Posted 10.29.2010 at 4:49 pm
23 Comments
Testing the Suit in Zero Gravity
MIT/James Waldie
This new Spiderman-style suit may not win astronauts a spot in the fashion hall of fame, but it could help keep their bones intact during long spaceflights. Described in a new paper, prototype tests of the Gravity Loading Countermeasure Skinsuit, being developed by a research team at MIT’s Man-Vehicle Laboratory, show that the suit simulates the effects of gravity on the human body, which could solve one of the biggest obstacles to future human space travel.
Astronauts lose 1 to 2 percent of their bone mass for each month they spend in space. As far back as the Gemini missions, conditioning exercise regimes have been used to slow the rate of bone loss, but a 2001-2004 NASA-sponsored study showed that crew members aboard the International Space Station (ISS) were still losing up to 2.7 percent of their interior bone material and 1.7 percent of outer hipbone material for each month they spent in space. If ISS crew members lose this much bone density after 4 to 6 months in space, astronauts on long missions to Mars—voyages that could take years—could lose enough bone mass that they suffer fractures while carrying out tasks on the Martian surface.
With stirrups that loop around the feet, the elastic gravity skinsuit is purposely cut too short for the astronaut so that it stretches when put on—pulling the wearer’s shoulders towards the feet. In normal gravity conditions on Earth, a human’s legs bear more weight than the torso. Because the suit’s legs stretch more than the torso section, the wearer’s legs are subjected to a greater force—replicating gravity effects on Earth.
The prototype suit testing took place on parabolic flights that created brief periods of weightlessness. Results showed that the suit successfully imitated the pull of gravity on the torso and thighs, but it did not exert enough force on the lower legs. Researchers are now refining the suit’s design to address this; they also plan to test the suit to see how it performs when worn overnight. Volunteers who wore the suit on the test flights reported that the suit was comfortable and did not significantly restrict movement, which means crewmembers can work and exercise while wearing the suit.
An article on the study will be published in the journal Acta Astronautica.
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And Star Trek scores one more!
How synchronistic. This explains why James T Kirk (William Shatner) wore a girdle on Star Trek!
I have no clue why it would take years to get people to mars. You send your dead cargo with solar ion not people. The people go on smaller chemical rockets.
Geez. This is very obvious in hindsight. Adding similar elastic panels to those overalls could help maintain general muscle-tone as well. Crap. Somebody should have realized this fifty years ago. Makes you wonder how many unsolved problems have embarrassingly simple solutions.
Add a negative pressure system to the legs and put a big dent in the fluid buildup in the head and arms. only slightly negative, shouldn't take much. Just a G-suite in reverse. Much lighter duty though. Suction pants. Ha! Not sure I want my name on them...
Wow. That's really cool. I mean, this is a major issue in prolonged spaceflight and the first practical solution to it.
New Astronaut space suits, water on Mars and the moon, new space shuttle engines and technologies, plus Russia putting astronauts in a Mars simulator and DARPA trying to start up a colonization project. C'mon what else do we need to discover to realize now is the time to start exploring. This could also provide our species with a semi-insurance from a catastrophe on Earth. C'mon! Let's beat the Russians to this!
Popular Science should make some sort of wiki to link these related posts to each other instead of search bar on top.
Skin tight space suits on a coed space flight...
Wow, a new article and only 4 out of the first 13 posts are spam trying to "sell" us crap (which would probably end up with gullible people losing their credit card numbers...
I wish someone at PopSci would get the hint and have a lackey spend a few hours a day checking comments and getting rid of zzji27 and QQpop and all the rest.
I flag these spammers as often as I find them, but I'd think having a staffer spend an hour or two with the ability to just delete the comment and commenter would be beneficial.
Could this have physical training applications here on Earth?
This is a crazy cool new invention! I'm impressed at the creativeness it must have taken to come up with this idea. We'll be colonizing other planets in no time! The only downside is that these suits are kinda see through....they should probably work on that.
with all these great achievements in science & technology, you think someone would invent a system of oddly skewed alphanumeric characters, and perhaps some IP logging/banning to keep the popsci comments clean. I do find the Starfleet uniform more appealing. maybe throw on some Spock ears..
"In order to ensure that your comment is not flagged as spam by our system, please do not include any linked URLs (non-linked URLs, and URLs that start with www, are fine-- these will not be flagged as spam). If there is no URL in your comment, please ignore this message and proceed to post."
i would not mind solving a captcha from time to time just to know the spammers jobs just got a little bit harder. how about a captcha AND solving a little 3rd grade math, or a 3rd grade math Captcha, so you only have to solve one problem, but you have to visually decipher the problem before solving it. or just block the country whose main export is SPAM
need a little help blocking these chinee spammers?
"lin jianping" linjf1203@163.com
Phone: +86.2510882 205.209.172.102, 205.209.157.184 ip location= United States - California - Los Altos - Dcs Pacific Star Llc
Phone Number : 86-0594-2529565
IP Address:
60.18.147.78 Reverse-IP | Ping | DNS Lookup| Traceroute
IP Location:
China - Liaoning - Shenyang - China Unicom Liaoning Province Network
can't post it all because in this case, the spam filter actually gets triggered.
F-ing spammers...
I mean, I like to place URL of my website on the end of the comment, but I wrote normal stuff related to article....
This kind of spamming ruining blogging efforts.
Regarding suits, yes they look a bit feminine :) but if they do the job of preserving my bone structure, I would wear diapers for the F sake :)
We are going in the right direction with our preparing for next epic space journey.
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http://staupisati.com/
hmmm, these outfits could be useful in preserving bone mass, but is there a specific reason as to why they're designed like that? i would totally, all the way wear that if i was on a spaceship, by the way.
Who said this isn't fashionable? To me this looks like a GS skier suit.
It's also very functional. Kudos for whoever was creative enough to think about putting skin tight apparel on astronauts. Guess we're just spicing up the 21st century attire all over the place!
I favore the white/blue, not the white/white. Because that is just EMBARASSING.
I'd like to see that on a woman... hopefully a pretty one :3
Just as long as they don't make them in red. We all know what happens to the guy in the red shirt! :P
This is really awesome! Now we can have prolonged space travel. I love the outfits.
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http://newhomesteps.com/
where can i get one?
seriously, if MIT wants these things to be useful and comfortable, then getting interested segments of the public involved could speed up any necessary redesign processes
wear can i sign up?
Make mine blue with white stars!
People are still saying it, "C'mon! Let's beat the Russians to this!"
US vs THEM, THEM vs US! Really - let's get out of the past! Rev. King had a dream and now there's a Black president, Gene Roddenberry also had a dream. So let's get humanity together and into space.
Disband NASA, and all the other Space Agencies and create a single International Space Agency working together with but one goal. Get humanity to the stars!