The Real Reason SpaceX Is Developing A New Space Suit

[Music] Elon musk's SpaceX has already managed to define the aesthetic of 21st century human space flight with their crew Dragon spacesuits it's a certified iconic look but these shining white star men and women are only the beginning for SpaceX what we are looking at isn't even really a spacesuit not yet at least [Music] this is the space race so what's the deal with these SpaceX suits they almost look too cool to actually be functional but that's not the case these are the most advanced flight suits in the world and they are spectacularly effective at allowing people to comfortably travel through space but they are still not space suits the SpaceX crew Dragon astronauts are wearing what's technically referred to as an Iva suit or intravehicular activity this is opposed to the Eva suit or extra vehicular activity that you see people used to actually float around in outer space so we need to understand Iva first before we can get into future potential for SpaceX Eva suits the Iva can also be referred to as a flight suit because it's only worn while in the process of launching or Landing the vehicle or you can call it a pressure suit because that's the most important job that this equipment does it keeps the astronaut pressurized in the event event of a catastrophic failure in a perfect world you wouldn't need to wear this suit at all because the Dragon capsule is already pressurized and has all of the life support function that you need but if that ever stopped being the case in mid-flight then the crew would be in bad trouble very quickly in 1971 the Soviet Union lost a crew of three men on the soyuz 11 mission after their capsule depressurized on the return to Earth this was due to a valve that was damaged at stage separation and the crew suffocated within one minute of the pressure leak it was a rough way to go so even today no matter how much we might trust our vehicle and its technology once the ship is coasting in orbit it's as safe as it's going to get so astronauts can go suit off but during ascent and descent Maneuvers we expect anything that can go wrong will go wrong the modern Iva suit has three main jobs providing fresh air maintaining temperature and maintaining pressure it can keep in a person alive in the vacuum of space but again that's only for a worst case scenario when SpaceX was developing their Dragon capsule they knew that the end goal for this vehicle was going to be human space flight which meant that a pressure suit was going to be necessary at some point and Elon Musk wanted to make sure that the astronauts who flew SpaceX would leave a lasting impression on the world so Elon actually hired a Hollywood Costume designer named Jose Fernandez who has a long resume of making superhero outfits for high budget Marvel and DC films Jose didn't know anything about human spaceflight he hadn't even heard of SpaceX or Elon Musk until they hired him Elon wanted Jose to create the tuxedo of flight suits something that everyone would look their absolute best in it had to give the astronaut a sleek and well-defined figure like a superhero this is in contrast to the old space shuttle flight suits that made everyone who wore them look like a walking pumpkin so the design of the SpaceX suit came first and then Elon had had enough faith in his technical crew that they would be able to reverse engineer it into a fully functional Iva suit that would be approved by NASA that's why every crew that has ever flown a Dragon capsule has looked like they are about to walk onto a movie set they all look perfect and that's largely due to the fact that just like a tuxedo every SpaceX suit is tailored for the individual astronaut the suits are all fabricated in the SpaceX Hawthorne California headquarters alongside the Falcon rockets and Merlin engines this might seem like pure vanity but the precise fit also has a function to it by aligning the joints of the suit precisely with the physical joints of the human body in places like these shoulders elbows and knees it gives the astronaut much greater range of motion and control when the suit is pressurized just try and imagine for a second what it would be like to wear airtight clothing it's like walking around in an inflated balloon suit the bigger the baggier the fit the less you're going to be able to actually move around then SpaceX Engineers were able to achieve that Sleek minimalist look by eliminating all of the exterior valves and hoses that you would typically see on this type of pressure suit even looking at another modern suit design like the one Chinese taikonauts wear on their trips to the tiangong space station you can see the big main valve in the center of the chest then further down the Torso on the right they have external wires and electronics on the left is a hose attachment and that connects into the life support box that they have to carry with them in their hand so how did SpaceX avoid all of that Hardware well the first thing that they did was design the suit to be fully integrated with the systems of the Dragon capsule so when the crew takes their seats inside the capsule they simply attach an umbilical cable from the chair to a port on the thigh of their suit this one connection supplies Power air and a pressurent line into the suit astronauts breathe a cusp just a mixture of oxygen and nitrogen that is managed by dragon's onboard computer you don't want too much nitrogen because it can form bubbles in the blood during pressure changes the air mixture is chilled to maintain a comfortable temperature for the astronaut even during high heat re-entries the astronaut's helmet has built-in sensors that monitor pressure and temperature these feed data into the automated computer so there's no need for manual adjustment by the astronaut that eliminates the need for any external valves on the suit and by eliminating all of this excess Hardware SpaceX not only makes their suit better looking they also make it much easier for the crew to put on and take off the old style flight suits came in multiple segments that had to be fitted together and it took several people to help get an astronaut suited up that's not so bad during the pre-flight operation on Earth but they have to get back into those suits before leaving the ISS and that means doing it all in zero gravity with gloves and helmets and stuff floating around ever everywhere the SpaceX suit is a much more simplified procedure it's a single piece jumpsuit kind of design so the astronaut goes in through the pants that open up along a zippered inseam then they just kind of stand up into the suit step into the boots and then zip the pants back up and they're good to go there are more zippers along the forearm section so that the astronaut can quickly slip their real hand out of the glove to do more precise work though the SpaceX gloves do offer a lot of dexterity and they allow the crew to use the iPad style touch screen controls onboard the dragon so these are fantastic suits and they are perfect for the job they were intended for but SpaceX needs to push their capability even further it's time to leave the capsule if you dare we're not talking about Major Tom here the person stepping through the door of the Dragon capsule into the void of outer space is going to be Jared isaacman you might remember him as the leader of the inspiration 4 crew the one they made the Netflix show about Jared has a big plan for his his next SpaceX flight it's called Polaris Dawn and it's going to push the SpaceX Dragon capsule and its systems to the absolute limit the goal for Polaris Dawn is to reach the highest Earth orbit ever flown reaching out to the Van Allen radiation belt that exists on the border of Earth's magnetic field then at an altitude of 700 kilometers above sea level the crew will conduct a spacewalk they're going extra vehicular according to isaacman SpaceX is developing an Eva suit that will be an upgraded version of their current Iva suit that's why we had to explain the IBA first because this new SpaceX suit is just a beefed up version of what they already have now this is an important step to take because just like the Iva suit was crucial to the development of the Dragon vehicle an Eva suit is going to be just as important to Starship if SpaceX is going to follow through with elon's whole Mars City end game game then they are going to need a lot of spacesuits and those need to be capable and sturdy enough to keep people alive in some very extreme conditions so Polaris Dawn is going to serve as a halfway point an opportunity to use their existing suit design to test some expanded capabilities if you look at the render from Polaris Don it shows the existing Starman suit floating outside of the Dragon capsule with the umbilical line attached now this is a pretty basic concept art and it's not fully indicative of what the SpaceX Eva suit will actually look like what this does seem to indicate is that the umbilical connection will carry over from the IBA to Eva operation and that does make a lot of sense for now if we look at the typical astronaut performing a spacewalk at the ISS they wear their life support system on their back and that allows them to cover a lot of ground and maneuver freely around the exterior of the station that's not not necessary for Polaris Dawn and it's going to add a lot of extra bulk to the Eva suit we can imagine that the Polaris Dawn spacewalk will have a lot more in common with NASA's Project Gemini from the early 1960s these were the first missions where astronauts left the capsule and floated freely in outer space those first Evas were supported by an umbilical connection to the spacecraft the cord was made from an external layer of gold-coated nylon with silicone rubber hose inside the umbilical had a tensile strength of 350 pounds and there was an additional nylon tether line that had a strength of one thousand pounds so obviously SpaceX would need to make their existing umbilical connection a lot stronger and more secure but the concept of using this to support a spacewalk is totally sound another major factor that needs to be considered on a spacewalk is how the astronaut is going to maneuver in a vacuum on most ISS spacewalks the ash astronauts have used a system of tethers and help from the robotic Canada arm to maneuver around the exterior of the station and they also have use of a space jet pack that fires nitrogen gas thrusters to fly around Polaris Dawn won't have a robotic arm to help them out and the Jet Pack seems a bit bulky and overkill for the mission going back to Project Gemini you'll notice the astronaut holding a weird Contraption in their hand that is actually an air pressure gun that they used to maneuver around and it seems like the kind of thing that SpaceX might be able to develop for Polaris Dawn something that they could easily make a lot smaller for the modern day you can imagine that Iron Man style hand thrusters would be pretty effective for this kind of thing the most important thing that SpaceX needs to consider with their new Eva suit design is going to be radiation protection because Polaris Dawn is intending to conduct their spacewalk at such an extreme altitude of 700km kilometers they are going to be in close proximity to the inner reaches of the Van Allen radiation belt so their exposure to Cosmic radiation is going to be a lot higher than what is experienced at the ISS down at around 400 kilometers altitude so going outside the capsule even for a short time in those conditions could be physically dangerous to an astronaut if they aren't well protected the current Iva suit likely doesn't have any radiation shielding at all because you wouldn't need it you're already inside a shielded spaceship but there are opportunities for SpaceX to incorporate effective radiation protection into their existing suit design if you want the best possible material for blocking cosmic rays it needs to contain a lot of hydrogen atoms so a good candidate would be a plastic polymer called polyethylene this material can be woven into a matrix of threads that could then become a protective layer inside the shell of an Eva suit this wouldn't add very much about to the design but it would offer a lot more protection from the elements based on what SpaceX is able to learn from this first Eva test on Polaris Dawn they are going to be able to move on to the next step of developing a dedicated extravahicular activity suit which will then feed into their ultimate goal of creating an interplanetary activity suit that future settlers will use to colonize Mars meet us back here every week for more updates on everything Aerospace industry and Interstellar exploration related make sure to give the video a thumbs up today if you liked it that really helps us out for real and subscribe to the Space Race for more videos just like this we do one long form essay and one news update every week 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Channel: The Space Race

Views: 269,850

Keywords: spacex, spacex space suit, space suit, nasa, nasa space suit, EVA space suit

Id: Gd9woU9pjP4

Length: 13min 25sec (805 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 22 2023