What do ISS spacesuits do? I know they provide an at atmosphere but do they have insulation? I’d guess not because there’s no atmosphere to cool you down, but what about depressurization?
In: Engineering
A spacesuit is like a mini , personal space station. I’m not sure why you think a spacesuit doesn’t need insulation. It absolutely *has* to have insulation. Otherwise, you’d bake to death when facing the sun and freeze when in the shadow of the Earth. We’re talking about hundreds of degrees above and below zero. Heat is actually more of a concern than cold, so the astronauts wear a garment that has tubes sewn into it. Cold water flows through these tubes and keeps the astronauts from overheating. So in addition to the pressure bladder that contains the air, yes, there are many layers of insulation as well as layers of kevlar or similar material to protect against micrometeroids.
Turns out. Air is really hard to keep in. And space, you don’t cool off, which is kinda good, until you are sweating balls from working. As it turn out, having sweat floating everywhere on your face where you CANT WIPE WHILE WORKING is really, really, not desired. so it have a cooling part.
Pressure comes from air mass both INSIDE AND OUTSIDE. If theres literally nothing outside, the only thing you need to watch out is the pressure of keeping the air in, which is alot easier than underwater, where you have the ocean crushing on you.
Space also have a SHIT TON OF RADIATION, so unless you plan on having all kinds of cancer, you need protection, which is why the helmet LITERALLY HAVE A SHEET OF GOLD.
It also provides exo movement, because in space where you can grab nothing, the only thing you can do is propell your self with air.
It also houses radio so you can talk, and water and urine collection, because small things like human right to a non hostile working condition (somewhat) and mission success.
Space suits perform a whole lot of things.
The suit is heavily insulated. Because if it’s in sunlight, the side exposed to the sun is going to get very hot, because there isn’t an atmosphere to get in the way.
It also has a bunch of tubes with water running through it to cool down the astronaut and take away body heat.
~~The suit is also pressurized to earth normal pressure.
They used to keep it lower, but that involved the astronaut needing to do time consuming things to keep the nitrogen in their blood from killing them. So they stopped doing it for the most part.~~
Edit: was mistaken about pre-breathing.
Suits are kept at a pressure lower than earth normal pressure.
The astronauts need to do time consuming things to keep the nitrogen in their blood from killing them
Yes, they provide pressure, and insulation. When you’re in the sunshine, it can seriously overheat you in a small amount of time.
They are insulated because space is a wild set of climates. Imagine standing inside a huge deep freeze with a million watt floodlight 10 feet from you pointed at your back.
So you wrap yourself up in crazy amounts of insulation to keep from freezing and boiling at the same time. But now all that body heat you generate is trapped in there with you. So you have to remove that and radiate it away. Spacesuits have chilled water lines running through then and that keeps you cool.
So the spacesuits provide full climate control along with the proper amount of atmosphere.
Their method of cooling is also interesting. It is cooled by sublimating ice. There is a container of water behind a porous metal barrier. If the water seeps through the barrier into the vacuum of space, where it evaporates. This draws heat through the barrier and cools the water. The cooling loops are passed through this water.
If the water is cold enough, the evaporating water cools the barrier and the water outside it freezes to a thin layer of ice. The ice continues to evaporate, (or, to give it the right name for solids evaporating straight to gas, “sublimate”), cooling the barrier and the water in its pores until it freezes too, completely blocking the barrier so no more water is released. The colder the ice gets, the less ice sublimates. If the water warms, it warms up the ice, more ice sublimates; and if it warms up further, it will melt the ice in the barrier, allowing the water to seep out to refresh the ice. The system allows more fresh water to enter the container as required.
Other systems have simply passed the cooling loops through metal tubes outside the suit, and releases a little water onto the outside of the tubes. This water evaporates, freezes and sublimates, cooling the water inside the tubes.
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