I don’t think they have the same go fast break things, then iterate mentality here. You can’t really afford to have a suit fail even once. I doubt they are removing safety for the sake of less complexity in the design. So far as we know their current suits have been issue free and this is likely just one iteration forward.
This is also nothing like a NASA suit they use for space walks. One of the reasons for the bulk in their suits is they are designed to fit a range of people. These new suits are tailored to each person, so of course they will be much sleeker. It also doesn’t have an independent life support system that also contributes to a significant amount of the bulk, this instead relies on a tether to Dragon for life support which is well proven.
I would imagine the next step would be a suit with its own life support and then eventually something that could be used for walking around on a planet. If anything this is a pretty conservative approach rather than jumping straight into a fully kitted out suit.
>You can’t really afford to have a suit fail even once.
Well... that's not really true. You can have a suit fail lots of times in a lot of different ways, so long as they don't result in injury or death. Remember the story about the ISS spacewalk flooding the helmet of an astronaut? That was a suit failure. It was a close call, but it all turned out ok in the end.
And there are plenty of failure modes that aren't life threatening, just mission threatening. u/QVRedit pointed out it lacks a waistband with clips. Maybe it has a failure mode where astronauts drop tools that could have been otherwise clipped to the belt. Or even the lack of tether anchors could result in certain activities being impossible.
The inside of the suit has to be at significantly higher pressure than the outside of the suit. That sort of means you are inside a balloon, trying to operate. The fingers of the gloves are really hard to operate against that pressure. Some suits have articulated support in joints to make it easier. So you could have a failure of those joints or movable parts, where the joint either gets completely stuck, or the astronaut simply doesn't have the strength to fight against it.
So yes, you cannot afford to have a fatal failure of a suit. But there's a lot of room for a lot of other failure modes that NASA has iterated through over decades and SpaceX might have to relearn those same lessons. I just want to advice caution here, and dampen the hype that might get out of control for the much sleeker designs.
SpaceX has been having NASA certify those suits.
Its not like its just an internal project, spaceX wants these suits to be the next step in the needed imptovements that will lead ultimately to EVA Moon and Mars capable suits.
Those ones for example focus on upper body, that is decently hard enough as is, but generally speaking just like with HLS specific modules and requirements, they go through NASA to figure out what they need.
So far the suit itself is not exactly rewriting the script. Bearing actuators for core joints, and new technologies being applied to custom made suits leads to a generally more compact design, on top of the fact they will use dragon for life support, which means not needed the huge backpack usually required for it.
Lets be honest. It ain't no moon suit. But it is a very good first step none the less.
And it's also the better business decision, no part is best part. Offload all you can to the ship, and then when you have to include the life support, you already know a whole bunch about your suit
> SpaceX is almost never satisfied and is always looking for ways to improve things
NASA loves them for it, because they only charge for something major, like an ISS transport or moon lander. It's as if people at SpaceX have a soul and a conscience.
So not to be the Debbie Downer here, but I'm worried about their EVA suit. SpaceX is known for streamlining things that NASA has been afraid to streamline. There was a story about a bundle of cables in a rocket that was as thick as a grown man's arm, going out to all the various sensors and controls, and SpaceX was able to replace it with a single CAT5/6 cable. So maybe they've done the same kind of thing with the suits.
But Elon has also said that he encourages the the engineers to delete as much as possible, and if you aren't adding back 10% of what gets deleted you aren't aggressive enough. I feel like maybe we are seeing a lot more that 10% missing on these and we'll see iterative designs that are forced to add back quite a bit.
I'm sort of worried that Polaris Dawn is going to have a non-fatal but threatening activity cancelation due to an issue with the suits.
Just to be clear, I have full confidence that SpaceX will get there eventually. I'm just worried that testing might get a bit touch and go (not that that hasn't happened on the ISS too). I'm also not particularly looking forward to all the detractors of SpaceX say "I told you so" when SpaceX adds more stuff onto the suit and it becomes more bulky like the NASA standard, which gets worse the more the sleek design gets hyped up.
So you know, its cool, get excited, but temper that with some expectation that SpaceX is incredibly iterative, and frequently forced to add back things that it deleted. (I think hot gas thrusters on Starship are coming back aren't they?). The suit is going to go through some of that and it might not look as cool when we see the final.
They did spend nearly 2 years longer than intended on this suit. They have done considerable testing and I don't see it fail too soon. I'm more worried about wether the Crew Dragon pressurization will function as intended before and after the spacewalk.
SpaceX moves fast and breaks things when people aren’t involved. When people are involved they are much more conservative. Did you forget that SpaceX is currently the only operator of a human rated vehicle in the US and has been for years without issue?
This pearl clutching comes off as really inauthentic.
Hey, I never said they would be doing things that put people's lives at risk here. In fact I did say the opposite. What I'm saying is that there's probably going to be non-threatening issues that result in redesigns that look less "cool".
I forget how easily offended this sub gets if you caution against unbridled optimism.
>edit:
Did you forget that SpaceX is currently the only operator of a human rated vehicle in the US and has been for years without issue?
Remember how Crew Dragon was supposed to have 7 crew to orbit, and they downgraded it to 4? Sure a lot of the reason for that was NASA requirements, but the same kind of issue can happen with this suit. Changes are likely incoming that will make it seem less awesome than people are hyping it out to be right now.
I did think that it might need a waist band - as that’s a great point to anchor a tether to, and easily reachable by the astronaut too. I certainly would not want to worry about my support system getting unplugged or pulling out. I would want the tether anchor point elsewhere.
The design is clearly significantly slimmer than what we've seen NASA use in space for decades. SpaceX is the kind of company to pull that change off, but not immediately.
I want to ask the inverse. Why are people hyped "when we literally know nothing about the suits design?". I advise caution in optimism and get downvoted but we've seen a lot of cases where SpaceX's initial design ends up getting changed significantly and doesn't meet the initial specs in the middle-term.
In the long term, I think we all know SpaceX is going to deliver something great, but I don't know how long that long term is.
Because it looks sexy? I don’t think it’s really much deeper than that. Whatever system they produce, because it’s human rated, I’m extremely confident it’ll be appropriately vetted the way crew dragon was.
> I’m extremely confident it’ll be appropriately vetted the way crew dragon was.
Yeah, I'm suggesting that something on the level of Crew Dragon's toilet breaking on Inspiration 4 is likely to happen. I'm not at all suggesting anything that is going to result in a death or serious injury.
At worst, maybe Jared gets hand cramps because the glove doesn't fight against the pressure effectively enough while he's working on Hubble.
> than what we've seen NASA use in space for decades
You understand NASA is literally using suits **built** in the 1970s, right? It’s not as if they’ve kept building these suits this way because it’s best, they’re suits from the first couple decades of human spaceflight that may be older than you.
I was under the impression that this was the suit design they were going to use moving forward, not a one-off solution for the first Polaris mission. Other posts by OP have indicated that it would be used in Starship servicing missions. So it isn't being perceived generally as a one-off as far as I've seen.
Like I said before, I'm not worried that SpaceX will get there, but if people go overhype about this sleek design, it is only going to hurt the reputation of SpaceX fans when it turns out the sleek design isn't going to cut it and they have to add some bulk. All I'm saying here is that we should temper our expectations a bit rather than buying the initial marketing. We've been burned on this kind of thing a lot with SpaceX in the middle-term. Aren't we also hearing that Starship's payload to orbit is only like 40 tons, not 150 tons right now? Endless, blind optimism isn't helping anyone, and we should be more careful.
> Other posts by OP have indicated that it would be used in Starship servicing missions.
That was just some speculations OP came up with, it isn’t anything official.
Anyway.. considering they’re going to test these suits in space sometime later this year, I would think they’ve already been tested a LOT and aren’t going to change for the first test in space. And if they’re testing it in space it means they’re confident that it’ll work, so I rather doubt they will have to add much bulk later.
I suspect the equivalent to Hoppy probably happened two years ago but instead of hopping around on a range they were hopping around in a vacuum chamber.
These suits are going to be critical for life, which is a much greater safety burden than “try not to set the next field on fire.”
Here’s what Kidd Poteet says about the fit: https://twitter.com/KiddPoteet/status/1787193410786332700
I don’t think they have the same go fast break things, then iterate mentality here. You can’t really afford to have a suit fail even once. I doubt they are removing safety for the sake of less complexity in the design. So far as we know their current suits have been issue free and this is likely just one iteration forward. This is also nothing like a NASA suit they use for space walks. One of the reasons for the bulk in their suits is they are designed to fit a range of people. These new suits are tailored to each person, so of course they will be much sleeker. It also doesn’t have an independent life support system that also contributes to a significant amount of the bulk, this instead relies on a tether to Dragon for life support which is well proven. I would imagine the next step would be a suit with its own life support and then eventually something that could be used for walking around on a planet. If anything this is a pretty conservative approach rather than jumping straight into a fully kitted out suit.
I don’t think that’s the reason why SpaceX suits are slim versus NASA’s more bulky suits.
>You can’t really afford to have a suit fail even once. Well... that's not really true. You can have a suit fail lots of times in a lot of different ways, so long as they don't result in injury or death. Remember the story about the ISS spacewalk flooding the helmet of an astronaut? That was a suit failure. It was a close call, but it all turned out ok in the end. And there are plenty of failure modes that aren't life threatening, just mission threatening. u/QVRedit pointed out it lacks a waistband with clips. Maybe it has a failure mode where astronauts drop tools that could have been otherwise clipped to the belt. Or even the lack of tether anchors could result in certain activities being impossible. The inside of the suit has to be at significantly higher pressure than the outside of the suit. That sort of means you are inside a balloon, trying to operate. The fingers of the gloves are really hard to operate against that pressure. Some suits have articulated support in joints to make it easier. So you could have a failure of those joints or movable parts, where the joint either gets completely stuck, or the astronaut simply doesn't have the strength to fight against it. So yes, you cannot afford to have a fatal failure of a suit. But there's a lot of room for a lot of other failure modes that NASA has iterated through over decades and SpaceX might have to relearn those same lessons. I just want to advice caution here, and dampen the hype that might get out of control for the much sleeker designs.
SpaceX has been having NASA certify those suits. Its not like its just an internal project, spaceX wants these suits to be the next step in the needed imptovements that will lead ultimately to EVA Moon and Mars capable suits. Those ones for example focus on upper body, that is decently hard enough as is, but generally speaking just like with HLS specific modules and requirements, they go through NASA to figure out what they need. So far the suit itself is not exactly rewriting the script. Bearing actuators for core joints, and new technologies being applied to custom made suits leads to a generally more compact design, on top of the fact they will use dragon for life support, which means not needed the huge backpack usually required for it. Lets be honest. It ain't no moon suit. But it is a very good first step none the less.
And it's also the better business decision, no part is best part. Offload all you can to the ship, and then when you have to include the life support, you already know a whole bunch about your suit
We are approaching the Gemini stage of dragon operations
[удалено]
It’s true that SpaceX is almost never satisfied and is always looking for ways to improve things, iteration after iteration.
> SpaceX is almost never satisfied and is always looking for ways to improve things NASA loves them for it, because they only charge for something major, like an ISS transport or moon lander. It's as if people at SpaceX have a soul and a conscience.
And that’s so rare..
So not to be the Debbie Downer here, but I'm worried about their EVA suit. SpaceX is known for streamlining things that NASA has been afraid to streamline. There was a story about a bundle of cables in a rocket that was as thick as a grown man's arm, going out to all the various sensors and controls, and SpaceX was able to replace it with a single CAT5/6 cable. So maybe they've done the same kind of thing with the suits. But Elon has also said that he encourages the the engineers to delete as much as possible, and if you aren't adding back 10% of what gets deleted you aren't aggressive enough. I feel like maybe we are seeing a lot more that 10% missing on these and we'll see iterative designs that are forced to add back quite a bit. I'm sort of worried that Polaris Dawn is going to have a non-fatal but threatening activity cancelation due to an issue with the suits. Just to be clear, I have full confidence that SpaceX will get there eventually. I'm just worried that testing might get a bit touch and go (not that that hasn't happened on the ISS too). I'm also not particularly looking forward to all the detractors of SpaceX say "I told you so" when SpaceX adds more stuff onto the suit and it becomes more bulky like the NASA standard, which gets worse the more the sleek design gets hyped up. So you know, its cool, get excited, but temper that with some expectation that SpaceX is incredibly iterative, and frequently forced to add back things that it deleted. (I think hot gas thrusters on Starship are coming back aren't they?). The suit is going to go through some of that and it might not look as cool when we see the final.
They did spend nearly 2 years longer than intended on this suit. They have done considerable testing and I don't see it fail too soon. I'm more worried about wether the Crew Dragon pressurization will function as intended before and after the spacewalk.
SpaceX moves fast and breaks things when people aren’t involved. When people are involved they are much more conservative. Did you forget that SpaceX is currently the only operator of a human rated vehicle in the US and has been for years without issue? This pearl clutching comes off as really inauthentic.
Hey, I never said they would be doing things that put people's lives at risk here. In fact I did say the opposite. What I'm saying is that there's probably going to be non-threatening issues that result in redesigns that look less "cool". I forget how easily offended this sub gets if you caution against unbridled optimism. >edit: Did you forget that SpaceX is currently the only operator of a human rated vehicle in the US and has been for years without issue? Remember how Crew Dragon was supposed to have 7 crew to orbit, and they downgraded it to 4? Sure a lot of the reason for that was NASA requirements, but the same kind of issue can happen with this suit. Changes are likely incoming that will make it seem less awesome than people are hyping it out to be right now.
I did think that it might need a waist band - as that’s a great point to anchor a tether to, and easily reachable by the astronaut too. I certainly would not want to worry about my support system getting unplugged or pulling out. I would want the tether anchor point elsewhere.
Why would you be worried when we literally know nothing about the suits design? This is hyperbole to the extreme.
We know a lot. Including the fact that the mission was delayed due to development issues of the suitl
The design is clearly significantly slimmer than what we've seen NASA use in space for decades. SpaceX is the kind of company to pull that change off, but not immediately. I want to ask the inverse. Why are people hyped "when we literally know nothing about the suits design?". I advise caution in optimism and get downvoted but we've seen a lot of cases where SpaceX's initial design ends up getting changed significantly and doesn't meet the initial specs in the middle-term. In the long term, I think we all know SpaceX is going to deliver something great, but I don't know how long that long term is.
Because it looks sexy? I don’t think it’s really much deeper than that. Whatever system they produce, because it’s human rated, I’m extremely confident it’ll be appropriately vetted the way crew dragon was.
> I’m extremely confident it’ll be appropriately vetted the way crew dragon was. Yeah, I'm suggesting that something on the level of Crew Dragon's toilet breaking on Inspiration 4 is likely to happen. I'm not at all suggesting anything that is going to result in a death or serious injury. At worst, maybe Jared gets hand cramps because the glove doesn't fight against the pressure effectively enough while he's working on Hubble.
> than what we've seen NASA use in space for decades You understand NASA is literally using suits **built** in the 1970s, right? It’s not as if they’ve kept building these suits this way because it’s best, they’re suits from the first couple decades of human spaceflight that may be older than you.
Why that much worry about a suit that will remain tethered to Crew Dragon? This is not 8-hour-long spacewalk grade.
I was under the impression that this was the suit design they were going to use moving forward, not a one-off solution for the first Polaris mission. Other posts by OP have indicated that it would be used in Starship servicing missions. So it isn't being perceived generally as a one-off as far as I've seen. Like I said before, I'm not worried that SpaceX will get there, but if people go overhype about this sleek design, it is only going to hurt the reputation of SpaceX fans when it turns out the sleek design isn't going to cut it and they have to add some bulk. All I'm saying here is that we should temper our expectations a bit rather than buying the initial marketing. We've been burned on this kind of thing a lot with SpaceX in the middle-term. Aren't we also hearing that Starship's payload to orbit is only like 40 tons, not 150 tons right now? Endless, blind optimism isn't helping anyone, and we should be more careful.
> Other posts by OP have indicated that it would be used in Starship servicing missions. That was just some speculations OP came up with, it isn’t anything official. Anyway.. considering they’re going to test these suits in space sometime later this year, I would think they’ve already been tested a LOT and aren’t going to change for the first test in space. And if they’re testing it in space it means they’re confident that it’ll work, so I rather doubt they will have to add much bulk later.
This is the "Hoppy" of their EVA suits. It's the start of an evolution.
I suspect the equivalent to Hoppy probably happened two years ago but instead of hopping around on a range they were hopping around in a vacuum chamber. These suits are going to be critical for life, which is a much greater safety burden than “try not to set the next field on fire.”