Boeing just revealed a new line of snazzy blue spacesuits designed for NASA astronauts aboard the company’s upcoming CST-100 Starliner spaceship. The suits may someday be worn by astronauts on NASA’s Journey to Mars.
For the past decade, NASA has been hitching rides aboard Russia’s Soyuz spacecraft. When NASA retired its space shuttle in 2011, the agency looked to private companies to ferry its astronauts to and from the International Space Station.
Complications caused the expected launch date to be pushed back to 2018. Fortunately, the Soyuz is still available for transport. Unfortunately for NASA, Russia has since hiked its price-per-seat in order to capitalize on its temporary monopoly, according to Business Insider.
NASA is now counting on companies like SpaceX and Boeing to deliver on contracts for the Dragon and CST-100 Starliner spacecraft. SpaxeX’s explosion in September was far from confidence-building, though the company has since explained the technical failure in detail.
Boeing’s spacesuits certainly seems to have encouraged NASA.
“Astronauts have formerly had these relatively bulky, heavy suits with thick neck rings, and we learned throughout the years [that] maybe we didn’t need that,” Chris Ferguson, former NASA astronaut and Boeing director of Starliner Crew and Mission Systems, said in a promotional video.
While traditional spacesuits used by NASA weighed in at 30 pounds, Boeing’s new suit weighs just about 12 pounds. “We’ve simplified the suit,” Ferguson added. “It’s lightweight.”
The new spacesuits are stitched with a specialized material that offers pressurized mobility and pressurized comfort. The gloves are touchscreen-friendly and the soft helmet features a large and wide visor so astronauts can have better peripheral vision.
“Spacesuits have come in different sizes and shapes and designs, and I think this fits the Boeing model, fits the Boeing vehicle,” Chris Ferguson said.
After 13 suborbital test flights and more than $15 billion in development costs, SpaceX's Starship has finally reached orbit. The 407-foot megarocket, the most powerful ever built, lifted off from Starbase, Texas, on Monday and delivered its first real payload on it's 14th attempt. The celebration came with an asterisk, though, since SpaceX had to cut the planned 10-hour mission to roughly three hours.
https://twitter.com/SpaceX/status/2104601695711904180
SpaceX is finally ready to give Starship its biggest test yet. The company says the massive rocket's 14th test flight is scheduled for September 22, when it will attempt to put the upper stage into Earth orbit for the first time. The launch is currently pending regulatory approval, with a 75-minute window opening at 7:15 a.m. CT.
Starship has 26 Starlink satellites to deliver
For decades, humanity has looked up at the Moon and wondered what it would be like to live on it. Think sprawling cities, factories, research centers, and permanent human settlements. Unfortunately, there is one fairly fundamental problem with that vision.
A new study published in Frontiers in Space Technologies argues that even the Moon's potentially enormous reserves of frozen water may be nowhere near enough to support city-sized populations sustainably. Researchers Martin Elvis and Jonathan McDowell estimate that the permanently shadowed regions near the lunar poles could contain roughly one billion tons of water. It sounds like an extraordinary amount until you put a million thirsty humans next to it.