Suited for Space

in less than 5 years an astronaut will be stepping out on the moon to conduct Man's first real exploration of our oldest satellite it will have been a long Voyage carrying him far from his native land planet Earth into a strange and airless world to survive he must carry with him a bit of his familiar environment how bioengineers are designing a space suit that will support astronauts on a roundtrip lunar mission is our story today on science [Music] reporter hello I'm John Fitch MIT science reporter speaking to you from the Moon or at least a reasonable fact simile thereof actually this simulated lunar landscape and this mockup of the lunar Excursion module are at the Mann spacecraft Center in Houston Texas where Engineers for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration are testing and evaluating the performance of the Apollo space suit actually uh encapsulating a man into a suit that protects him from his environment at the same time uh gives him adequate life support is no very novel idea deep sea divers have depended on just such a solution for their descents into hostile ocean depths for decades but as it applied to going up instead of going down bioengineering got a much later start it wasn't until World War II when airplanes began nosing up to an airless 20,000 ft that man found he was stretching Beyond his natural reach breathing oxygen systems had to be devised and that's so many years later men flying high-speed military planes at ever higher altitudes required anti-force and decompression protective systems but today as we move into the Space Age these few problems seem relatively tame when they're measured against the support systems that man will require for lunar Explorations and to find out about these uh systems that will be used to protect men on the moon we talked to Mr Matthew radowski assistant chief of the system development Branch here at the man spacecraft Center John before I show you the Apollo suits I think you ought to see couple of our earlier models here we have the AL Shepard's suit this is the Mercury suit some of the interesting things about this suit are note there that there aren't any movable joints in this no hard joints no sealed Rings or anything else all Mobility is achieved by very clever uh tailoring uh you can see artificial brakes that have been sewn into the suit realizing of course that this entire suit is simply about a bladder and that the restraining garment on the outside is what allows us to have uh Mobility note in the elbows that we have no special joints simply through the use of this uh unidirectional restraint we're able to get a certain amount of mobility in the elbow I mean if you didn't have that you just sort of be out like a balloon exactly he would inflate and be almost rigid he just about couldn't move it all this green bottle is interesting this is the way we originally uh sealed our helmets the visor see this visor moves up and down and by inflating a seal that's around the periphery of it we achieve uh quite an excellent ceiling of the entire suit was this a a really significant um step forward in the suits or was not really because this suit uh was is really based on a developmental item that came from the Navy this suit as it stands is very similar to the markv navy suit which is used in conventional high altitude aircraft with some minor modifications in the in the hand we've uh added a different kind of a palm restraint in here uh but generally speaking the suit doesn't differ significantly from uh the uh Department of Defense uh model at the moment he's simply being ventilated by a uh ventilator here which keeps him cool uh until he would be attached up to the spacecraft itself mhm what about the next step well the next step after the G after the Mercury suit is the geminy and here we have oh yes this looks familiar this is uh a suit very similar to this in fact identical to this was one by white in his extra vehicular excursions uh this suit is covered with a material called uh NX a very high temperature nylon which will withstand very high temperatures about 700° is that because the sun shining on him out in space uh yes uh although and under these circumstances this is primarily used uh in case the spacecraft itself got hot on the outside and he touched it he wouldn't uh be burnt also the it would protect uh the material underneath remember the temperature outside can be up to about 250° well now um this actually had to support life for him out there in Sp with nothing but an that's right uh under the under uh White's uh flight or in White's flight he received his oxygen through this port uh through a long umbilical and it was simply uh ventilated through him uh part of the uh flow rate of the oxygen came down over his visor right here and also it might be interesting to note uh that he used very low flow rates uh because he didn't do that much work uh he worked hard but not much harder than he would normally either inside the spacecraft or for that matter on Earth uh the suit itself uh was equipped with glove lights I don't know if this yes we have them shown here which allowed the man inside the spacecraft uh when he was inside the spacecraft to scan his instruments uh without destroying dock adaptation when he was uh on the dark side of the uh Earth well now what kind of a suit will they wear on the way to the moon on the way to the Moon inside the cabin they probably won't need a suit at all let me come over here and show you what they will be wearing here's our constant wear garment oh really this look like a set of long underwear well that's just what it is it's a modified set of long underwear used as a carrier for the electronic equipment for amplifying the signals that come out of the bio sensors here's one of them is hanging out now this is stuck right against the skin on the inside I see well you mean this is all they have on inside the that's all they'll have on inside the Command Module there's no reason for a suit remember the main reason for a suit is to protect a man against uh low pressures very low pressures and at the same time uh in the event of returning to the Earth uh they would have to have environmental prote uh protection against the Earth's environment hostile environment uh in an emergency but normally under normal conditions we don't expect them to wear a suit a true shirt sleeve environment is what we expect to achieve then once they do get to the moon though can they wear something sort of like the that's something else again there's a whole series of problems associated with the very hostile environment of the moon for instance we have to protect the man against uh the thermal loads uh that he will encounter in working very hard on the moon's surface we have to protect him against the micrometeoroids uh which are a constant Source uh of potential danger uh and also the secondary ejector these are the splashes of rocks that come up when a single meteoroid would hit the ground let's say close to the astronaut we have to protect the man against the uh infrared and the ultraviolet radiations uh which are not at all uh reduced by a the lack of a uh atmosphere around the Moon we have to Pro uh protect the man against the very hot and very cold temperatures associated with the surface of the Moon there is there are a whole series of them we have to provide the man with a self-contained life support system this life support system would include uh a whole series of items which we can discuss later which I can demonstrate to you quite easily well now how are you going to solve all these problems well it's interesting here we have uh an indication of our hand with us thank you here I have a a mannequin dressed in a liquid cooling garment if you'll note the inside of this garment has is covered with small tubules these little tubules are filled with water they are actually uh filled prior to flight and uh by conduction by causing a flow of water through the main uh branch and then returning it from this uh secondary Branch we have the ability to pick up heat directly from the skin which keeps the man's temperature skin temperature down and therefore stops him from perspiring well now why can't you just use a regular air conditioning with normally you do normally you do are simply blowing cold dry air Across the Skin and this is supposed to pick up all the perspiration associated with his work but on the moon surface we expect the man to work very hard extremely hard almost twice the rate that he works on the uh surface of the Earth as a result uh his work rate is so high and his uh production of perspiration so great that we can't possibly pick it all up by the rate and the amount of gas uh available in the portable life support system see well now does he uh wear this uh thing over that or under no this this is one uh immediately over a very light set of skibbies mhm or a light set of underwear and directly under the pressure gam assembly uh which we have over here oh can we see that I'll get rid of this for you thank you oh this does look quite a bit different from that uh gmany suit that we saw it is this is a one of our earlier models of the Apollo suit note the joints particularly this is a demonstration of a constant volume joint concept uh which was submitted To Us by one of the contractors who ultimately won the contract for the uh Moon suit mhm what do you mean by a constant volume joint well under these uh under this design or in this design the man can move and when he moves he doesn't disturb the column of air so that the internal pressure remains constant oh he isn't trying to squeeze air when he turns to move exactly if indeed he'd squeezed air the uh force and work associated with doing that would almost uh prevent him from making any sort of motion MH there's a great deal of work anyway and we want to keep this to a minimum to make normal motion he's not pressurized at this time again being ventilated simply to keep cool could we see the actual Apollo suit yes let's take a look at the uh suit now now it seems to me he's walking a little more stiffly than the other well this man is pressurized now he has 3.7 PSI that is there's three almost a little uh over 3 and 1/2 lb differential pressure in his suit it's slightly inflated a little more than the previous suit is it all right to surely but you can see that there is a considerable pressure associated with this uh mode of operation the gases are ventilated or the incoming V gases come in here go up to his helmet and then pass over the front to stop it from fogging and uh a portion of the gases the rest of the gases go down to the extremities to his fingers and to his toes and then come back are collected and come back through here when the astronauts leave the lamb for their exploration of the lunar surface they'll strap on one of the most important parts of the extra vehicular Mobility unit the portable life support system or plss to learn about this unusual backpack we visited the Hamilton standard division of United aircraft in Windsor loocks Connecticut where the plss is manufactured we talked with Mr Ronald Lang project manager for systems engineering here in our space lab I'd like to show you a full scale markup of our portable life support system or backpack this when used in conjunction with a pressure garment or space suit gives a man all the required Essentials for life support as a matter of fact it has everything that a spacecraft would have with the exception of a propulsion system we don't have any Rockets no we use our legs for the propulsion when a man wants to put this on uh in the vehicle he disconnects the oxygen supply that goes to the suit that's going and coming from the suit he disconnects the water that goes to the liquid cool garment in back and this is an emergency oxygen system that goes into the helmet and then an electrical umbilical and then to put on this backpack he faces it in this fashion turns around with the precious suit on and then puts connects these all to the proper connectors on the suit then this just has a harness it fits over his shoulder just puts on a harness it weighs about 65 Earth pounds that's pretty heavy but on the moon it's only about 11 12 lb all right because of the reduced gravity now as a life support system contains all the the basic ingredients for life support a chief among these would be the supply and regulation of high pressure oxygen to the suit this oxygen bottle sitting right here contains one a little bit over one pound of oxygen it's at 850 PSI and it's regulated down to suit pressure of about one quar of what the pressure is in this room would that be a little uncomfortable no it it wouldn't be because it's pure oxygen and as far as a man is concerned his lungs see the same amount of oxygen as they do on Earth now as the oxygen goes to the pressure suit and picks up carbon dioxide it brings it back through these umbilical to the backpack and a backpack must remove that carbon dioxide otherwise it'd be lethal to the man really uh what we have to do then is use a chemical absorption bed we have a a contaminant removal cartrid that removes odors and carbon dioxide best to show you then uh a cartridge which is a replace replaceable we use one of these with each Mission it contains lithium hyd oxide and activated charcoal and it's completely consumed at the end of emission looks like an oil filter yes it is and uh it in incidentally it gives off heat during this process it it adds heat to the system and uh I should add that for that to be effective the fact that it's sitting here by itself doesn't do us any good we have to come up with a technique for getting the CO2 Laden oxygen from the helmet to the backpack right and uh for this reason we use a fan and the fan is this gadget right over here oh I see that is a fan and the fan is powered by an electric motor uh we also use a pump to push the liquid cooling uh the water to the liquid cooling garment and back the pump sits right at this point and it is also powered by an electric motor well that's right uh to send the water over there and bring it back and how do you cool the water once it's inside the backpack the water has picked up about 8° when it goes through the liquid garment and the oxygen is coming out of a body temperature and it has a lot of moisture in it and this is all red in this box right here which is a sublimator does now a sublimator is best described by referring back to the to the big snow banks in Maine that seem to disappear even though the temperature never goes above 32° they what happens here is that the snow goes directly from the ice phase to the gas phase and it never melts in between so the principle of operation here is exactly the same what we do then is we and let me show you by the way way this is a sublimator a complete and actual sublimator the oxygen from the suit comes in through here and leaves here the water comes in from here and leaves here the water that we are turning into ice to Sublime is coming in from here to here from a reservoir and what it does is it becomes an ice layer in the in the layers in here becomes ice and for to enable it to go from Ice to gas it must pull heat away from its surroundings it cools this whole L down to almost 32° in fact the ice is at 32° and in so doing the oxygen and the water that go through here are cooled down to the levels that we have to have that is very interesting well we have other things that are on that are in this backpack that are not life support elements per se a chief among these are communication we have a communication subsystem which sits right on top of the sublimator and is cooled by it this is the antenna and this is the connection here so that he can talk back to the lamb or exactly he could talk back to the lamb or he could talk to the Earth via the lamb little radio station that is a complete transmitter and receiver I'd like to show you a component there this is the communication system that is really small isn't it it's very small and very Compact and it has in addition to voice it has seven channels of information that are continuously telemed if the man so desires he can shut off the Telemetry it monitors the performance and gives us EKG electrocardiogram now just thinking that all these things seem to run on electricity how do you power all of this for 4 hours we power the electric motors and the communication system with a battery a silver zinc battery which is also a one shot deal we have as many batteries the battery goes right in here at this point and there are as many batteries as we're going to run missions it's 5 lbs and it's designed with the launch vibrations in the vehicle from Cape Kennedy in mind it's a very rugged reliable battery and that's enough to run this for 4 hours it's enough to run this for 4 hours yes it is the other thing that like to mention uh is failure detection for us to be able to run a successful Mission we must feel confident that we could bring the man back in the event of a failure and the astronaut will have on here various systems to tell him that he's got problems if he in fact does but two of these will be a low pressure warning device which will trigger an audible warning buzzer if the suit pressure goes below 3.2 PSI how would that happen if we had a leak in the system or if for some reason we stop supplying oxygen the pressure would begin to Decay and the other thing that we would like to tell them about is if we're using up too much oxygen we have a flow warning buzzer that tells him you're using your oxygen too fast do something well if he does get into one of these serious problems how is he going to get back when he's wandering around in the he has an emergency mode of operation he immediately Cuts in his emergency oxygen system which is built on to here for expressly that purpose the emergency oxygen system is uh a teroid 7500 lb per square inch Supply that contains only 2/10 of a pound of oxygen and when when used in conjunction with the main Supply can give us emergency ventilation and purging of the helmet area even though the fan fails now that thing will go in this area up against the backpack another emergency system is the communication we have a redundant Communication System see if we can to see the rest of the space suit to be worn on the moon we talked again with Mr Matthew rovski at the man spacecraft Center in Houston this um white garment what is that for you wear that this is thermal meteoroid garment it's made up into uh layers these are the layers of material the first layer is a NX cloth this whole garment provides protection against radiant energy impinging on the suit uh from the Sun and also re reflected from the Moon and also protects them against meteoroids see this is a most interesting insulation this insulation only works in a vacuum it's very similar to the material that we have in a thermos bottle on Earth it's as though the men were completely enclosed in a thermos jug there so many layers it consist of some seven or eight layers of aluminized Mila with a dakron scrim and then covered with the abrasive resistance no Mex material that we've talked about before uh and also has this felt layer this nylon felt uh which provides the bumper protection against the meteoroids that we also discussed uh for instance on the lunar surface we have uh meteoroids microm meteoroids uh which are constantly hitting the moon uh even if they don't hit the man or only hit close to the man they travel at immense speeds uh something like uh 30,000 ft per second or higher and as they uh hit the Moon uh they send off Showers of rocks which also have high energies associated with them and they themselves traveling at very high speeds could go uh injure the man were it not for the protection afforded by this soft layer now how big are these uh M they're not large they run uh from 5 Micron in diameter upwards so like a little speck of dust or yeah they uh you can't see them actually uh and as I said before they run something like 10 times the speed of a bullet I see so they have a of energy even though they are a great deal of energy they they are they are so fast that one could POS never know it again either I see these are very unusual U shoes that he has on top of his regular note that this portion of a suit Pro provides protection against radiant energy mhm the boots provide protection against conductive heat heat loss or gain through the soles of the shoes mean the surface of the Moon could actually be hot to touch the surface of the Moon will probably be range between plus 250° andus 250° and uh the heat lost through the boot sols could be uh tremendous then of course we have our visors and these Pro give protection against both ultraviolet and infrared uh Rays resulting from the lack of an atmosphere around the Moon uh normally on Earth we have an atmosphere which filters out to a great degree the harmful radiations uh from the sun when they are intense on the moon we have no such cover and we have to provide it if it weren't there the man would become blind he'd be have retinal Burns and so forth uh he must have this kind of protection these uh fold down over reg down over his visor uh the one is for the infrared and the other one for the ultraviolet they also provide visual uh protection in the visual range the visible range so like big sunglasses like big sunglasses exactly but with all of this material on I wonder how he can do anything but just sort of stump around a little bit he actually can do quite a bit do you want to uh show him some of the exercises now he's pressurized here 3 and 1 12 3.7 lb do quite a bit that's very interesting well that's fine on uh here on the Earth but is it uh the same if he was up on the moon it wouldn't be on the same the same on the moon no on Earth where this test was just run we're at one 1 G mhm but really in order to determine how uh how much effort is associated with working on the uh lunar surface we must somehow simulate the lunar Gravity the lunar gravity being approximately 1 16 that of the the earth now we have three ways of achieving this uh the first is a 16g simulator uh which we've uh had fabricated here it is a series of of levers counterbalanced with weights with a man hanging on one end of it uh he's like one portion of a giant mobile and by counterbalancing and overweighting one side we can give him the effective uh the effect of 16g however there's a great deal of mass and uh inertia associated with this rig it weighs several tons and uh we in order to overcome this we use SE several ropes and Men on the end of them so that it won't take over from the man then there's a third one a second one and this is the uh Langley uh simulator where a large pendulum a very long pendulum is attached to the man sideways who uh attempts to walk as though he were walking alongside of a building he's held by six or eight tethers from various points of articulation on his body uh in this manner we can vary the point or pivot of the uh pendulum so as to simulate again 16g on his boot SES but probably the best way of doing it is in the KC 135 aircraft which through parabol flying parabolic oxs can simulate between 35 and 40 seconds in duration 16g and we've done most of our tests our our most effective tests are done uh at altitude in the KC 135 uh craft now these are supplied To Us by the Air Force but when you put all this together what does a space suit nowadays cost specifically the Mercury space suit ran between $6 and $7,000 uh the Germany spacecraft uh space suit uh will run uh ultimately approximately $35,000 and the Apollo suit when it is complete on a unit basis will run somewhere around $150,000 including the portable life support system I see well do you feel that the Apollo suit is the ultimate in space suits no uh there is another suit system that's being developed undergoing the same series of tests that have uh been uh imposed on the other suits and this is a hard suit this suit is fabricated of of aluminum and honeycomb so like a suit of armor then it's indeed a suit of armor with the exception of the visor which is a plastic uh the joints are covered with cloth uh just for purposes of protection uh keeping dust and so forth out of them but many of us feel that a suit of this type is the ultimate uh in lunar exploration the extra vehicular Mobility unit for project Apollo is as we've seen not the final word in space suit research is already underway on even more advanced systems but no matter what these systems may look like they will certainly benefit from the experience gained with Apollo's emu today we visited the man spacecraft Center in Houston Texas I'm John pitch MIT science reporter [Music] [Music] h [Music]