What's the lightest "emergency spacesuit" you could have in a locker?

[AngelLestat]

Ok.. thinking out of the box..

No suit, no bag, nothing..
Just a syringe to inject oxygen directly to my bloodstream..
When I found vacuum, it will be bad.. but once I overcome the air leaving my lungs and the reflex arc to breath.. I can move and function fine over the next 15 minutes.

http://gizmodo.com/5921868/scientists-invent-particles-that-will-let-you-live-without-breathing

 

Edited January 22, 2016 by AngelLestat

[Nuke]

i figure much like the pressure suits worn by u2 and sr71 pilots. they had a helmet like a space suit, but the suit itself was skin tight and held together by its own structural rigidity rather the pressurized man-shaped beach ball paradigm that nasa uses. thing was they had to be tailor made to exacting tolerances, and the pilots had to maintain their body weight to within a couple of pounds. so its not something that can be mass produced.

8 hours ago, kunok said:

A "corset" for compressing the lungs, and an airtight helmet connected with an oxygen bottle.

And then run.

actually this is not a bad idea. corsets are designed to be adjustable so that women and crossdressers can cinch in their waist over time with blatant disrespect for their internal organs. this would not be the case for space applications but it does give you an idea of what kind of engineering you need to use. corsets sometimes have steel structural members in them to make them rigid then the lace up in the back allows for adjustment. so imagine a stiff fabric possible reinforced with kevlar cable then you would have a flexible seam for a lacing system. these would run up and down the extremities and down the torso and possibly the neck and would need to be adjusted before use. if you needed a one size fits many suit you could mass produce, but still needed to be able to suit up very quickly, you could put servos in the lacing systems (power laces!) that would allow the wearer to push a button to fit the suit automatically. the helmet could be made out of thick transparent kevlar reinforced vinyl (or perhaps something better) and be inflated by a connected life support pack. astronauts might drill to be able to get suited up in about 30 seconds.

[SomeGuy123]

So, what I'm hearing is, it wouldn't be practical to put on a complex suit like the Sokol while the air is gushing out.

You could separate the ship into more compartments and try to make it to one that isn't affected, but you would expect to close automatic doors immediately on pressure loss to isolate the gas mass lost to the actually affected compartments.  The crew in those compartments don't have time to go through an airlock.

So you need a uniform that has internal banding of some sort.  Power laces and fibers.  Myoelectric fibers that shrink when power is applied.  External stiff bands sewn in, sized so there is a little bit of give, and then air or liquid bladders that you inflate to provide compression.

Interestingly, everyone would be wearing an outfit that fits them tightly and no one is permitted to gain or lose weight because if you do you'll need a new uniform.  

You'd actually want the emergency oxygen goggles and mask as part of your uniform, ideally.  Kind of bulky though.

[suicidejunkie]

I think you're overestimating the rate of depressurization to Hollywood levels.  Unless you're talking about the whole wall coming off, you should have lots and lots of time to find a patch kit and fix it without getting dressed.  If you accidentally a spacewalk, you won't be in reach of a suit locker anyways.

 

Still, rather than suiting up, why not something you can wear all the time as an undershirt like the corset?  There will be lots of pressure for garment makers to refine things with a space economy going.

Keep the mask folded up in your utility belt instead of in a locker.

[Nuke]

i think no matter the size of the suit what is really going to get you is the size of the life support pack. it has to have an o2 supply and scrubbers, neither of which can be made too compact. essentially bigger means a longer duration of life support. you might have a suit with a small pack in the the with a 5 minute o2 bottle, and a small scrubber. then in an emergency your first task would be to get a larger life support pack out of a locker. you might even have receptacles built right into the ship as well in case you cant find a pack.  then you can have a mask and life support module in your belt. the mask would include a receptacle for either the portable life support unit, the larger pack or the emergency port in the hull.

i dont think the idea of wearing a survival suit all the time is a good one. for one this would subject the suit to continuous wear and tear, vs it being safe in a locker somewhere until needed (exception might be during space combat, where your ship is in danger of being attacked at any time). it would also not be very comfortable and would interfere with normal tasks. you might be able to design a more comfortable garment that can be instantly switched to survival mode with powered laces or muscle wire, if you can make the servos and control hardware small enough to wear comfortably (im thinking super caps and peltier devices, so the thing would be powered by a stored charge from body heat). they would need to be tough comfortable and durable.

i remember engineer uniforms in star trek 2, which seemed to have a life support system built right in. in the ambush scene you could see the engineering crew scramble for the masks and you see scotty wearing one in one scene. it kind of suggests that they had a loss in life support rather than a full depressurization event, i dont think that gear would have worked at all in full vacuum. perhaps with a full helmet, but as i understand it st2 didnt have a huge budget.

Edited January 23, 2016 by Nuke

[cantab]

Arthur C. Clarke in Islands In The Sky described a different approach. In each room was an emergency patch, described as a piece of thick rubber I think about the size of a manhole cover. If there's a hull breach, you manoeuvre that into place over the breach to make a temporary seal. If the hole is too big well it was big enough to drain all the air before you had a chance anyway.

Alternatively, you simply wear a sufficiently lightweight and flexible spacesuit all the time. Something akin to the space activity suit might do the trick, and maybe the compression could be active so it's not uncomfortably tight all the time. The helmet might be slightly cumbersome, but plenty of jobs already require some sort of helmet to be worn.

[Red Fang]

SomeGuy123 - More or less, yes. That is the idea. Though, i don't think masks could work very well. You would run into issues of sealing it properly against your face. What happens to eyes and eardrums if you manage to get a good seal?  A vizor with a soft "helmet" and an adapter collar could be made very compact, probably less bulky than a gas mask. 

suicidejunkie - I don't know enough about rapid decompression to weigh in on utility of corset-like garments, but I know that any permanently rigid clothing is a poodle to wear, especially if you have to work against it. Anything that restricts your movement around the waist and/or restricts your breathing gets annoying to wear really fast. 

Nuke - Yes, we are mostly on the same page here. Let's say Newman manages to develop the BioSuit for a 2-year mars mission. That thing will have to endure thousands of hours of EVA in a dusty abrasive environment, so it will have to be though as @#$ck. Sacrificing some durability so you could wear in situations when combat is imminent (for hours, days or months?) in generally much less hostile environment, should not be that difficult. If it can be made reasonably comfortable, it could be worn for prolonged times. The question remains: how comfortable can it be made in the time-frame we reach conditions int the OP?

[AngelLestat]

Yeah, but all you are dealing with helmets, suits, mechanic skinsuits, skinsuits tight with vacuum..  bags, etc.

All those things takes valious time, and is possible that the suit would not be airtight, or the helmet fail, or the mobility is bad.

My idea is the most lightweight, the most faster to apply, it gives you great mobility and it works over the time that it needs to work.
In my case the suit, is your own skin, which is mentioned by many spacesuit engineers as the perfect material.
So what if you dont have air in your lungs.. meanwhile you have oxygen in the blood where it should be.

[B787_300]

in all honesty there is really no need for a space suit.  As has been said before any hole that is really big enough to cause issues mean you are getting sucked into space and the station or hab is now a vacuum.  a small patch kit is much more likely and useful to have on you at all times.  In the Case of the ISS most of the wall space that could be punctured is pretty thick and is designed with 2 layers. and then has other stuff in front of it

[DBowman]

6 hours ago, AngelLestat said:

Ok.. thinking out of the box..

No suit, no bag, nothing..
Just a syringe to inject oxygen directly to my bloodstream..
When I found vacuum, it will be bad.. but once I overcome the air leaving my lungs and the reflex arc to breath.. I can move and function fine over the next 15 minutes.

http://gizmodo.com/5921868/scientists-invent-particles-that-will-let-you-live-without-breathing

 

I like this, kind of a 'decompression epipen', but worry about lung damage from 'boil-off' of the fluid lining and the alveoli are pretty delicate - not that I know anything bad would happen but it seems a delicate, essential, and hard to 'repair'/bypass system. I wonder what the minimal pressure and gas mix that would protect the lungs would be? If you just shut your mouth & nose I assume H2O would boil off until it was at equilibrium, but how much boiling is that? and is the resulting vapor pressure 'protective'.

wikipedia has some dire sounding consequences apart from oxygen deprivation; tissue freezing due to evaporative cooling (lungs - ouch, don't blink your eyes might freeze closed), lung collapse,  bubbles forming in blood and tissue (think opening a shaken soda), & formation of ice in the respiratory tract. Just the bubble formation can be disabling / very distracting, it's the bends / decompression sickness (but not as bad as from diving).

I think you need something minimal and portable/wearable that buys you time to get into some thing super simple where you can don a 'proper' if emergency lightweight cutdown space suit. Your epipen, then find the bag and in, pressurize it with < 30 mins of LS, then don the contained sokol 'lite'.

[Nibb31]

8 hours ago, Nuke said:

i figure much like the pressure suits worn by u2 and sr71 pilots.

NASA used those suits as the LES on the early shuttle flights. They phased them out in favor of ACES for various reasons.

If you want an emergency suit, you don't just want it for one type of emergency (depressurization). You also want it to be fire-resistant, water-resistant, chemical-resistant, and floatable. In the case of the Shuttle, it also needed to be wind-shear resistant so that they could bail out at a rather high speed.

Which is why I suggest that the ACES suit is probably very close to what you'd need.

[SomeGuy123]

5 hours ago, AngelLestat said:

Yeah, but all you are dealing with helmets, suits, mechanic skinsuits, skinsuits tight with vacuum..  bags, etc.

All those things takes valious time, and is possible that the suit would not be airtight, or the helmet fail, or the mobility is bad.

My idea is the most lightweight, the most faster to apply, it gives you great mobility and it works over the time that it needs to work.
In my case the suit, is your own skin, which is mentioned by many spacesuit engineers as the perfect material.
So what if you dont have air in your lungs.. meanwhile you have oxygen in the blood where it should be.

So built into the uniform in an out of the way spot there's this pouch.  There's a battery operated auto-needle in there and a pressure sensor.

What does this thing inject, exactly?  Care to share enough data to figure out how long a given volume/mass of fluid could keep you conscious?  What do your lungs do?

You're totally right, this is how to go.  

[sgt_flyer]

29 minutes ago, SomeGuy123 said:

So built into the uniform in an out of the way spot there's this pouch.  There's a battery operated auto-needle in there and a pressure sensor.

What does this thing inject, exactly?  Care to share enough data to figure out how long a given volume/mass of fluid could keep you conscious?  What do your lungs do?

You're totally right, this is how to go.  

from what i've read, the oxygen is trapped in lipids before injection. (to prevent injecting bubbles in the bloodstream)

however, it would only help you for a few minutes, if you can't extract the CO2 from your blood. (wonder how the lungs would work in this case... would they continue extracting tiny amounts of co2 when the blood reaches the lungs ?

Edited January 23, 2016 by sgt_flyer

[AngelLestat]

This is not a full remplace for a suit, but it could work like that in case of emergency.
I guess the first step in this kind of emergency could be this injection, or just wear a prop attached to you that will automatically inject the right amount and when is needed.
After that, we can go and wear our spacesuit without risk to be trap in the middle of the process (in case the base has one suit for each person).
The evaporation on the lungs and skin, is slow..  you will be able to resist that for longer times than the injection period.

it only helps for 15 min for two reasons, you can not inject a lot of these lipids  in the blood because a lot of oxygen is bad and does not remplace the co2 filtration that the lungs do as sgt_flyer said.

"This is a short-term oxygen substitute -- a way to safely inject oxygen gas to support patients during a critical few minutes," he says. "Eventually, this could be stored in syringes on every code cart in a hospital, ambulance or transport helicopter to help stabilize patients who are having difficulty breathing."

The microparticles would likely only be administered for a short time, between 15 and 30 minutes, because they are carried in fluid that would overload the blood if used for longer periods, Kheir says.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/06/120627142512.htm
https://youtu.be/R6OOWqdjaeA?t=8m16s

Space exposure.

http://www.geoffreylandis.com/vacuum.html

[lajoswinkler]

Corset might seem like a good idea, but it's mislead. Lungs would not burst through the ribs. They would burst downwards, through the diaphragm. They don't need to fly out like in bad movies. Internal small rupture is enough to cause enormous pain and internal bleeding. Blood in lungs, oedema, pneumothorax... not fun.

And sphyncters can't hold body pressure against zero pressure. You wouldn't poop or fart. You'd get a rectal prolapse. Oh, don't search for those photos if you're eating.

I'm sorry, but the only fast way is to survive a slower hull breach is to curl inside of those NASA balls and wait. As for explosive decompression, you'd get injured right away and you'd have like 10 seconds of consciousness. Unpacking a ball and doing all that... yeah, you wouldn't make it.

 

Oh, and receiving oxygen without removing carbon(IV) oxide is a recipe for death, too. CO₂ buildup would first trigger panic via the carotid body, and then your blood buffer systems would overload. You'd die in agony.

Edited January 23, 2016 by lajoswinkler

[Nibb31]

A corset won't help you against chemical leaks or fire. Why spend money on rescue equipment that will only serve a single (rare) purpose. Most decompressions can be dealt with by compensating the air supply, which provides enough time to find the hole and close it. That is how the ISS deals with the risk of MMOD.

[SomeGuy123]

5 hours ago, AngelLestat said:

it only helps for 15 min for two reasons, you can not inject a lot of these lipids  in the blood because a lot of oxygen is bad and does not remplace the co2 filtration that the lungs do as sgt_flyer said.

"This is a short-term oxygen substitute -- a way to safely inject oxygen gas to support patients during a critical few minutes," he says. "Eventually, this could be stored in syringes on every code cart in a hospital, ambulance or transport helicopter to help stabilize patients who are having difficulty breathing."

The microparticles would likely only be administered for a short time, between 15 and 30 minutes, because they are carried in fluid that would overload the blood if used for longer periods, Kheir says.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/06/120627142512.htm
https://youtu.be/R6OOWqdjaeA?t=8m16s

Space exposure.

http://www.geoffreylandis.com/vacuum.html

Ok, so an adult man uses about 0.3 liters/minute of oxygen.

Blood has "19.7 mL O2/deciliter".  So you need 1.55 liters of blood to live a minute. (your blood flow rate is faster than that because you don't consume all of the oxygen)

So the article says "The suspension carries three to four times the oxygen content of our own red blood cells."

So a minute would be 381 milliliters.  Too much fluid to carry around.

I also found a rule for decompression, the "one-one-ten-hundred rule: "
A one square-centimeter hole in a one cubic-meter volume will cause the pressure to drop by a factor of ten in roughly a hundred seconds. 

If you started at 1 atmosphere, that's about how long you have to stay conscious if you are breathing pure oxygen.

So, I'm not sure.   All the gear that a person could have "on them" all the time seems like it would be not much smaller than just wearing a space suit all the time with an inflatable helmet of some kind.  

 

Edited January 23, 2016 by SomeGuy123

[Nuke]

i just thought of another use of such a survival suit. putting out fires by depressurization. assuming you have an emergency pressure suit near by and you hear a fire alarm, ship doctrine would give everyone 45 seconds to get suited up (were assuming the easy to get into autolaced suit and beech ball helmet and 5 mintue o2 supply, or even a rescue ball, where astronauts have drilled down to 30 seconds) before the ships computer automatically depressurizes the sections which are on fire. even those who cannot get suited in time might still survive a couple minutes (with training).

[Nothalogh]

On 1/22/2016 at 9:27 AM, SomeGuy123 said:

You sprint for the nearest emergency suit locker

You'd be better off to build lockers for the crew.

I'm not even joking, look at ejection capsules for high speed aircraft

Edited January 24, 2016 by Nothalogh

[fredinno]

15 hours ago, Nibb31 said:

NASA used those suits as the LES on the early shuttle flights. They phased them out in favor of ACES for various reasons.

If you want an emergency suit, you don't just want it for one type of emergency (depressurization). You also want it to be fire-resistant, water-resistant, chemical-resistant, and floatable. In the case of the Shuttle, it also needed to be wind-shear resistant so that they could bail out at a rather high speed.

Which is why I suggest that the ACES suit is probably very close to what you'd need.

But that would take a long time to put on..

[SomeGuy123]

5 hours ago, Nothalogh said:

You'd be better off to build lockers for the crew.

I'm not even joking, look at ejection capsules for high speed aircraft

You're completely correct.  It could be as simple as a cabinet made of aluminum.  The same life support pack that pressurizes the space suit would be able to pressurize the cabinet if the door is closed and the pressure is below 1 atmosphere.

So yeah, you run towards the nearest cabinet and get in it.  The cabinet has an icon indicating it's a shelter of some time.  You press a button to close the sliding Cool Door.  At that point, there's a loud hissing sound as the life support pack on the space suit vents air + nitrogen through the open helmet to repressurize.

You then can get into a space suit at your leisure.  

And if 2 people happen to get trapped in here, and they just happen to meet the other's mating preferences, bow chicka wow wow.

[Nothalogh]

1 hour ago, SomeGuy123 said:

So yeah, you run towards the nearest cabinet and get in it.  The cabinet has an icon indicating it's a shelter of some time.  You press a button to close the sliding Cool Door.  At that point, there's a loud hissing sound as the life support pack on the space suit vents air + nitrogen through the open helmet to repressurize.

You then can get into a space suit at your leisure.  

Basically, like oxygen masks on airliners, the fancy atmo-coffins pop open on depress or other anomaly and await their inhabitants

[SomeGuy123]

57 minutes ago, Nothalogh said:

Basically, like oxygen masks on airliners, the fancy atmo-coffins pop open on depress or other anomaly and await their inhabitants

Now, hmm.  I know space is relatively cheap on a spacecraft, since it doesn't have to be any particular shape and you really only pay for mass, not volume, and adding more volume inside a spaceship is cheap.  Still, the unused space inside each "atomo-coffin"..inelegant.  Must be a way to combine functions.

Oh.  Of course.   Just make the door on each crew quarters module seal and give it a life support module.  If you were really god's gift to engineering, you'd make the normal air recycler unit for the crew quarter module - the one that keeps the carbon dioxide out of your face - also be detachable and usable as a backpack.

So then the only thing you have to have is a light space suit in there.  Russians can do it in 10 kg, so it's possible.  Still, wonder what you do if 2 crewmembers happen to pile into the same module and they happen to be the only survivors?  There's only 1 suit...

 

Edited January 24, 2016 by SomeGuy123

[radonek]

8 hours ago, SomeGuy123 said:

So then the only thing you have to have is a light space suit in there.  Russians can do it in 10 kg, so it's possible.

Yeah, and interested parties are bothering with Orlans and EMUs out of boredom? One tiny detail you are missing is that Sokol or ACES suit balloon in vacuum making any movement very hard. It works for crew who sit in their anti-g couches and maybe push a button, and thats about it. This is why skinsuits are all the rage, but those have to be custom made.

Detachable lifesupport unit IS nifty idea, but wont help you much here. If you end up almost immobile, much less able to actually do something, you are better off just sitting tight. Thus, your best life support equipment is CO₂ scrubber and a good book.
 

[SomeGuy123]

3 hours ago, radonek said:

Yeah, and interested parties are bothering with Orlans and EMUs out of boredom? One tiny detail you are missing is that Sokol or ACES suit balloon in vacuum making any movement very hard. It works for crew who sit in their anti-g couches and maybe push a button, and thats about it. This is why skinsuits are all the rage, but those have to be custom made.

Detachable lifesupport unit IS nifty idea, but wont help you much here. If you end up almost immobile, much less able to actually do something, you are better off just sitting tight. Thus, your best life support equipment is CO₂ scrubber and a good book.
 

So you need a skinsuit and a detachable life support unit.  It would make sense that in each crewmember's quarters they would have a skinsuit custom fitted for them.

The inner optimizer in me doesn't like the idea of carrying 2 life support units - they are pretty heavy and there are a lot of systems inside one.  A "wall mounted" unit doesn't need a casing or technically need internal batteries like a portable one, but the internal batteries would mean if the ship's main power failed, life support would keep running off individual modular units until their batteries are exhausted.  

Edited January 24, 2016 by SomeGuy123