Boeing unveils its spacesuit for Starliner missions
The competition heats up: Boeing today unveiled the streamlined but snazzy spacesuit it plans to use on its Starliner manned ferry flights to and from ISS.
This tidbit though I think illustrates the new mindset, to make things simpler and cheaper and more focused on their actual purpose.
Boeing’s suit, designed with the Massachusetts-based David Clark Co., weighs about 12 pounds, compared to 30 pounds for NASA’s orange suits formally called the Advanced Crew Escape Suit, or ACES. …The “get us home suit,” as Ferguson called it, couldn’t be used for a spacewalk. It’s intended to provide air and cooling to keep astronauts safe during launch and landings back on land, and during emergencies, like if a micrometeoroid strike caused a loss of cabin pressure.
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In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
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The competition heats up: Boeing today unveiled the streamlined but snazzy spacesuit it plans to use on its Starliner manned ferry flights to and from ISS.
This tidbit though I think illustrates the new mindset, to make things simpler and cheaper and more focused on their actual purpose.
Boeing’s suit, designed with the Massachusetts-based David Clark Co., weighs about 12 pounds, compared to 30 pounds for NASA’s orange suits formally called the Advanced Crew Escape Suit, or ACES. …The “get us home suit,” as Ferguson called it, couldn’t be used for a spacewalk. It’s intended to provide air and cooling to keep astronauts safe during launch and landings back on land, and during emergencies, like if a micrometeoroid strike caused a loss of cabin pressure.
Readers!
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. Your support allows me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
Interesting “The Space Show,” from a few days ago, wherein (in part) they discuss the lack of an appropriate space-suit, for the surface of Mars.
(Musk can go to Mars, but he won’t be able to leave his capsule, for multiple reasons….)
referencing my space-suit comment:
Dr. Larry Kuznet, on the sunday 1-22-17 show.
http://thespaceshow.com/show/22-jan-2017/broadcast-2849-dr.-larry-kuznetz
Wayne, I was wondering the same thing. Does this type of suit come anywhere near to what is needed on Mars? Could the umbilical cord approach be used, much as we once used it for undersea diving, on Mars?
jburn–
This is way out of my bailiwick. (but that never stops me! ha)
Oxygen & pressure are one thing, while heating & cooling are another entirely different thing, along with being able to articulate & bend leg/arm joints.
Anything to do with fine-motor tasks will also require appropriate hand-gear.
Gravity on Mars is not our friend, as far as space-suits are concerned. As I understand it, the suits used on the Moon would be too heavy to use on Mars.
And apparently, one also gets dehydrated relatively quickly while actively using a spacesuit.
I guess the only logical conclusion, is to start buying Iron-Man suits from Stark Industries.
Suit Up scenes Iron Man
https://youtu.be/ZMEHyrfoa7w
(6:57)