Space/Science — HabitableZone

Space/Science

A spacesuit for the Moon...

In the december BIS Spaceflight magazine , there's a good article written by Dwayne A Day. Parts of it are here.

The issue is: spacesuits for the Moon.

The Mark III Pressure suit seems to be a good development.
However, John Young who's been on the Moon and who experienced damaging the heat-flow experiment with his foot without realizing it, has been asked what he thought spacesuits should be on the Moon and back in 1993 had said spacesuits should be as lightweight as possible, but spacesuits haven't stopped gaining weight (of course, weightlessness isn't the same thing as the Moon). Young also says the knees must be able to bend.
The Mark III Full Pressure suit has a rear entry, a full length hard torso, hard upper thigh joints, a waist bellows and shoulder joints with bearings. The glove and wrist mobilities were great, found Young but the weight and volume were unacceptable. He proposed to eliminate the rear entry and proposed the waist entry (like the current EMUs), using inflatable materials rather than hard materials for the upper and lower torso and the hip joints. He wanted to eliminate ball bearings (because of the moon dust), suggested using multiple ports for consumables.

http://www.globaleffects.com/C_pages/Rental/Wardrobe/SpaceSuits/Futuristic/markh.JPG


http://www.globaleffects.com/C_pages/Rental/Wardrobe/SpaceSuits/Futuristic/Mark3_cloth665F_hi.jpg


From Here.
No easy task ! Imagine a spacesuit without gloves but with end effectors! Why have humans in space, then?

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