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New Spacesuit Design

All Acting Regiment

04:56 / 17.07.07

In the 40 years that humans have been traveling into space, the suits they wear have changed very little. The bulky, gas-pressurized outfits give astronauts a bubble of protection, but their significant mass and the pressure itself severely limit mobility.

Dava Newman, a professor of aeronautics and astronautics and engineering systems at MIT, wants to change that.

Newman is working on a sleek, advanced suit designed to allow superior mobility when humans eventually reach Mars or return to the moon. Her spandex and nylon BioSuit is not your grandfather's spacesuit--think more Spiderman, less John Glenn.

Traditional bulky spacesuits "do not afford the mobility and locomotion capability that astronauts need for partial gravity exploration missions. We really must design for greater mobility and enhanced human and robotic capability," Newman says.

So this looks anything, but I'm damned if I know anything about spacesuits.

Quantum

16:51 / 17.07.07

It's a necessary step toward proper sci-fi suits, because it allows progression to the next advances e.g. a powered exoskeleton;

"Key to their design is the pattern of lines on the suit, which correspond to lines of non-extension (lines on the skin that don't extend when you move your leg). Those lines provide a stiff "skeleton" of structural support, while providing maximal mobility."

Once that's been standard for a few years and robotics/bionics has got better, we'll have powered suits that are flexible as superhero costumes. Then when space war comes they'll get big plates of armour on and we'll have proper power armour, huzzah!

jentacular dreams

14:46 / 18.07.07

This is a fantastic concept, and whilst theoretically compatible with a powered exoskeleton, I can't help but wonder whether they might go the other route and have it (at least partially) powered by movement? Either way, I suspect that the technology it inspires won't remain constrained to space suits for very long.

Evil Scientist

08:33 / 19.07.07

I notice there's no mention of the amount of radiation protection the suit provides. I understand that it might not be such an issue under the protection of a planetary atmosphere but don't the space-suits used EVA need to be bulky by necessity of the shielding, as well as the coolant/heating systems involved.

Still, it'd certainly make planetary exploration a little easier for those damn Mars-ies.

jentacular dreams

09:39 / 19.07.07

Well there's always the option of coupling a lighter version of traditional shielding with a magnetic or plasma shield, though obviously that would require a fair bit more technological development, as well as having notable power implications. There's also reinforced autoclaved polyethylene fibre, which is apparently both a reasonable rediation shield, and also a decent ballistic shield. It would be a lot stiffer than the flexible materials covered above, but maybe some sort of micro-mosaic pattern would prevent too much loss of mobility?

delta

14:49 / 20.07.07

I wonder if there's any scope for them to get together with these guys to add a shock absorbant layer.

D3o is a dilatant material, so when you shock it, it stiffens, but otherwise it remains flexible. It occurs to me that if someone wearing one of those suits falls off a small cliff on Mars the substantial tearing would probably kill them outright regardless of the impact at the bottom. D3o would maybe fix that problem.

There's work to make d3o anti-ballistic, amongst other applications. More info can be found at an article by the Sunday Herald.

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