“1978 suits” query in google image search actually brings out spacesuits on first page. And many other things. Enter at your own risk.
Remember that spacesuit glove competition? The follow-on, that would have gotten NASA prototypes for all new suits and paved the way for a COTS-like procurement of operational spacesuits, never got funded.
It’s a safe bet that Rand remembers, since the glove competition was proposed by Rand Simberg.
Ha! Thanks for reminding me!
35 year old suits? Well, hell. There’s your problem…
Never trust any space suit over 30…
The spacewalk ended short of its anticipated six-and-a-half-hour time frame when Mastracchio, the lead spacewalker, began complaining about chilly temperatures in his space suit… The 780-pound pump is about the size of a double-door refrigerator and difficult to handle, with plumbing full of toxic ammonia, The Associated Press reported. Flight controllers tried but failed to fix the bad valve through remote commanding.
Why do these space suits have the form they do? Form should follow function. The astronauts using the suits aboard the ISS are not using their feet for much more than a place to tether themselves. Nobody is going to use one of these suits on the moon.
I think it is time to rethink the whole concept of the spacesuit, at least for orbital applications. The movie 2001 showed astronauts using spacesuits and pods. Shouldn’t a spacesuit that is only used in orbit be a combination of the two?
35 year old suits? Are you kidding me?
When I heard they were having suit problems due to their age I was thinking 5-10 years.
35 year old suits are an absolute travesty.
Well, the basic design is that old. And perhaps the suits were originally manufactured that long ago. I do remember that the loss of suits on Columbia was a big hit to inventory, so by 2003, it must have been impossible (or mind-bogglingly expensive) to make new suits.
But remember, the suits were maintained by a group of technicians in Houston. Llike the orbiters, many improvements have been added, parts replaced, etc. Recall the addition of video cameras, SAFER units, etc.
On the gripping hand, one would think, however, that we could do better now. It’s possible that whatever suits are used for Orion will eventually find their way to ISS. But those are sounding to be variants of the shuttle launch and entry (“pumpkin”) suits, not anything fundamentally new.
I have always wondered about teperature control. Yes, the temprature in the shade is very low. On the other hand, space is essentially a giant thermos bottle, vacuum. Pretty good insulator. Shouldn’t be too hard to make a suit to retain heat. The problem would be getting rid of it. Sorry if this reveals my ignorance. Anyone care to enlighten me?
The vacuum means you don’t have heat transfer via convection or conduction, but you’ll still have radiation. In the dark, the temperature difference between the warm astronaut and surroundings will be high, so there will be a lot of heat radiated by the astronaut at a few microns+ wavelength, about 400 W/m^2 if the background is near 0K. In the sunlight, it’s very hard to shed heat, because you’re getting warmed by 1370 W/m^2 sunlight, so now you can’t radiate either.
Radiation, higher temp to lower. Sure, I get that. Hmm, well it obviously IS a problem, so I must just have been underestimating it. Thanks.
I suggest we turn LL Bean loose on the problem.
I heard it cannot be fitted to men because of, ahem, certain “technical problems.”
Dava Newman talks a good talk, but in nearly a decade of work has yet to build an actual pressure suit. The garment she models in the photos has no provision for pressure-tight interface at the helmet, no joint mobility structures, no counterlung, and oh by the way, provides no pressure to the body. All it does it look good, a Potemkin suit.
I saw a Japanese researcher who was pursuing something similar, but who admitted that the technique can’t handle areas with reverse curvature like the armpit.
I’m still trying to understand the basic concept. Unless you dip yourself in Latex, there’s going to be some small amount of air between your skin and the suit.
Back when I was thinking about the glove challenge, among the ideas I considered (I used to make welded chain maille, including a nifty glove and a segmented finger gauntlet) was to use steel wire running around spring loaded cams, which can create almost any desired force-distance curve to counteract the balloon stiffness curve, and deliver the forces via the wire to the joint. The cams and springs could be located on the back of the hand or up on the wrist cuff. I suppose if the idea was pursued further, the flexible parts of the suit would be a mesh of steel wires, each ending in something like a ball-point pen compression spring that holds them at the proper tension.
They’re still wearing disco-era suits?
The only spacesuit book I have, US Space Gear, is almost 20 years out of date. It looks like that’s not much of an issue.
There’s a newer book called US Spacesuits, published in 2011, along with one on Russian Spacesuits that looks interesting.
“1978 suits” query in google image search actually brings out spacesuits on first page. And many other things. Enter at your own risk.
Remember that spacesuit glove competition? The follow-on, that would have gotten NASA prototypes for all new suits and paved the way for a COTS-like procurement of operational spacesuits, never got funded.
It’s a safe bet that Rand remembers, since the glove competition was proposed by Rand Simberg.
Ha! Thanks for reminding me!
35 year old suits? Well, hell. There’s your problem…
Never trust any space suit over 30…
The spacewalk ended short of its anticipated six-and-a-half-hour time frame when Mastracchio, the lead spacewalker, began complaining about chilly temperatures in his space suit… The 780-pound pump is about the size of a double-door refrigerator and difficult to handle, with plumbing full of toxic ammonia, The Associated Press reported. Flight controllers tried but failed to fix the bad valve through remote commanding.
Why do these space suits have the form they do? Form should follow function. The astronauts using the suits aboard the ISS are not using their feet for much more than a place to tether themselves. Nobody is going to use one of these suits on the moon.
I think it is time to rethink the whole concept of the spacesuit, at least for orbital applications. The movie 2001 showed astronauts using spacesuits and pods. Shouldn’t a spacesuit that is only used in orbit be a combination of the two?
35 year old suits? Are you kidding me?
When I heard they were having suit problems due to their age I was thinking 5-10 years.
35 year old suits are an absolute travesty.
Well, the basic design is that old. And perhaps the suits were originally manufactured that long ago. I do remember that the loss of suits on Columbia was a big hit to inventory, so by 2003, it must have been impossible (or mind-bogglingly expensive) to make new suits.
But remember, the suits were maintained by a group of technicians in Houston. Llike the orbiters, many improvements have been added, parts replaced, etc. Recall the addition of video cameras, SAFER units, etc.
On the gripping hand, one would think, however, that we could do better now. It’s possible that whatever suits are used for Orion will eventually find their way to ISS. But those are sounding to be variants of the shuttle launch and entry (“pumpkin”) suits, not anything fundamentally new.
I have always wondered about teperature control. Yes, the temprature in the shade is very low. On the other hand, space is essentially a giant thermos bottle, vacuum. Pretty good insulator. Shouldn’t be too hard to make a suit to retain heat. The problem would be getting rid of it. Sorry if this reveals my ignorance. Anyone care to enlighten me?
The vacuum means you don’t have heat transfer via convection or conduction, but you’ll still have radiation. In the dark, the temperature difference between the warm astronaut and surroundings will be high, so there will be a lot of heat radiated by the astronaut at a few microns+ wavelength, about 400 W/m^2 if the background is near 0K. In the sunlight, it’s very hard to shed heat, because you’re getting warmed by 1370 W/m^2 sunlight, so now you can’t radiate either.
Radiation, higher temp to lower. Sure, I get that. Hmm, well it obviously IS a problem, so I must just have been underestimating it. Thanks.
I suggest we turn LL Bean loose on the problem.
The new MIT suit looks interesting.
Nasa.gov link
I heard it cannot be fitted to men because of, ahem, certain “technical problems.”
Dava Newman talks a good talk, but in nearly a decade of work has yet to build an actual pressure suit. The garment she models in the photos has no provision for pressure-tight interface at the helmet, no joint mobility structures, no counterlung, and oh by the way, provides no pressure to the body. All it does it look good, a Potemkin suit.
I saw a Japanese researcher who was pursuing something similar, but who admitted that the technique can’t handle areas with reverse curvature like the armpit.
I’m still trying to understand the basic concept. Unless you dip yourself in Latex, there’s going to be some small amount of air between your skin and the suit.
Back when I was thinking about the glove challenge, among the ideas I considered (I used to make welded chain maille, including a nifty glove and a segmented finger gauntlet) was to use steel wire running around spring loaded cams, which can create almost any desired force-distance curve to counteract the balloon stiffness curve, and deliver the forces via the wire to the joint. The cams and springs could be located on the back of the hand or up on the wrist cuff. I suppose if the idea was pursued further, the flexible parts of the suit would be a mesh of steel wires, each ending in something like a ball-point pen compression spring that holds them at the proper tension.