Life saving Space suit materialism
Have you ever felt curious how the astronauts protect their body from all the unknown, invisible and mysterious radiations that empower the whole universe when they are at space?
Didn’t you had a question like, if it’s extremely hot on moon at direct sunlight Why it wasn’t floral soft cotton pants with a pair of cool shades cause its simply the best picnic a billionaire could have in lifetime?
Lets have a little chat about that materialism of the fluffy ,ideal suit that swifts in to our mind whenever we drive our minds towards the astronomical world and lets find the special chemistry behind the materials used to produce this special suit.
Why a space suit?
First of all we’ll see the need of having this kind of a suit. Its obvious that everyone of us know that the atmospheric pressure and oxygen is not there in space and they are the main components that sustain human life. So simply, if we are at space, we don’t have them even if we need them to survive. . And then the temperature at space is about 275F due to the direct sunlight. Also astronauts have to get protected from all the harmful radiations around them. That is something serious…
Radiation is a form of energy that is emitted from various potentials and it can be in the form of an electromagnetic wave or sometimes as particles. Radiation may be visible like visible light or infrared radiation and may not be visible as Gamma rays and X-rays. Human body is not much capable of enduring these kind of rays and getting exposed to an environment for a long period of time can cause sudden or timely biological disorders. Even though earth is protected by an atmosphere, all the above mentioned radiations are active on Earth naturally or by means of human activities. And for day today living, humans have organized safety procedures and systematic functions to get protected whenever they are getting exposed to those rays.
Our journey begins from earth… By reaching an approximate velocity of 18,000 miles per hour, we are out of the orbit just in seconds.
And then our story begins…the case is way serious from this moment…
At the Space
At the interstellar space atoms are accelerated up to speed of light and due to the vast change in velocity the electrons get removed and the nucleus get remained. So the nature and characters of radiation sounds way scary than on Earth. Space radiation is all about ionized radiation and it is divided in to 03 sections mainly as, Particles trapped in Earth’s Magnetic field, Particles come in to space due to solar flare, Galactic cosmic rays (photons with high energy and heavy ions which are from outside of Earth’s Solar system).
what happens if get exposed
According to NASA, astronauts are getting exposed to above mentioned ionized radiation in a range of 50–2,000 mSv. (mSv -milli Sievert is measuring unit of radiation). And based on their further explanations 1mSv is equal to three chest X-rays. So its like having 150–6000 chest X-rays approximately.
Take a good breath .Read that again. Its 150–6000 chest X-rays!
Due to these reasons astronauts have a risk of having disorders like radiation sickness, cancers, disorders in central nervous system and degenerative diseases.
So can you imagine how important it to have a protective wardrobe to defend radiations? I mean If the radiations can do such a keen affect to astronauts body, can you understand how defensive should the materials of the wardrobe have to be?
We’ll see the micro level characteristics of the materials used in a space suit.
Origin of the space suit & its materialism
ILC Dovers INC is one of the pioneer companies who have produced space suits for Apallo mission on 1966. Up to today they work as a partner in providing best space suits for voyages.
Bellow details are based on the article “space suit evolution from custom Tailored to Off-The-Rack”. The article was published on 1994 and yeah Sounds too old but going through their information really makes sense .
ILC Dovers INC have started the designing campaign on1961 and prototypes were introduced on the year 1964. At that time the thickness of the space suit was 3/16 inches and it comprises of 11 layers from variety of materials. They are Ortho-fabric, Aluminized Mylar, neoprene-coated nylon, Dacron, Urethane-coated nylon, Tricot, Nylon/Spandex, Stainless steel and high strength composite material. The materials were sewn and cemented together for reinforcement and metal parts were attached to join the components.
We’ll consider the speciality of each material in brief. While going through the facts just imagine how the characters of each material have supported the whole space suit to be radioprotective as well as comfortable.
According to the book, “Suited for Space walking”, the garment that was used in Apallo mission had a network of thin walled plastic tubing that circulated water throughout the astronauts body preventing from overheating(cooling suit). And on top of that (cooling suit), multilayered pressure garment is worn. The innermost layer of the garment is made for comfortableness with a layer of nylon and it consists of fabric ventilation ducts. These textile ventilations are to provide a smooth air flow. And on the top of the above a layer of neoprene-coated nylon surrounded by a nylon restraint layer. Pressure inside the suit is contained by this layer. Mobility of the suit is achieved by Rubber with built in restraint cables. And this material constitution is found in each joints like waist, elbows, knees, shoulders and ankles. On above of this layer, there is a set of layers consist of Aluminized mylar and Non-woven Dacron. The mix goes like five layers of Aluminized mylar and four spacing layers of non-woven Dacron. Protecting the astronauts from heat is done by this layer. For further thermal protection and nonflammability two layers of Kapton and Beta marquisette and for abrasion protection a layer of Teflon-coated filament beta cloth is added. And finally it is the white colored Teflon cloth. The last two layers are also resistant to flame.
We have basically finished talking about the materialism of the major part. And now we move to Head ,Legs and Hands of the suit. For head it is a specially materialized polycarbonate-plastic helmet ,for legs its specially prepared lunar protective boots and for hands Gloves are made by silicon-rubber fingertips which gives sensitivity to fingertips.
Move from Moon to Mars
With time, the story of space navigation has evolved from moon to mars. Today we are in an era of planning the colonization of Mars. So each and every section of this whole journey have been developed in past decades with thousands and thousands of experiments.
Requirements of the space suit depends on the environment of the astronauts’ destination. Mission mars is totally different from Apallo. Lets move to materialism behind the planned space suit for Mars mission in 2030. According to Nasa, most of the things are under experimental stage and they are having researches to find the enormous way to protect astronauts from harmful radiations.
Radiations at Mars
According to the article, Real Martians: How to Protect Astronauts from Space Radiation on Mars which was written by Sarah Frazier, it is mentioned that at mars astronauts are exposed to two types of radiations. From her own words, the first radiation come from sun is stream of solar particles as a regular release and solar flares and coronal mass ejections that releases as a result larger bursts in the awake of of giant explosions as an occasional release. And the second one is particles from Galactic Cosmic Rays(GCR). GCR are particles shoot from other galaxies or stars of milky way and they are accelerated near the velocity of light.
Both the solar particles and GCR particles are protons. so what is important is, the huge energy in these particles which is capable of knocking apart the atoms of the subjected objects. what if they hit on astronauts ?
Materialism of the Space suit for Mars
Mainly there are 02 ways to get shield from these higher energy particles. First one is use of lot more mass of traditional spacecraft materials. And the second one is use of more efficient shielding materials. The first one is extremely expensive because of the higher fuel requirement for launching due to the higher mass. The second one is much feasible compared to the first one but to obtain the best fitted material it is not that easy and thousands of researches have to be done. NASA currently conducts work on this and one great idea came in to the researches. It is, “to block the radiation, same size particle should be used”.
For this idea Hydrogen became the best match because it has only one electron and one proton (The size of Proton and neutron are approximately same).And the best thing about Hydrogen was its abundancy. Hydrogen is mostly found in water and in plastics like polyethylene. So the production cost become considerably low amount. But the problem was the strength and insulation to heat was insufficient. By adding metal structure to polyethylene, the strength can be improved but apparently the mass get increased and fuel requirement for launch also get increased.
According to Sheila Thibeault, material researcher at NASA (NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia), they have came up with a new material called Hydrogenated Boron Nitride nanotubes (Hydrogenated BNNT) which has the capability of facing all the challenges successfully. BNNTs are best at shielding and even strong at high heat. After further researchers they were able to produce yarns from BNNTs. These yarns were then converted to fabrics with woven technology.
This materialism can protect astronauts from the radiations and the risk on their lives can be severely minimized.
Space is full of invisible attacks. Unless it wasn’t the great materialism behind the space suit, it won’t be an easy deal to protect the lives of Astronauts.
