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Behold, Your newest form fitting spacesuit for Mars!
hawkwing43
Member Posts: 1,701 Arc User
I don't like the color, but the bubble dome looks retro. 
http://www.wired.com/design/2014/01/how-a-textbook-from-1882-will-help-nasa-go-to-mars/?cid=16730214#x
http://www.wired.com/design/2014/01/how-a-textbook-from-1882-will-help-nasa-go-to-mars/?cid=16730214#x
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"Hah! You are doomed! You're only armed with that pathetic excuse for a musical instrument!!!" *the Savage Beast moments before Lonnehart the Bard used music to soothe him... then beat him to death with his Fat Lute*
Cheers,
Brandon =/\=
On a more serious note: are all those little red lines criss-crossing the suit supposed to be the "ribbing" they were talking about? If the lines are pure fashion statement, I'm not really impressed, and would think fashion should be a far second to function when considering hostile non-Earth environments. I do agree that a slimmer suit would offer greater functionality.
red and black ribbing. ugh! what an eye sore.
if i remember right CO has something like this bubble dome helmet, considering both games are similar enough, respray a copy and throw it in STO.
Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
Seriously, shouldn't we be colonizing the freaking place by now? It sucks when real life catches up with science fiction timelines and we're still stuck here. :mad:
...Oh, baby, you know, I've really got to leave you / Oh, I can hear it callin 'me / I said don't you hear it callin' me the way it used to do?...
- Anne Bredon
Todays computer technology is pretty much way beyond what we have seen in any of the Star Trek series.
Honestly static LCARS displays is so last century in a day and age with dynamic interactive multi-touch displays and motion/gesture control systems. :P
And just imagine what starfleet could do with smartphones!
Yet our space tech is still in its infancy, and 99% of the world also still relies on internal combustion engines to propel their vehicles.
It's true, explosive decompression is a myth. Your blood simply boils away and your lungs decompress. Your eyes also freeze over if they're not closed.
I can only imagine. Pretty easily. In graphic detail.
The pressure difference between Mars atmosphere and total vacuum is next-to-nothing, since Mars atmosphere is only a hundredth as much pressure as Earth sea level. The bigger issue would be the need to add an extra couple of layers of kevlar over it to block micrometeoroids which can impact at ten times the speed of a rifle bullet.
Fun fact: the average vehicle tire normally uses a pressure differential more than twice the difference between Earth sea level air and total vacuum, which implies that your pressure vessel needs to only be about half as strong as a tire.
So soon these new suits will resemble the Japanese Anime form fitting Hardsuits?
Bubblegum Crash opening sequence
"Hah! You are doomed! You're only armed with that pathetic excuse for a musical instrument!!!" *the Savage Beast moments before Lonnehart the Bard used music to soothe him... then beat him to death with his Fat Lute*
My character Tsin'xing
1: Regular tempered glass is kind of brittle (as were any reasonably hard plastics available in the 1960s), and current-day materials like transparent aluminum (yes it's a real thing!) either weren't available or were harder to work with.
2: Making the helmet a single piece would mean having to take off the whole helmet any time you wanted to reach inside or speak without the radio (or eat or spit for that matter--and yes I know that you wouldn't want to open the helmet in vacuum, but astronauts wore the helmet while in their flight seats as well a decent fraction of the time). Mating a glass visor that could be pushed upward to a glass helmet would require using a lot of opaque stuff around the seals, hinges, and guide rails that would reduce the advantage of having the whole helmet transparent to begin with.
Also, NASA wanted to put some padding inside the helmet, not only to protect against possible blows to the head, but also some padding behind the head since a normal mission could experience up to 9 g's of acceleration, and you do NOT want your skull pressed against a hard surface with that kind of force. Note the helmet that the woman in the image further down the page is holding--it appears to have some padding in it, and looks like a much more practical helmet design for somebody who is likely to get knocked about during the mission.
The woman on the left, or the spacesuit on the right?
My character Tsin'xing
I am Il Shadow and i approve these Shennanigans!
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
I applaud your taste
On a serious note, I expect exosuit technology to be integrated into spacewear before long - the ability to lift extreme loads would be invaluable on the martian surface, meaning less dedicated lifting equipment has to be transported
of course terrestrial armies will likely use it first..
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Engineer: "Now let's see ..."
Unknown doctor: "If you just reverse the polarity of the neutron flow, you can do it more easily. Shall I show you?"
Engineer: "Are you part of this unit?"
Unknown doctor: "I am part of UNIT, yes."
Engineer: (sighs) "I'll go get the brigadier."
(they return)
Brigadier: "Now, what seems to be the problem, Doctor?"
Doctor: "They need to exchange one anti-positronic photon emitter for another. I could do it with my eyes closed, if necessary."
Brigadier: "I imagine you could. Let him proceed, engineer."
Engineer: "Yes, sir."
(exchange is made in under one minute)
Brigadier: "Any other problems, engineer?"
Engineer: "The world needs to be saved from evil aliens."
Brigadier: "Again? This is getting monotonous."
Doctor: "I believe that's my line, Brigadier."
I wonder how many people caught that "anti-positronic" basically means "electronic"?
In just over 50 years we went from the first controlled powered flight, to making it to the moon. I would say we can do a lot in a generation or two.
On another note, I LOVE MY INTERNAL COMBUSTION ENGINES. No one ever got goosebumps from hearing a Tesla's motor whirl. But a G.M. small block sounds good and a Ferrari zipping to redline is auditory TRIBBLE.
My character Tsin'xing
Also, the ICE has its own advantages, most of which are why we haven't switched off of them... power density, energy efficiency, scalability, range, overall complexity, safety... for many vehicles and transportation purposes, the ICE is still an unparalleled choice.
Oh! That's right! UCHUUUU KITAAAAAAAAAA!
I Support Disco | Disco is Love | Disco is Life
You're welcome. Sometimes these things just sort of arrive on the doorstep of my TARDIS. But, for some strange reason, the idea keeps imitating the TARDIS and ends up bigger on the inside. Makes editing rather difficult sometimes.
Btw, there was a companion in a catsuit back in the 1960s: Vicky. She'd probably look really good in that Martian space suit too. I just hope there aren't any Ice Warriors waiting for human colonization of Mars.
Well, in order to preserve full range of motion (or enough to capitalize on the globe's visibility range enough to make it worthwhile) the globe would have to be pretty bulky, which creates it's own ergonomic issues. Try looking down and over your shoulder, and imagine how much wider than your head the globe would have to be to accommodate how far the crown of your head is moving off centerline. Now imaging trying to climb through a space-conservative hatch while trying to avoid bonking the globe, bearing in mind that you have to move your entire upper body to maneuver the globe instead of just ducking or turning your head. Also keep in mind that a large globe will take up a lot more precious storage space while not in use.
Ultimately I think that if a skin-tight suit like these can be made at all, moving the helmet seal up the neck so the helmet fits like a motorcycle helmet would not add much to the challenge. If you can solve the problems for the crotch, elbows, etc, then you've more or less already solved them for the neck. If you can do that, then you don't need a globe in order to have full visibility range.
IMO the globe's sole advantage is implicitly invalidated by the premise of a suit like this.
Ah, but the nifty thing is that stuff like that could now be done in a much more modular off-the-shelf way. The pressure suits would be expensive and custom made, but since they're basically comparable to a wetsuit in profile, nothing else would need to be, unlike with current designs. Thermal regulation gear, radiation protection, micrometeorite armor, etc could all be worn and thus designed and mass manufactured basically as if they were terrestrial clothing. In fact for some things you might even be able to use existing terrestrial protective/clothing products as-is. This could actually make space suits as a whole significantly cheaper.
Though in the specific case of micrometeorites, IIRC the sort of impact you're thinking of would punch right through a modern space suit anyway. They do have micrometeorite protection layers, but they're built for smaller/lighter impacts that are much more common (most stuff I've read compares it to very gradual sandblasting rather than bullets). Bullet-like impacts are basically "shark attack" rare, so they don't armor for those as a standard precaution.
Looks awfully familiar.....
Extant space suits don't even come close. Your proposal doesn't go that far either. this material may flex but I don't think it can twist. thus your helmet idea would prevent the wearer from looking left or right at all.
I think the best solution would be to size the helmet so that it's just large enough that you can rotate your head inside it. It wouldn't require much more bulk than the size required to get your head to fit. True, this approach requires you to practice turning your head without tilting it to the side, but it can be done. Er... actually.... that one seen in the first picture looks about right.
My character Tsin'xing