Space Fashion
by Jean Thilmany, Associate Editor 

Humans have traveled into space for 40 years. During that time, Americans have gone from wearing bell-bottom jeans to today's skintight version—with stops along the way for boot-cut jeans and even hip-huggers. Needless to say, spacesuits have gone in their own direction, fashionwise.

According to Dava Newman, a professor of aeronautics and astronautics and engineering systems at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass., they may be due for a makeover. Today's bulky, gas-pressurized outfits give astronauts a bubble of protection, but their significant mass and the pressure itself severely limit mobility, Newman said. Also, traditional spacesuits don't afford the mobility that astronauts need for partial-gravity exploration.

Dava Newman, an MIT professor of aeronautics and astronautics and engineering systems, has designed a significant update to the traditional spacesuit. Her suit looks more like the full-body, skintight outfit pro skiers wear and is designed for maximum mobility in space. 

A new-style suit needs to address those issues before astronauts can fully explore Mars and carry out other missions, said Newman, who has spent the past seven years designing such a suit.

Her prototype, called a BioSuit, uses spandex and nylon. It is not your grandfather's spacesuit. Think more Spiderman, less John Glenn. It looks almost like the full-body, skintight outfits Olympic downhill skiers wear.

Instead of using gas pressurization, which exerts a force on the astronaut's body to protect it from the vacuum of space, Newman's suit relies on mechanical counterpressure, which involves wrapping tight layers of material around the body. The trick is to make a skintight suit that stretches with the body, allowing freedom of movement, she said.

Over the past 40 years, spacesuits have involved a lot of mass. On Earth, they now weigh in at approximately 300 pounds. That bulk—much of which is due to multiple layers and the life support system coupled with the gas pressurization—severely constrains astronauts' movements. About 70 to 80 percent of the energy they exert while wearing the suit goes toward simply working against the suit to bend it.

"You can't do much bending of the arms or legs in that type of suit," Newman said.

When an astronaut is in a micro-gravity environment—for example, doing a spacewalk outside the International Space Station—working in such a massive suit is manageable, Newman said.

"But it's a whole different ballgame when we go to the moon or Mars, and we have to go back to walking and running, or loping," she said.

At work with Newman on the project are her colleague Jeff Hoffman, her students, and a local design firm, Trotti and Associates. Their prototype isn't ready for space travel, but does demonstrate what they're trying to achieve—a lightweight, skintight suit intended to allow astronauts to become truly mobile lunar and Mars explorers.

Newman said that the BioSuit could be ready by the time humans are ready to launch an expedition to Mars, possibly in about 10 years. Current spacesuits could not handle the challenges of such an exploratory mission, Newman said.