Wait, who says SpaceX's spacesuits for commercial crew aren't designed (eventually) to be used for EVAs?
Quote from: Robotbeat on 05/17/2017 02:29 amWait, who says SpaceX's spacesuits for commercial crew aren't designed (eventually) to be used for EVAs?Because that would make them impractical for use inside Dragon?
Launch and entry suits are totally different in design and function from an EVA suit....
... Dragon, like shuttle, is almost certainly designed with air-cooled electronics and is therefore probably not more than minimally functional at internal vacuum. A system like Apollo, with cold plates for electronics cooling, is much more expensive to develop and build duplicate vehicles, and would be prohibitively expensive if you don't have a requirement to support routine EVAs.
Just because SOME launch/entry suits aren't suited for EVAs doesn't mean SpaceX isn't going in that direction.
Quote from: Lars-J on 05/17/2017 02:37 amQuote from: Robotbeat on 05/17/2017 02:29 amWait, who says SpaceX's spacesuits for commercial crew aren't designed (eventually) to be used for EVAs?Because that would make them impractical for use inside Dragon?Quote from: obi-wan on 05/17/2017 03:21 amLaunch and entry suits are totally different in design and function from an EVA suit....One of the Constellation suit designs used the launch/entry suits for EVAs by adding an overcoat for EVAs (prototypes were made, although not final ones, obviously). Just because SOME launch/entry suits aren't suited for EVAs doesn't mean SpaceX isn't going in that direction.But please, tell me again that some launch/entry suits aren't suited for modification to EVA suits, that surely will prove that none ever can.
Yeah, I would expect SpaceX is designing their launch/rentry suits with Mars EVAs in mind.
Maybe in future they will adapt these suits to work well for EVAs, either with intrinsic changes or "overcoat" style add-ons, but I don't think that such design work is going to feature in the suit they plan on flying in 2018. Possible? Sure. Probable? I don't think so, but I could well be wrong (and SpaceX does have a penchant for "improbable" developments). Still, personally, my money is on improved suit development concurrent with the later stages of ITS development.
Then you start thinking about putting, you know, big satellites up, hundreds of them up there, and being able to service them; it really changes the whole dynamic. So that’s what we’re working on right now.
I remember seeing some clever suit design someone cooked up where it had some sort of elastic material or something to prevent the balooning effect without going the bulky route for normal EVA suits. Maybe you could mix the two, by having some kind of system to let out the suit to be more comfortable normally and then ratchet it in slightly for vacuum use to pull the tightening lines in ?