June 10, 2021 • 6 mins
America will be going back to the moon as early as 2024, and the next destination after that could be Mars. And one of their most important pieces of equipment will be their space suits. MIT astronautics professor Dr. Dava Newman has created a “second skin” suit that will allow astronauts to do their jobs more efficiently and comfortably.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to this episode of Here's Something Good, a production
of the Seneca Women Podcast Network and I Heart Radio.
Each day we aspire to bring you the good news,
the silver lining, the glass half full, because there is
good happening in the world everywhere, every day. We just
need to look for it and share it. Here's something
(00:26):
Good for today, Americans are going back to the Moon.
Last year, NASA announced plans to have astronauts walk on
the lunar surface as early as and this time those
moonwalkers will include women. The gender and ethnicity of NASA
astronauts has changed a lot since the last moonwalks, which
(00:47):
ended in ninety two. What hasn't changed as much is
the spacesuits that astronauts wear. They're bulky, can weigh as
much as three pounds on Earth, and they're awkward. Dr
David Newman and asked Anautyx, professor at m I T,
is aiming to change that with a sleek space suit
she designed called the BioSuit. A renowned scientist and researcher,
(01:09):
Dr Newman previously served as NASA Deputy Administrator, and she
was recently named head of the famous m I T
Media Lab, the School Center for collaboration and innovation. The
biosuits she designed is not only practical, it's visually striking,
so much so that it's been exhibited in museums around
the world. We wanted to find out more about Dr
Newman's amazing BioSuit. Here's what she had to say. So,
(01:32):
we're actually working on four suits right now, so i'll explain.
The bio suit is the one that I guess guess
most of the media coverage and press, but essentially in
terms of the technology that we work on, compression governments,
if you will, so to live in space and to
work conductively in space. Let's just say we're on the
International Space Station. When you leave your protective and you
(01:54):
have an atmosphere when you're working inside, we call that
intra be here for the activity for inside the VIC.
When you go outside the vehicle, we call that extra
vehicular activity or e b A spacewalks. So that's when
you see the astronauts dressed up in the right now
kind of the big white looking michelin Man type of suit.
It's it's quite massive. It's actually a hundred and forty
kilos as pushing three hundred pounds. It's in the weightless environment,
(02:18):
so it's not going to squash you, but it's a pressure.
I think of it as a balloon, a pressurized balloon,
and you have to get all your work done. We've
been to the mood on the Apollo suits. They were
a little bit less massive. But you probably remember the
famous videos. Looked like a pogo and it looked like
the astronauts were bunny hopping across some In my opinion,
that's actually a bad space suit design. Now, it was
(02:40):
great space suit design for the nineteen sixties. I call
the space suit the world's smallest spacecraft. That's what we're designing.
You have to take all of the systems that the
spacecraft would have when you wrap them around a body.
So that's quite an engineering feat. So it's a marvel
in itself. Every every gas pressurized suit is ever phone
in space. Okay, so let's say, but we've changed the paradigm.
(03:02):
So for the BioSuit, what I envisioned in is still
pressurizing the astronauts, keeping them alive in the vacuum of space.
How can we do that? You know, put him in
a balloon. That's what's always traditionally been done, But our
designs and my patents and put the pressure directly on
the skin. So essentially I'm squeezing your skin. I have
to squeeze you with a third of an atmosphere. That's
(03:24):
thirty a third of an atmosphere. I put that pressure
in your skin. That's enough to keep you alive on
the move, you know, to be a future martial explorer.
How do I do that? Well, I'll do that with
very interesting patterns, which is basically the mathematics behind the BioSuit.
And then I also do it with advanced materials. And
we're inventing new materials today, so kind of the combination
(03:45):
of our design, patterning materials to literally put you in
a second skin suit. So as an aerospace engineer, I
have studied way more than anyone wants to know about
skin and I get a lot of help from my
tissue engineering colleagues that I might take. I'm also scuba diver, right,
we explore under see as well, So if you've ever
been in a wet suit, I mean they're they're pretty comfortable.
The air skin type. Obviously they have to be skin
(04:07):
type because you need to pressurize you to keep your life.
But then we really work on the bat mechanics UM
enabling human mobility. So I'm trying not to have the
astronauts waste any of their energy in the current Compared
to the current gas pressurized suits, you waste probably of
your energy is just fighting the darn suit. So we
flipped that parrot. I'm gonna say, okay, if I can
(04:28):
give you a skin tight suit, pressurize you keep you alive.
That the helmet is looks more conventional. It is a
gas pressurized helmet to give you, you know, major vision,
but we put a lot of advanced technology in terms
of the heads up displays, the vision and the programming
in times of the helmet. But back to the suit,
it is a skin type suit, but you can move
around very very naturally, because I want all of your
(04:51):
energy going into searching the life. That's why we're going
to Mars with our robots, with our rovers. But when
we get astronauts there and we're gonna practice on them,
and we're gonna to the Moon in the next few
years again with people. But I want to make sure
that we can develop, design and hopefully fly the best
kind of state of the art technology that we have.
It's um as an engineer. You know, I don't want
(05:12):
to go backwards. I don't want to fly old technology.
I want to make sure that we're developing new technology
to enable exploration. Well, that's an exciting glimpse of the future.
So here's something good for today. Dr Dava Newman shows
us how fresh thinking happens. Sometimes it's a matter of
flipping the paradigm. Dr Newman saw that space suits were
(05:33):
bulky and awkward, so she designed one that went in
the opposite direction, skin tight and flexible. Dr Newman's achievements
remind us why science gets better when teams are diverse,
when they include women and people of color. When everyone contributes,
that's when we can make the greatest progress. If you
want to see what Dr Newman's BioSuit looks like, go
(05:53):
to Dava Newman dot com and to hear much more
from this innovator and groundbreaker, listen to today's episode of
our podcast, Seneca's One Women to hear. Thank you for listening,
(06:15):
and please share Today's something Good with others in your life.
This is Kim Azzarelli, co author of Fast Forward and
co founder of Seneca Women. To learn more about Seneca Women,
go to Seneca women dot com or download the Seneca
Women app free in the app store. Care Something Good
is a production of the Seneca Women podcast network and
I heart Radio Have a Great Day. For more podcasts
(06:42):
from my heart Radio, check out the i heart Radio app,
Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to this episode of Here's Something Good, a production
of the Seneca Women Podcast Network and I Heart Radio.
Each day we aspire to bring you the good news,
the silver lining, the glass half full, because there is
good happening in the world everywhere, every day. We just
need to look for it and share it. Here's something
(00:26):
Good for today, Americans are going back to the Moon.
Last year, NASA announced plans to have astronauts walk on
the lunar surface as early as and this time those
moonwalkers will include women. The gender and ethnicity of NASA
astronauts has changed a lot since the last moonwalks, which
(00:47):
ended in ninety two. What hasn't changed as much is
the spacesuits that astronauts wear. They're bulky, can weigh as
much as three pounds on Earth, and they're awkward. Dr
David Newman and asked Anautyx, professor at m I T,
is aiming to change that with a sleek space suit
she designed called the BioSuit. A renowned scientist and researcher,
(01:09):
Dr Newman previously served as NASA Deputy Administrator, and she
was recently named head of the famous m I T
Media Lab, the School Center for collaboration and innovation. The
biosuits she designed is not only practical, it's visually striking,
so much so that it's been exhibited in museums around
the world. We wanted to find out more about Dr
Newman's amazing BioSuit. Here's what she had to say. So,
(01:32):
we're actually working on four suits right now, so i'll explain.
The bio suit is the one that I guess guess
most of the media coverage and press, but essentially in
terms of the technology that we work on, compression governments,
if you will, so to live in space and to
work conductively in space. Let's just say we're on the
International Space Station. When you leave your protective and you
(01:54):
have an atmosphere when you're working inside, we call that
intra be here for the activity for inside the VIC.
When you go outside the vehicle, we call that extra
vehicular activity or e b A spacewalks. So that's when
you see the astronauts dressed up in the right now
kind of the big white looking michelin Man type of suit.
It's it's quite massive. It's actually a hundred and forty
kilos as pushing three hundred pounds. It's in the weightless environment,
(02:18):
so it's not going to squash you, but it's a pressure.
I think of it as a balloon, a pressurized balloon,
and you have to get all your work done. We've
been to the mood on the Apollo suits. They were
a little bit less massive. But you probably remember the
famous videos. Looked like a pogo and it looked like
the astronauts were bunny hopping across some In my opinion,
that's actually a bad space suit design. Now, it was
(02:40):
great space suit design for the nineteen sixties. I call
the space suit the world's smallest spacecraft. That's what we're designing.
You have to take all of the systems that the
spacecraft would have when you wrap them around a body.
So that's quite an engineering feat. So it's a marvel
in itself. Every every gas pressurized suit is ever phone
in space. Okay, so let's say, but we've changed the paradigm.
(03:02):
So for the BioSuit, what I envisioned in is still
pressurizing the astronauts, keeping them alive in the vacuum of space.
How can we do that? You know, put him in
a balloon. That's what's always traditionally been done, But our
designs and my patents and put the pressure directly on
the skin. So essentially I'm squeezing your skin. I have
to squeeze you with a third of an atmosphere. That's
(03:24):
thirty a third of an atmosphere. I put that pressure
in your skin. That's enough to keep you alive on
the move, you know, to be a future martial explorer.
How do I do that? Well, I'll do that with
very interesting patterns, which is basically the mathematics behind the BioSuit.
And then I also do it with advanced materials. And
we're inventing new materials today, so kind of the combination
(03:45):
of our design, patterning materials to literally put you in
a second skin suit. So as an aerospace engineer, I
have studied way more than anyone wants to know about
skin and I get a lot of help from my
tissue engineering colleagues that I might take. I'm also scuba diver, right,
we explore under see as well, So if you've ever
been in a wet suit, I mean they're they're pretty comfortable.
The air skin type. Obviously they have to be skin
(04:07):
type because you need to pressurize you to keep your life.
But then we really work on the bat mechanics UM
enabling human mobility. So I'm trying not to have the
astronauts waste any of their energy in the current Compared
to the current gas pressurized suits, you waste probably of
your energy is just fighting the darn suit. So we
flipped that parrot. I'm gonna say, okay, if I can
(04:28):
give you a skin tight suit, pressurize you keep you alive.
That the helmet is looks more conventional. It is a
gas pressurized helmet to give you, you know, major vision,
but we put a lot of advanced technology in terms
of the heads up displays, the vision and the programming
in times of the helmet. But back to the suit,
it is a skin type suit, but you can move
around very very naturally, because I want all of your
(04:51):
energy going into searching the life. That's why we're going
to Mars with our robots, with our rovers. But when
we get astronauts there and we're gonna practice on them,
and we're gonna to the Moon in the next few
years again with people. But I want to make sure
that we can develop, design and hopefully fly the best
kind of state of the art technology that we have.
It's um as an engineer. You know, I don't want
(05:12):
to go backwards. I don't want to fly old technology.
I want to make sure that we're developing new technology
to enable exploration. Well, that's an exciting glimpse of the future.
So here's something good for today. Dr Dava Newman shows
us how fresh thinking happens. Sometimes it's a matter of
flipping the paradigm. Dr Newman saw that space suits were
(05:33):
bulky and awkward, so she designed one that went in
the opposite direction, skin tight and flexible. Dr Newman's achievements
remind us why science gets better when teams are diverse,
when they include women and people of color. When everyone contributes,
that's when we can make the greatest progress. If you
want to see what Dr Newman's BioSuit looks like, go
(05:53):
to Dava Newman dot com and to hear much more
from this innovator and groundbreaker, listen to today's episode of
our podcast, Seneca's One Women to hear. Thank you for listening,
(06:15):
and please share Today's something Good with others in your life.
This is Kim Azzarelli, co author of Fast Forward and
co founder of Seneca Women. To learn more about Seneca Women,
go to Seneca women dot com or download the Seneca
Women app free in the app store. Care Something Good
is a production of the Seneca Women podcast network and
I heart Radio Have a Great Day. For more podcasts
(06:42):
from my heart Radio, check out the i heart Radio app,
Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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