EVA suits

[Rock3tman4]

I was spending some time looking at NASA spacesuits, and I thought that a cool mechanic would be the evolution of spacesuits in career mode.

-You would start out with a basic suit like in Mercury missions that wouldn't allow EVA, and you could spend science to unlock others

-As you researched those options on the tech tree, you would unlock EVA capability, but with no crew jetpack, like Gemini.

-Then, you could unlock specialized suits, like planetary exploration suits to increase the amount of surface samples you could carry, or an escape suit with an included parachute.

-And the astronaut complex would become more important, because choosing the crew and the suits they wear could affect how much science you gain on a mission.

[TheCanadianVendingMachine]

I believe this is planned. I remember reading about this in 0.18 from a suggestion. It got a devs attention I believe and they said maybe.

I also agree with you

[Weegee]

Evolution of suits would be pretty cool. But, if specialized suits are ever added, with tweakables coming up, you should be able to store multiple suits in a capsule (different capsules would allow different amounts) and then you could chose one when you hit the "EVA" button. For example, you could have a suit with a jetpack for during a transfer, and then if you're landing somewhere where jetpacks are useless, you could switch to a different, more specialized suit.

[404james]

I've got a few ideas running through my head, in that regard.

EVA Suit Ideas:

- Jumpsuit: A standard blue or grey jumpsuit kerbonauts might wear while in the capsule, or on EVA on Kerbin. no RCS, no O2. Fast movement, so long as you have a breathable atmosphere.

- launch escape suit: Partial pressure suit in a nice orange color. moderate oxygen, reasonable heat resistance, not much tolerance for low atmosphere. It'll save you if you're falling from mid to upper atmosphere, but wont help much in space. optional parachute.

- extravehicular mobility unit: Closest to the current EVA suit. Reasonable amount of RCS, good in a vacuum, SUPER slow movement when walking about on a planet's surface.

- surface operations suit: designed for use on planetary or munar surfaces with no atmosphere. reasonably mobile, no RCS.

Any other ideas?

also, it might be an interesting consideration to have some EVAs require a prebreathing period before exit, to acclimate kerbals to the suit's rarefied atmosphere (probably between 30 seconds to a minute or so in game, rather than the several hours in real life.) perhaps some more advanced suits could use a full atmosphere instead, negating the prebreathe, at the cost of mobility, or some such.

[Jimbo Jambo]

It sounds interesting, but I might argue that all that space suit micro-management distracts from from the main focus of KSP, which is, of course, rocket ships, not human resources. I'd rather not have to sift through skill and equipment subscreens just to fix a broken wheel.

[ravener]

if i remember correctly they said that the eva jetpack is going to be reserched. we will start without packs, then the ladders have meaning.

[Algiark]

if i remember correctly they said that the eva jetpack is going to be reserched. we will start without packs, then the ladders have meaning.

If that's true, then I hope tethers will be included in the stock game. Otherwise KSP could turn into an unofficial Gravity: The Game.

[Rock3tman4]

Something like that could give lander cans an advantage specifically for exploration missions. Also, you could decide to trade off crew member slots in a hitchhiker for suit storage (or maybe snack storage).

[kiwiak]

Next class of suits woudl be these providing protection from hazard conditions.

What do we need to protect from?

- Extra high gravity (exoskeleton)

- High atmospheric pressure

- Toxic atmosphere

- High temperature (on surface, but in space close to the sun too!)

- Low temperature

- Viruses/basteria in atmosphere?

- Radiation (if it ever gets implemented..)

It seems unpractical to have separate suit for each of these conditions. What if we want to land on planet with high gravity and toxic atmospheres? Number of combinations woudl be very high, so it woudl be best to give player some basic hazard suit, that can have modules attached to it, to create suit personalized for specidic planet conditions. So we for example can have suit for planet with super low temperature, high gravity and toxic atmosphere.

Such suit shoudl look very sturdy and bassicly look more like power armor than clothing. It coudl have no glass helmet at all, just external sensors showing sorrounding on screen inside.

Oh, and i got other idea.. About these bacteria and viruses. Our kerbonaut is in suit so it shoudl be fine. Bot if he returns to ship, well its the end for all crew. So ship visiting planet woth dangerous microbes shoudl have some decontamination chamber. What about probes, will probe that is send back to Kerbin kill everyone? Well, no because microbes attack only kerbonauts and are not interested in probes. Or something.

[Skyler4856]

The first space suit should be a fish bowl and a fire extinguisher.

[sumghai]

At the very least, I'd like the option to recolor spacesuits / jumpsuits in the stock game, using techniques similar to the KerbPaint / Universe Replacer add-ons:

Current Known Implementation (0.20.2 / 0.21)

- Kerbals inside vessels wear Orange/Silver flight suits, presumably based on the

Launch Entry Suits

/

Advanced Crew Escape Suits

- Kerbals on EVA wear white suits with red helmet markings, presumably based on the

Apollo Lunar EVA suits

(markings are used to differentiate between astronauts)

- In 0.21's Astronaut Complex GUI, Kerbonaut candidates wear

the blue jumpsuit DanRosas designed

. Once hired, they change into the Silver flight suits (As per

HOCgaming video overview of KSP 0.21 at the 0m46s mark

).

Observations/Issues/Problems

- Inside vessels, Kerbonauts wear their Orange/Silver suits throughout the entire flight (barring the occasional EVA excursion). This is fine for space capsules or during launch/re-entry/landing, but outside of those events most real astronauts wear jumpsuits in a shirt-sleeve environment (

Ref 1

,

Ref 2

).

- The game currently reserves Orange flight suits for the Jeb/Bob/Bill trio, whilst subsequent candidates are forced to wear the silver ones. This is in contrast to real spaceflight, where the entire crew wears flight suits of the same color (Orange for

NASA's ACES

, White/Blue for the

Russian Sokol

)

- While on EVA, all Kerbonauts wear the identical excursion suits. I don't mind the white with the red markings, but there are certain players who want to differentiate between individual based on various criteria arbitrarily defined by the player (e.g. factions, faux "specialisations")

Suggestions

Flight Suits

- worn during launch/re-entry/landing, like right now

- allow selection of one (primary) base color

- can apply globally (i.e. all Kerbonauts) or individually (e.g. some player may want one particular Kerbal to always wear a purple flight suit)

- defaults to orange or silver

Shirt-sleeve Jumpsuits

- worn inside vessels when not at launch/re-entry/landing

- allow selection of one (primary) base color and one (secondary) minor cuff band trim color

- can apply globally (i.e. all Kerbonauts) or individually (e.g. some player may want a specific subset of Kerbals to wear blue jumpsuits with light blue bands on their cuffs)

- defaults to blue with no cuff band color

EVA Suits

- worn outside vehicle during spacewalks / planetary excursions

- allow selection of one (primary) base color and one (secondary) helmet marking color

- can apply globally (i.e. all Kerbonauts) or individually (e.g. EnterElysium may want to differentiate between Elysium Empire and Styx Corporation forces)

- defaults to white with red helmet markings

Suit availability

- By default, any command pod that can hold crew will always show Kerbals wear their default flight suits (customised in whatever colors they chose)

- Part modders like myself can add to our part IVA definitions a variable to force Kerbals to wear jumpsuits instead

INTERNAL

{

MODULE

{

name = InternalSeat

seatTransformName = FrontSeat

allowCrewHelmet = false

forceJumpsuit = true // true for Kerbals to wear shirt-sleeve jumpsuits, false for pressurized flight suits

}

...

}

- Kerbals on EVA will always wear their EVA suits; future versions of KSP may differentiate between habitable environments like Laythe by allowing helmet removal / changing into shirt-sleeve jumpsuits whilst still outside the vessel

Distant Future - Modder-made space suits

- Devise a similar system to part / IVA modification to allow modders to insert rigged models of custom spacesuits. This would satisfy a small minority with decidedly unusual requests such as suits specialized to each planet.

Implementation

Customisable Suit Colors

- Requires mapping of existing space suit models / textures to accept user-selected color choices (Parts of this functionality currently exist in various add-ons -

Universe Replacer

allows access/replacement of default SQUAD assets such as spacesuits, while

KerbPaint

allows users to define custom color "masks" for parts and repaint them using an in-game GUI)

- Storage of user-selected color choices in persistence file

- Moderate work required

Enabling/Disabling shirt-sleeve jumpsuit in IVA

- Current code is able to assign either flight or EVA suits based on IVA or EVA mode

- Extend this code to check for forceJumpsuit variable; if true, replace flight suit with shirt-sleeve jumpsuit

- Relatively easy

Modder-made space suits

- Possibly restructure assets to add "Suits" subdirectory in GameData folder

- Official publication regarding suit dimensions, rigging, functionality (e.g. helmet lights, EVA thruster packs) and color-substitution regions

- Furthest down the line in terms of priority

[Rock3tman4]

Next class of suits woudl be these providing protection from hazard conditions.

What do we need to protect from?

- Extra high gravity (exoskeleton)

- High atmospheric pressure

- Toxic atmosphere

- High temperature (on surface, but in space close to the sun too!)

- Low temperature

- Viruses/basteria in atmosphere?

- Radiation (if it ever gets implemented..)

It seems unpractical to have separate suit for each of these conditions. What if we want to land on planet with high gravity and toxic atmospheres? Number of combinations woudl be very high, so it woudl be best to give player some basic hazard suit, that can have modules attached to it, to create suit personalized for specidic planet conditions. So we for example can have suit for planet with super low temperature, high gravity and toxic atmosphere.

Such suit shoudl look very sturdy and bassicly look more like power armor than clothing. It coudl have no glass helmet at all, just external sensors showing sorrounding on screen inside.

Oh, and i got other idea.. About these bacteria and viruses. Our kerbonaut is in suit so it shoudl be fine. Bot if he returns to ship, well its the end for all crew. So ship visiting planet woth dangerous microbes shoudl have some decontamination chamber. What about probes, will probe that is send back to Kerbin kill everyone? Well, no because microbes attack only kerbonauts and are not interested in probes. Or something.

I do like the direction you're heading in with the decontamination chamber, but I think an airlock would be more useful. Lander cans would have it built in but you could put it onto other structures.

[Sharpened Alliance]

As much as I like the idea, just think of how annoying that UI would be if your trying to switch a kerbals suit or select the suits for a mission in the VAB, and if you stored suits in the one part of your ship and you got your kerbal out to take them to the suit storage, only to have them die because the suit they were in didn't protect them from the conditions, then your entire mission is ruined. Not to mention having to go back and make sure all your earlier ships have the right suits on them would be a pain, so i think it would be easier for everyone if we only added evolution but not a choice of suits.

[404james]

I do like the direction you're heading in with the decontamination chamber, but I think an airlock would be more useful. Lander cans would have it built in but you could put it onto other structures.

Actually, considering how heavy an airlock would be, and how much space it would occupy, it would be more efficient to just re-pressurize the capsule entirely after every EVA, like what Apollo did, at least on landers. Suitports (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suitport) might be an interesting idea, too.

[ravener]

As much as I like the idea, just think of how annoying that UI would be if your trying to switch a kerbals suit or select the suits for a mission in the VAB, and if you stored suits in the one part of your ship and you got your kerbal out to take them to the suit storage, only to have them die because the suit they were in didn't protect them from the conditions, then your entire mission is ruined. Not to mention having to go back and make sure all your earlier ships have the right suits on them would be a pain, so i think it would be easier for everyone if we only added evolution but not a choice of suits.

they probbably shouldent die, they would just be slow and unable to do experiments and such. the only way a kerbal can die for now is if it impacts anything, there is no evidence they need anything in terms of life support or that they are chemically reactive in any way... for all we know they are made from gold and noble gasses.