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Space Suits: The Next Generation
Hundreds of people have already signed up for suborbital flights into space through Virgin Galactic, one of several firms that plan to offer such trips by 2010. But what are all those space tourists going to wear?
A new company called Orbital Outfitters is already at work on a space suit specifically designed for suborbital tourism. Last week, Orbital announced that it had signed a contract with XCor Aerospace, of Mojave, CA; the companies will work together on finalizing a space-suit design and other safety equipment. Orbital Outfitters will manufacture and own the suits, which will be leased to XCor.
Interesting point is that any development of Mars or the Moon will need an increase in available spacesuits and this is a problem with suits tending to be individualised pieces of high tech engineering.
Chan eil mi aig a bheil ùidh ann an gleidheadh an status quo; Tha mi airson cur às e.
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My question is whether a pressurized space suit would be needed at all. I think NASA needs to study shrink-wrap type suits. Such a suit would simply keep the body from expanding into space with shrink-wrap. Marshall T. Savage covers shrink-wrap type space suits in his book, The Millennial Project. A shrink-wrap suit would also allow more flexibility. Comparable to wearing a wet suit. Also, there are no joints in a shrink-wrap type suit. Joints have been a major problem for designing a Mars suit, because martian dust tends to get in and wear the joint out. It may seem surprising but such a suit may even have holes for the hands. Tests have been done where patients hands were exposed to complete vacuums. Apparently, no damage had occured, and the patients didn't feel any ill effects. There was a very controversal scene in 2001: A Space Odyssey, where one of the characters was exposed to space without his helmet on. While humans might not get away with this amount of exposure, as the fluid behind the eye would have likely pushed the eyes out, I beleive humans can expose their ams and legs to complete vacuums. For how long, I'm not sure. Does anyone have any more information on the vacuum exposure tests?
You and hands legs will swell and start bleeding.
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I have noticed that all space suits are bulky and cumbersome to wear in space. But what about on Mars where obviously the scientists will have to bend and squat to pick up samples or get to get a closer look at what they are looking at.
My idea comes from medival times when banded mail armor was used.
Essentially the armor was hundreds of small bands of metal or wood laced together providing flexibility in movement. This same principle could be used in a suit design.
By using small bands of semi rigid material held together with material that would stretch would allow for the scientist to have greater flexibility in their movement. Although not a tailor, my grandma was a seamstress and when I was younger i enjoyed seeing how she had her patterns for what she was making, laid out on her table. Being inquisitive and too her dismay i would ask question after question about what she was doing. So I know this part of the suit will work.
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My design for a skinsuit would be like a very wide belt with buckles, around the stationary parts of the body (chest, femur area, calf, upper arm, lower arm. Helmet attached to body by some sort of spray. Regular spacesuit joints.
-Josh
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My idea on another forum was disposable overalls (similar to the type forensic experts use) to protect the expensive suit from Mars dust abrasion and to help protect the internal habitat environment from dust pollution.
Such suits could be very light. Let's say 50 grams. 20 per kG or 5000 per 250 kgs. It might be worth taking them along for the ride if they did really prolong the lives of the space suits and make dust control easier.
Let's Go to Mars...Google on: Fast Track to Mars blogspot.com
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Would a mars suit need to be heated at all? The temperature may be -60, but the atmosphere's only 0.005 bar, so what's going to convect the heat away from the suit? The astronaut's skin should supply a lot more heat to the suit than the thin atmosphere can carry away. So as long as they don't touch the freezing rocks with their bare hands (which they won't), they'll be fine, won't they?
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There are some studies out there for passively cooled suits. The main problem is that the hands and feet can cool very quickly if you stop moving or walk into a shadow or if the wind speed picks up, etc.
Fan of [url=http://www.red-oasis.com/]Red Oasis[/url]
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In that ballpark. Lower if you can put together a workable "spot heating on demand" system - I saw one proposal powered by alpha-emitting RTGs at negligible extra mass.
Fan of [url=http://www.red-oasis.com/]Red Oasis[/url]
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Mechanical counterpressure really is the way to go, since mobility is crucial for real exploration/investigation capability. The thing holding it back is materials not capable of 0.33 atmosphere mechanical squeeze. Unnecessary requirement, all that is needed is 0.2 to 0.25 atmosphere, and that was first done successfully back about 1969.
GW Johnson
GW Johnson
McGregor, Texas
"There is nothing as expensive as a dead crew, especially one dead from a bad management decision"
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I recall a previous discussion which ended up with the thought that we don't really need thick space gloves on Mars...We could probably get by on light mittens on a warm afternoon. I think that would be a definite plus.
Let's Go to Mars...Google on: Fast Track to Mars blogspot.com
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Well, the "suit" back in 1969 was 6 or 7 layers of porous panty-hose material over torso and limbs. It does not have to be one piece. There was a breathing bag for tidal volume, a restraint vest over that, and a helmet tied to the suit. The gloves and booties were 2 or 3 layers of that same kind of stuff. This stuff got put on the web in Paul Webb's site about the "elastic spacesuit". My dad thinks he knew Webb in the mid 1950's when he (my dad) was designing the F-8 Crusader. Webb was an aerospace medicine type who worked in high altitude crew escape for decades. Somebody at MIT is working mechanical compression suits, but to a 0.33 atmosphere specification from NASA. Today's materials cannot quite meet that.
Other stuff I read said the edema / swelling that hits unprotected body parts takes around 15-20 minutes to occur. That means you could doff the compression gloves and work barehanded in vacuum for maybe 10 minutes at a time, before you have to re-don the compression gloves. The only real worry would be thermal injuries from touching very hot or cold objects. Harder to do with a gas balloon suit, but not impossible. The necessary wrist sealing was on the gas balloon pressure suit Joseph Kittinger wore for his balloon jump in 1960. His right glove failed to pressurize, but he flew the mission anyway. That was several hours exposure to vacuum. It swelled up and was painful and useless, but returned to normal within hours of landing.
GW
GW Johnson
McGregor, Texas
"There is nothing as expensive as a dead crew, especially one dead from a bad management decision"
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My recollection was that bruising was likely to arise more in the soft tissue areas - e.g. stomach or thighs and that the finger tips would not be susceptible to pressure effects.
Let's Go to Mars...Google on: Fast Track to Mars blogspot.com
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Louis take my word for it as saturation divers can tell you pressure changes even to finger tips hurt and often lead to complete loss of feeling in those fingers. That is a very dangerous thing to happen. There is also the real possibility that Martian regolith will be extremely dangerous to exposed flesh and in all likehood extremely abrasive.
So we need a holy grail suit one that is light but tough and able to be donned without too much prebreathing and preperation and also still flexible with a long mission durability. Luckily since Apollo and even shuttle suits material science has improved so maybe we can get something.
Chan eil mi aig a bheil ùidh ann an gleidheadh an status quo; Tha mi airson cur às e.
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I'd guess that the thermal injury from cold is a bigger risk that the sharp abrasive characteristics. Up to about 10 and down to about 3, even pH is no real risk. We eat stuff that far from neutral all the time.
That being said, I think there is a lot of merit to a mechanical counterpressure suit made of separate pieces, whose gloves can be doffed in vacuum for several minutes at a time in safety. There is no substitute for handling a sample with your bare fingers, right there on site. It's a big piece of how we were made to sense things, after all.
GW
GW Johnson
McGregor, Texas
"There is nothing as expensive as a dead crew, especially one dead from a bad management decision"
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So a mechanical counterpressure suit, and body armor that you strap on over top?
Seems like you could make a relatively flimsy pressure suit, and just wear overgarments to prevent damage to the suit. Perhaps slip a wetsuit on directly over the mechanical pressure suit, which may add nominally to the effective pressure of the suit, and have velcro all over the wetsuit bit, to which kevlar gloves and sleeves and torso protection garments could be attached. Or you just put on a pair of slightly oversized normal work boots (oversized to accommodate the wetsuit and pressure suit thickness), and wear a long sleeved shirt, jeans, gloves, and a parka, with an oversized hood to fit your helmet?
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I think a good material to look at is stuff like Tyvec for the outermost Dust-protection layer, aka 'bunny suit'. Tyvec is extremely strong and tear resistant, thin and very light and also 'breathable' with respect to water vapor. A Breathable suit over an equally breathable Mechanical counter pressure suit would provide evaporative cooling to the Astronaut.
Despite what a lot of bad sci-fi has told you a person on Mars is not going to be cold, they are going to over-heat. The Atmosphere is a near vacuum and that makes a very good insulator. The Human body generates a massive amount of heat and we can only ever feel 'cold' when convection of dense air or water removes our body heat faster then we can make it. On Mars the only strong cooling will be conduction from direct contact with the cold surface regolith through the boots so these would likely be insulated or act as heat-sinks. But by far the best way to regulate temperature is evaporative cooling with the permeability of the suit being actively adjusted to match the wearers temperature and exertion. This would eliminate the need for active coolant water pumping and the associated heavy pumps, batteries and bulky tubing.
A material that change its permeability either in response to heat or to a weak electric current would be idea, electricity might even be generated by a thermovoltaic system utilizing the wearers waste heat, as the wearer heats up the voltage increases and this drives an increase in permeability and cooling.
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Think MCP-as-vacuum-protective underwear. Then add whatever coveralls and hats and gloves and boots you need for physical protection from heat, cold, and other hazards. It's exactly the same sort of outer clothing we use down here, as a matter of fact. The MCP rig does not need a cooling system: the tight cloth is porous, you sweat right through it into vacuum.
GW
GW Johnson
McGregor, Texas
"There is nothing as expensive as a dead crew, especially one dead from a bad management decision"
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IIRC, though, your sweat would freeze solid at some point, sealing your pores, or the suit... basically boiling until it froze... the fabric suit keeps your skin from exploding and rupturing blood vessels, but as the liquid sweat is able to wick through the fabric, it would evaporate until it froze solid... and then slowly sublimate... would this be quick enough to carry heat away? I'm thinking a couple of peltiers and a wee bit of insulation would be a halfway decent idea. a pound or two of peltier junctions and battery should be able to tweak a heat balance issue on the hottest/coolest excursions - maybe just two, plastered right to your lower back over the kidneys, or right under the arms for maximum heat transfer to/from the bloodstream.
I would agree, though, that given the non-michelin-man form factor, you wouldn't need the liquid cooled undergarment currently used on EVA suits.
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Take a look at what Paul Webb did ca. 1969 with the pantyhose-material MCP suit. It was a multi-piece garment, multiple layers. It was porous, non-gas-tight at all. The test subject sweated right through it, both in atmosphere tests and in the vacuum tank. They tested half an hour at simulated 87,000 ft, no ill effects, sweating through the garment with no ice formation.
The two mid-60's vacuum exposure accidents in NASA's vacuum facilities produced evaporative frost and frostbite injuries to wet tissues only. The mouth, nose, and eyes are at risk. Ordinary skin does not do that. Nor does it swell or burst (nor do the eyes), except in response to internal tissue edema, which takes 10 to 30 minute's exposure to set in.
Same results for the 3 cosmonauts who died in the Soyuz depressurization accident during reentry. 10 minutes vacuum exposure. No noticeable freezing injuries, no swelling of anything, just blue color from total anoxia. Non-rescusitatable. They tried. Just too long gone. About 1.5-2 minutes is it. Brain death too far gone.
GW
GW Johnson
McGregor, Texas
"There is nothing as expensive as a dead crew, especially one dead from a bad management decision"
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Fixed shifting issue and artifacts
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There is now memory material and new clothing design, something that can keep shape and even deal with impacts, fabric that can change from loose to tight elastic but at the same time wear Loose for ease of donning, materials science keeps expanding and growing. Working in a Mars suit is different to the ISS or the Moon, living on the surface creates several concerns for the human body. The suit will be different for the long trip compared to the suit on the surface.
There is now a future possibility things could be 3-D printed.
According to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Curiosity’s RAD data has revealed that using natural materials such as the rock and sediment on Mars could offer some protection from the ever-present space radiation.
https://www.republicworld.com/technolog … eport.html
Conversation with aerospace engineer about a new space suit design called SmartSuit with soft robotics and self-healing skin (WeMartians Podcast)
https://www.wemartians.com/podcasts/101 … az-artiles
Chinese Astronauts Wear 'New Generation' Spacesuits at Tiangong Space Station
'quote from article
According to a statement from China Manned Space, the astronauts wore a "new-generation homemade [extravehicular mobility unit] spacesuits."
end quote'
https://www.sciencetimes.com/articles/3 … cewalk.htm
‘Analog astronauts’ wearing Mars suits >>> article is behind a paywall but it shows a vid of an Israel team Mars suit experiment
it looks like it could be an international funded team doing research for one month, a 'D-Mars' training camp?
https://www.independent.co.uk/life-styl … 36750.html
Upcoming Moon missions spur the search for new spacesuits
https://news.yahoo.com/upcoming-moon-mi … 01233.html
Last edited by Mars_B4_Moon (2021-11-29 06:51:04)
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While working on the Email Outreach for today, I accidentally bumped this post from the early days of the forum.
The topic itself continued on for 65+ posts...
Hi!
First post here. The point Marshal Savage makes in his book "The Millienium Project" (one of my favourites!) is that skin itself is pretty tough stuff. He does mention the tensile strength, etc. but I cannot recall. The flexible rubber suits he mentions where to add an extra layer of external inward pressure, maintain regular blood flow, etc. He also mentions wearing tungsten body plates to reduce radiation exposure -+extra thick 'codpiece'. A helmet is required.
There is so much stuff in his book, I sometimes wonder if he is a nut or genius...
As Nasa doesn't seem too interested in sending people to Mars, a Mars mission could be done with old technology and China is developing fast has anyone considered the first person on Mars will be Chinese (possibly with a little help from Russia)? After they get someone in space next year maybe, then the moon, then a 'fast track' Mars mission...
I like the sound idea -someone has probably got this cracked as part of a Virtual Reality project.
Regards, Nick Outram.
Bump (th)
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They will launch two Saudi and also two Turkish, Ax-2 and Axiom Mission 3 to the ISS?
NASA is "renting" the suits
Ax-4 in mid-2024?
2025?
https://twitter.com/jeff_foust/status/1 … 9129689088
Axiom Space’s Mary Lynne Dittmar says at a Beyond Earth symposium this morning that the first Axiom module launch is now scheduled for late 2025. (It had been late 2024.) Will be followed in 6-8 months by a second module, a clone of the first.
Axiom Space reveals prototype spacesuit for Artemis astronauts on the moon
https://www.space.com/axiom-space-artem … s-revealed
Last edited by Mars_B4_Moon (2023-03-15 08:53:02)
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