Technology AI, Science and New Things
Traditional Moon-rated space suits pack an entire spacecraft round the human form. The shape is unwieldy. Movement is limited. The cost is prodigious. The tech is old. A redesign is overdue and underway.
MIT’s Professor Dava Newman, the face of US space research at Davos, is working on it.
She says new 3D-knitted fabrics made of carbon-doped polyethylene will apply a third of an earthly atmosphere of pressure directly to the skin – a job done till now by bulky systems of compressed gas in tubes – while offering protection against temperature swings from +200 to minus 200 degrees C and a decent amount of protection against radiation.
The upshot should be a svelte new generation of Moon- and Mars-walkers with familiar big helmets but daypack-size oxygen tanks and silhouettes more like gym bunnies than Buzz Lightyear.
The next crewed Nasa lunar mission is tentatively scheduled for 2027.
