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Elon Musk has unveiled the spacesuit (or flight suit) that will be used by astronauts aboard crewed Dragon flights:
In his Instagram post, Musk added that this suit was not a mock-up but rather a fully functional unit. "Already tested to double vacuum pressure," he wrote. "Was incredibly hard to balance aesthetics and function. Easy to do either separately." (Double vacuum pressure simply means the suit was probably inflated to twice the pressure of sea level and then put into a vacuum chamber.)
Musk gave no other technical information about the suit. Most strikingly, it is white, in contrast to the very blue spacesuits unveiled by Boeing in January.
These are not, strictly speaking, "space suits." Rather, they are more properly flight suits designed to be worn during the ride to space and again on the ride back down to Earth. They have a limited time in which they can operate in a full vacuum and are not intended for spacewalks.
Related: Boeing Unveils New Spacesuits for Starliner Astronaut Taxi
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Virindi on Thursday August 24 2017, @08:35AM (5 children)
It's an emergency suit, right? So that means that it is minimally articulated, as opposed to general purpose suits designed to do work in a vacuum environment? And it has less or no thermal protection because it is for use inside a craft?
Maybe I'm wrong, but I was under the impression that the difficult parts of making a suit were: 1) the articulation points, and 2) thermal management. Is the purpose of showing this off just to show how cool it looks rather than showcase technical accomplishment?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by lentilla on Thursday August 24 2017, @09:43AM (1 child)
Just because something is obvious to me does not mean it is obvious to other people. In my experience, this is highly prevalent amongst "engineering types".
We need the story-tellers as much we need the engineers.
Put bluntly, it's the general excitement that makes it easier to pay for the engineers to continue doing what they were going to do anyway... pay or not. I can't believe I just made an argument in favour of a marketing department. Can't tell if I feel dirty or liberated.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Thursday August 24 2017, @10:58AM
Maths and science works like once I have derived/grokked a concept it is obvious. But grokking is a hard process that can take hours/days. Funny huh.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 24 2017, @09:44AM (2 children)
This [airspacemag.com] article gives the details on the goals, specifications, and purposes for these sort of suits. Boeings blue butt or NASA's pumpkin suits for instance is intended for the same purpose. Like you mention it is not an EVA (space walk) suit, but a suit worn during ascent/descent intended to protect the astronauts in case of unplanned depressurization or other ship failures. However, doing that is no small feat as you seem to be implying. Doing that and making it look good is a major accomplishment.
(Score: 1) by NateMich on Thursday August 24 2017, @04:23PM
It certainly looks cool, like something out of a comic or maybe a movie.
But for sure, I'd rather have form over function in something designed for life support.
(Score: 2) by EvilSS on Thursday August 24 2017, @05:17PM