NASA: Vote now to put flashy lights on future spacesuits NASA is retiring its current spacesuit, the Z-1, in favour of the Z-2 model which is "approaching a final flight-capable design". And it wants you to decide what it should look like. The Trend in Society spacesuit design The Trend in Society spacesuit design. Credit: NASA The Z-2's basic structure has, of course, already …
This is a really cool idea, but it's incompatible with any sort of suit maintenance, since the suit is left outside - and with suits being very complex mini-spacecraft, they will always need lots of maintenance.
At least NASA is sort of catching up with the Russian ORLAN suits.
None of these designs made any sense to me at all! How is a pilot to see and retrieve someone whereing a suit lit with patterns NASA is proposing? They are unsafe. There is no simple way to tell head from toe or back from front; no good outline of the astronaut's body. The lighting seems to nothing more than a mere fashion statement of some weird kind. It has nothing to do with safety or making a safe recovery possible.
I had the same thought, I think the idea is to have light patches/wire purely intended for easy identification of which suit is which based on colour and maybe pattern, not as a beacon to aid in locating a suit or help identify orientation which for a item which can theorecticaly have any orientation relative to the observer seems a bit weird.
Personally I would have had a light wire on viewable from every angle running down the lenght of the arms and legs (to help show that human shape), with a standardized easy to recognise pattern at the top and bottom of the torso to help identify orientation, maybe something as simple as a single wire running around the bottom of the torso and 2 parallel towards the top, finally a light panel front and back, again something simple light a large circle front and a large square at the back to indicate orientation and maybe a non equilateral triangle on top of the helmet with the sharper pointing forwards.
Then you have either colour or maybe patterned patches on shoulders to identify individuals if needed.
That makes it easy to location, orientate and identify a suit.
Saw Buzz Lightyear.
Actually that was the most sensible.
Light colour, distinctive colours / patterns for each Astronaut.
Pattern needs to point to head and be different to the back, the Y shapes do provide that.
I would say a strip starting near belly button splitting into a V onto the shoulders could be one,
So technology is nearest.
Planetary way up is not important, Space it is.
I would think they would atleast put some sort of navigation light system on. I would think a green stripe down the right arm, a red stripe down the left arm, a double white light on top of the helmet and a short yellow stripes down the back and front of the legs near the ankles would do nicely. (This matches the color scheme now used on for instance the Cygnus spacecraft) This also complies with current naval and aeronautical conventions.
I'm also highly skeptical any astronaut would WANT all those lights on his suit when working on on a spacecraft in the dark. Things would be hard enough without the glare from a chest mounted lighting panel screwing up your night vision
The Tech and Society suits looked better, I was surprised that only the Bio suit had fabric covering the joints.
Just wondering about planetary dust and grit......
I agree with the idea of subtle navigational lighting.
Coat? Of course: we're talking space coats :-P
Electroluminescent Wire runs at 90+ VAC. A vacuum doesn't conduct and pressurized air doesn't conduct, but somewhere in between a tiny bit of gas conducts AC very well. It could make the air lock interesting if the power wires aren't perfectly sealed.
EL wire is inefficient, radiates EMF, is temperature sensitive, and doesn't last long. It seems like late generation LED chips in a light pipe would be far easier for space. At low currents (10% max) they use little voltage, are very efficient, and tolerate an extremely wide temperature range.
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