One giant leap for space fashion: MIT team designs sleek, skintight spacesuit

Have you ever noticed how large and bulky spacesuits are? After decades of research and development today’s spacesuits are a far cry from what was worn by early celestial pioneers, but they are still far from ideal. It is estimated that 70 to 80% of the energy an astronaut expends during EVA is dissipated in fighting against the inflexibility of the spacesuit they wear. This could be envisioned as trying to clap underwater, or attempting to write your name on a chalkb0ard with a twenty pound weight tied to your wrist.

In fhte future, things might not be quite so difficult for the intrepid explorers of the cold black. Dr. Dava Newman has developed new spacesuit technologies that may allow future astronauts the kind of physical flexibility henceforth seen only in science fiction movies. Current spacesuits are somewhat like big person-shaped balloons. The outer material contains an astronaut and an atmosphere that in addition to providing air to breathe, has been pressurized to keep the astronaut inside from exploding in the vacuum of space. Dr. Newman’s propsal turns this around- instead of pressurizing the gas inside the suit, the suit itself is made to be skintight with a stuctural system that keeps the astronauts body pressurized. This allows the suits to be not only much more flexible, but far less bulky. The prototypes appear to be less constraining than the protective garb worn by a firefighter.

It is predicted that the technology could be ready when the first predicted missions to Mars should take place in approximately ten years.