off from U.S. soil since the retirement of the Space Shuttle in 2011.

            It was also the suit worn by the Inspiration4 crew as they becam

  • or Just tell them the ceo and bean counters (Score:3)

    by Growlley ( 6732614 ) on Sunday June 30, 2024 @07:19AM (#64589671)
    are going to be first out an air lock door wearing them,

  • Am i missing something? (Score:3)

    by zmollusc ( 763634 ) on Sunday June 30, 2024 @08:28AM (#64589801)

    In 2019 they decide to do a manned moon landing in 2024, in 2022 they commission some spacesuits. Shouldn't that have been picked up earlier? I can't think of any Apollo moonwalks which were done without spacesuits.

  • There are old concepts to revisit (Score:3)

    by Baron_Yam ( 643147 ) on Sunday June 30, 2024 @10:15AM (#64589953)

    Why a space suit for space 'walks' when you could have a microship?

    It looks a lot less awesome, but a box with a domed port for vision and a couple of arms on it would be easy to get into, astronauts could wipe their faces and scratch itches, use a full computer interface, access a drink pouch, etc. One size would truly fit all, astronauts would adust their position on the ship's interior with simple Velcro straps.

    Thermal regulation is also a lot easier when you don't need to run pipes all over the astronaut's body. You just use a fan on the ship's internal air.

    And a real bonus is less need for an airlock - the back of the ship can directly mount to a port for access. You might put the docking room behind a bulkhead just in case of a leak, but generally you wouldn't be worrying about cycling air.

    • This reminds me of a short story from years ago where suits like that were used for EVA work outside a space station in LEO. (No, I don't remember the name any more.) Somebody was using one of those suits and heard some squeaking from the "bottom" of the suit, near his feet. Concerned that there was a mechanical problem, he looked at his feet and saw the station's mascot and her latest litter of kittens. Cats will consider the weirdest places good to have their kittens, even in space.

  • Suits Need Evolution--Not Revolution (Score:3)

    by BrendaEM ( 871664 ) on Sunday June 30, 2024 @10:38AM (#64590009) Homepage
    The Apollo-era suits worked as a system. Trying something radically different means that there would be a whole new range of problems. Just because someone claims "New and Improved!" doesn't mean it will be better. Improved may be better; new may be worse. There are human lives at stake--not just someone's bottom line. Lastly, some of the suit proposals, I see are just copies of Russian suits with ridged backs. If you study the Apollo program, you will see that Playtex's flexible suit design one, and won for a reason.

  • We LITERALLY did this work with slide rules 50 years ago.

    Why can't we accomplish it today? Simple question.

  • Russia doing something right (Score:3)

    by Tablizer ( 95088 ) on Sunday June 30, 2024 @11:45AM (#64590151) Journal

    Russia uses incremental improvements to keep costs down and reliability up. Overall it works.

    US's throw-it-out-and-start-over mentality is NOT working on space shit. With consumer products, consumers are (unwitting) guinea pigs and eventually help the company work out the kinks via mass trial and error.

    But the "error" part is very bad in space. In space, everyone can see you fail.

    We should have kept Apollo with incremental tweaks. It would have been overall cheaper than the Shuttle et. al. even without reuse. If a mission needs a bigger crew, then launch 2. When the commercial satellite launchers perfect re-use, THEN use it on manned missions. Let satellites be the guinea pigs, not humans.

    Just tweak the old suits a bit, they are time-tested.

    Throw-it-and-start-over has also fucked up IT, at least ordinary internal CRUD, but that's a rant for another day. Learn from my lawn while getting off it!

  • They did some nice work about 100 years ago.

  • 2030 or thereabouts?

    If so why are they looking to make more spacesuits for use outside the ISS?

    If commercial space stations are going to be build, shouldn't the commercial companies come up with their own space suits (following whatever NASA standards - mobility, connectors, capability, etc)?

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