flist! Do you know?

[ljgeoff]

What is the sensory experience of meeting someone who's just come in from a spacewalk? Would the suit warm up while the airlock pressurizes? If not, does it get frosty when the station's air hits it? Where do they leave the EMU? What would the next generation spacesuit look like?

What are the pressurized lines in the space station made of? I'm thinking oxygen lines. The only pressurized lines that I'm familier with are the gasoline and brake lines on a car, and those are stainless steel, I think. So, titanium, maybe?



Space diving? I thought that things entering the atmosphere from space got really hot. But perhaps jumping from a platform ~3658 kilometers (120,000 ft) above the surface wouldn't give the person the velocity to burn up?

Re: space smells like bacon, here's another data point: The best description I can come up with is metallic; a rather pleasant sweet metallic sensation.

The smell of moondust

The Sun reports:
Outer space smells of fried steak or bacon, scientists revealed yesterday. The universe also has an aroma of hot metal and motorbike welding, Nasa experts said. Astronauts reported the bizarre scents on their suits when they returned from space walks.

Astronomer Sir Patrick Moore says, "These odours may have come from astronauts’ suits or spaceships. The vacuum of space is unlikely to have its own scent. It is more likely to be reacting to man-made equipment. There is nothing in space and nothingness cannot really have a smell."

Comments

[anansi133.livejournal.com]

Vacume is a really weird thermal environment. Living in an atmosphere, we take convection for granted. I like to imagine everything in space as being surrounded by an invisible thermos. Vacume is what makes a thermos work, and it's why space is so thermally stressful.

If the suit was in direct sunlight just before entering the airlock, it's going to be warm to the touch. If it was in shade for a while, it will be cold to the touch.

An astronaut in a space suit has got to shed heat somehow, the body's sweat will only work in an atmosphere. Plus, there's all the heat generated by the life support machinery. The Apollo suits released water in order to cool the heat pump. I don't know how the shuttle suits do it, they probably don't want to foul the immediate environment with a lot of outgassing.

I've heard the smell inside the space station compared to the inside of a submarine. Both places, you've got a place where certain bacteria can thrive without ever being flushed out.

The smell of objects coming into the airlock has been described as a kind of cooked meat smell. Space smells like Bacon!

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With space diving, you've got a confusion between high altitude and orbital velocity. If there was something to hold the stunt man up- motionless relative to the ground (like a balloon!) then he won't burn up on the way down. Beyond a certain height, though, you have to be moving at mach 22 in order to have your centrifugal force pull you away from the earth with the same tug as gravity pulling you in. It's not the high altitude that makes re-entry warm, it's shedding all that speed.

(yeah, I know, centrifugal force is an illusion, but it's convenient right now)

I was confused when the X-prize was awarded to Rutan's entry, for going to 'space' altitudes. The ship wasn't going fast enough to spend more than a few seconds that high. That ship would have needed about ten times the thrust in order to stay in orbit.

one more thing...

[anansi133.livejournal.com]

Oh, and skydiving from a balloon, you would eventually slow down to only about 200 miles per hour. That's called 'terminal velocity', because faster than that, and wind resistance slows you down. (at sea level, that is. You'd go somewhat faster at higher altitudes, but slow down as you approached sea level.)

A falling blue whale would have a higher terminal velocity, and an ant's terminal velocity is so low that it could walk away from the impact. It's all about wind resistance.

Re: one more thing...

[johnpalmer.livejournal.com]

I thought it was a sperm whale that had gone space diving (along with a pot of petunias).
(Never mind. Douglas Adams reference.)

Re: one more thing...

[anansi133.livejournal.com]

D'oh! You're right. I was trying to slip the reference in sideways, but got the species wrong.

Re: one more thing...

[johnpalmer.livejournal.com]

Hey, I just assumed you knew the terminal velocity of various large mammals because you were cool like that.

[ljgeoff.livejournal.com]

The smell of objects coming into the airlock has been described as a kind of cooked meat smell. Space smells like Bacon!

Stuff coming into the airlock from space smells like cooked meat? Why? That's just weird. Just the suits? Or the astronauts when they come out of the suits?

[anansi133.livejournal.com]

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=space+smells+like&btnG=Google+Search&aq=f&oq=

[anansi133.livejournal.com]

What would the next generation spacesuit look like?

Believe it or not, there's some controversy about this. A growing number of engineers are proposing a fabric-free shell, made of swiveling metal armor. The hard shell design gets a lot of resistance from the old guard, who prefer to old style fabric approach.

The most common problem with fabric suits is the way they "starfish" when pressurized, like a surgical glove being inflated. The astronaut has to fight this in order to move. Hard shell designs don't have this flaw, plus they aren't going to attract dust and become abraded in the same way.