New Bio-Suit

Tom

An Old Friend
From Space.com I found this in my RSS reader


Science - Space.com

spacecom.gif High-Tech Spacesuits Eyed for 'Extreme Exploration'


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[size=-1]a Bio-Suit System that incorporates a suit designed to augment a person's biological skin by providing mechanical counter-pressure. The epidermis of such a second skin could be applied in spray-on fashion in the form of an organic, biodegradable layer.
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[size=-1][size=-1]The Bio-Suit System could embody communications equipment, biosensors, computers, even climbing gear for spacewalks or what NASA (news - web sites) calls an Extra Vehicular Activity (EVA).
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[size=-1]The NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts, headquartered in Atlanta, is sponsoring the Bio-Suit System effort.


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[size=-1]We need to shrink-wrap the astronaut, Newman said. It would be like wearing a second skin.[/size]

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I will be following this, I wonder if anyone is consulting Drexler on Nano-suits for this Idea
Since nanotechnology lends itself to making small things, consider the smallest person-carrying spacecraft: the spacesuit. Forced to use weak, heavy, passive materials, engineers now make bulky, clumsy spacesuits. A look at an advanced spacesuit will illustrate some of the capabilities of nanotechnology.

Imagine that you are aboard a space station, spun to simulate Earth's normal gravity. After instruction, you have been given a suit to try out: there it hangs on the wall, a gray, rubbery-looking thing with a transparent helmet. You take it down, heft its substantial weight, strip, and step in through the open seam on the front.

The suit feels softer than the softest rubber, but has a slick inner surface. It slips on easily and the seam seals at a touch. It provides a skintight covering like a thin leather glove around your fingers, thickening as it runs up your arm to become as thick as your hand in the region around your torso. Behind your shoulders, scarcely noticeable, is a small backpack. Around your head, almost invisible, is the helmet. Below your neck the suits inner surface hugs your skin with a light, uniform touch that soon becomes almost imperceptible.

You stand up and walk around, experimenting. You bounce on your toes and feel no extra weight from the suit. You bend and stretch and feel no restraint, no wrinkling, no pressure points. When you rub your fingers together they feel sensitive, as if bare - but somehow slightly thicker. As you breathe, the air tastes clean and fresh. In fact, you feel that you could forget that you are wearing a suit at all. What is more, you feel just as comfortable when you step out into the vacuum of space.
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