Dava Newman: Space Suit of the Future

So you've done a lot of exciting research, design engineering on spacesuits. What does the spacesuit of the future look like?

Well, if I have anything to say about it, it'll be a very tight fitting suit. We use mechanical counter pressure to pressurize right directly on the skin. Seems that it's technically feasible. We're still at the research and development stage. We don't have a flight system, but technically it's feasible. So we do a lot of work in the materials. What materials do we need to pressurize someone? What's the patterning we need? That's what our patents are in, the patterning kind of how we apply this. It's a third of an atmosphere.

Just to sort of take a little step back. You have this incredible biosuit where it's tight fitting so it allows more mobility and so on. So maybe even to take a bigger step back. Like what are the functions that a spacesuit should perform?

Sure. So start from the beginning. A spacesuit is the world's smallest spacecraft. So so I really. That's the best definition I can give you right now. We fly gas pressurized suits. But think of developing and designing an entire spacecraft. So then you take all those systems and you shrink them around a person, provide them with oxygen to breathe, scrub out their carbon dioxide, make sure they have pressure. They need a pressure environment to live in. So really the spacesuit is a shrunken spacecraft in its entirety, has all the same as well, probably communications. Exactly. So you really. Thermal control, little bit of radiation. Not so much radiation protection, but thermal control, humidity, you know, oxygen, debris. So all those life support systems, as well as the pressure production. So it's an engineering marvel. You know, the spacesuits that have flown, because they really are entire spacecraft, they're a small spacecraft that we have around a person, but they're very massive. But 140 kilos the current suit. And they're not mobility suits. So since we're going back to the moon and Mars, we need a planetary suit, we need a mobility suit. So that's where we've kind of flip the design paradigm. I study astronauts, I study humans in motion. And if we can map that motion, I want to give you full flexibility. You know, move your arms and legs. I really want you to be like a Olympic athlete, an extreme explorer. I don't want to waste any of your energy. So we take it from the human design. So I take a look at humans, we measure them, we model them. And then I say, okay, can I put a spacesuit on them that goes from the skin out. So rather than a gas pressurized shrinking that space spacecraft around the person, say, here's how humans perform. Can I design a spacesuit literally from the skin out? That's what we've come up with. Mechanical counter pressure, some patterning, and that way it could be order of magnitude less in terms of the mass and it should provide maximum mobility for moon or Mars.

What's mechanical counter pressure? Like how the heck can you even begin to create something that's tight fitting and still doesn't protects you from the elements and so on. And the whole the pressure thing, that's the challenge.

It's a big design challenge. Been working on it for a while. So you can either put someone in a balloon. That's one way to do it. That's conventional.

That's the only thing that means the.

Balloon that you throw in, that's a gas pressurized suit. So put someone in a balloon, it's only a third of an atmosphere to keep someone alive. So that's what the current system is. So depending on what units you think in 30 kilopascals, you know, 4.3 pounds.

Per square, so much less than the, the pressure that's on Earth. You can still keep a human alive with 0.3. And it's alive and happy, alive and happy.

And you know, you mix the gases. Do you need here we're having this chat and we're both, we're at one sea level in Boston, you know, one atmosphere.

But oxygen and nitrogen.

Oxygen, nitrogen. To put a suit, if we put someone to a third of an atmosphere. So for mechanical counter pressure now, so one way is to do it with a balloon, and that's what we currently have. Or you can apply the pressure directly to the skin. I only have to give you a third of an atmosphere. Right now you and I are very happy in one atmosphere. So. So, you know, we can. So if I put that pressure, a third of an atmosphere on you, I just have to do it consistently, you know, across, you know, all of your body and your limbs. And it'll be a gas pressurized helmet. Doesn't make sense to shrink wrap the head. See the Blue man group, that's a great, great act. But we don't need to, you know, there's no benefits of like shrink wrapping. You put, you know, gas pressurized helmet. Because the helmet, then the future of suits you asked me about, the helmet just becomes your information portal.

Yes.

So it will have augmented reality. It'll have all the information you need. Should have, you know, the maps that I need. I'm on the moon. Okay, well, hey, smart helmet then. Show me the map, show me the topography. Hopefully it has the lab embedded too. If it has really great cameras, maybe I can see with that regolith that's just lunar dust and dirt. What's that made out of? We talked about the water. So the helmet then really becomes this information portal is how I see kind of the IT architecture. The helmet is really allowing me to use all of my modalities of an explorer that I'd like to. So cameras, voiceover images. If it were really good, it would kind of be, would have lab capabilities as well.

Okay. So the pressure comes from the body, comes from the mechanical pressure, which is fascinating. Now what aspect when I look at biosuit, just the suits you're working on, sort of from a fashion perspective, they look awesome. Is that, is that a small part of it too?

Oh, absolutely, because the teams that we work with, of course I'm an engineer. There's engineering students, there's design students, there's architects. So it really is a very much a multidisciplinary team. So sure. Colors, aesthetics, materials, all those things we pay attention to. So it's not just an engineering solution. It really is a, you know, much more of a holistic. It's a suit. It's a suit. You're, you know, you're dressed in a suit. Form fitting. Form fitting. So we really have to pay attention to all those things. And so that's the design team that we work with and my partner Gitradi, you know, we're partners in this in terms of he comes from an architecture industrial design background, so bringing those skills to bear as well. We team up with industry folks who are in athletic performance and designers. So it really is a team that brings all those skills together.

So what role does the spacesuit play in our long term staying in Mars, sort of exploring the doing all the work that astronauts do, but also perhaps civilians one day almost like taking steps towards colonization of Mars. What role does a spacesuit play there?

Spacesuit. So you always need a life support system, pressurized habitat. And I like to say we're not going to Mars to sit around. So you need a suit. Even if you land and have the lander, you're not going there to stay inside. That's for darn sure. We're going there to search for the evidence of life. That's why we're going to Mars. So you need a lot of mobility. So for me, the suit is the best way to give the human mobility. We're always still going to need rovers, we're going to need robots. So for me, exploration is always a sweet of explorers. Some people are going, some of the suite of explorers are humans, but many are going to be robots, smart systems, things like that. But I look at it, it's kind of all those capabilities together make the best exploration.