7 ms·

NASA unveils new moon suit

55 points by jaredwiener 4y ago

ChicagoBoy11 4y ago
I feel like over the past few decades I have seen tons of news like this or that at least feels like this where there is some announcement about tangible progress that is made towards our returning to the moon -- some new prototype capsule announcement, a new unveiling of a rocket plan, the new suits, the "biosphere" stuff, etc. -- only to then see a published time horizon for the moon return which seems to always be "five years out." Any reason to expect THIS time around is different?
- cecilpl2 4y ago
  Artemis 2 is scheduled to send a crew around the moon in 2024 and Artemis 3 is scheduled to land a crew in 2025. SLS has already launched its test flight. Starship HLS (the lander) is funded and in development.
- idopmstuff 4y ago
  NASA's Artemis program is generally on track - Artemis 1 (uncrewed test flight into lunar orbit which then returned to Earth) was successful in 2022. Artemis 2 (humans going into lunar orbit) is scheduled for next year, and indications seem to be that it's on track. Artemis 3 (humans landing on the moon) is scheduled for 2025. So there has been very tangible progress in the form of Artemis 1, plus the schedule is to get people back on the moon in two years. Obviously it could be delayed, but we're pretty clearly out of the realm of a theoretical moon landing and into planning/implementation for a specifically planned and approved NASA mission. I would definitely put money on humans on the moon in well under 5 years. Wikipedia article about Artemis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemis_program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemis_program
  - gibolt 4y ago
    Starship will be the rocket delivering them to the surface. It is likely to have a first orbital test within the next 3 months. That will be a major milestone, approaching the capability to once again land and return humans from the lunar surface.
    - 96llort 4y ago
      [dead]
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - chrisco255 4y ago
      What I don't understand is why is the SLS being used to transport the humans to lunar orbit but the Starship HLS is supposed to take them to the surface? Why not just ride the Starship the whole way?
      - grecy 4y ago
        Because then there would be no reason for SLS, and all the jobs it creates. At this point it's widely accepted the SLS design is already obsolete with no reuse, is wildly expensive, and is extremely delayed. But it creates a lot of jobs in areas where congressmen want to get reelected, so they keep it going. Sooner or later it will die and Starship will take over, but it's going milk many more billions before then.
        whatshisface 4y ago
        SLS is not obsolete until Starship flies. That's probably coming soon, but it hasn't happened yet. If the delays hadn't happened it would have been around a few years before Starship and gotten some good use.
        grecy 4y ago
        > If the delays hadn't happened it would have been around a few years before Starship and gotten some good use It costs $2.2 BILLION per launch, and it only launches ~once per year. That doesn't sound like "some good use" to me.
        yamtaddle 4y ago
        When I visited the US Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, AL a couple years back, it was full of stuff promoting the SLS as the future of space flight, without any mention of other, non-NASA platforms. It felt like the kind of propaganda-driven alternative reality one might encounter in the Soviet Union—it's been plain for years that, at best, it's gonna be obsolete by the time it's ready, but here are all these pieces of marketing pretending it's not a giant waste of money and carefully avoiding mentioning any more-promising rockets. If a person came in without any idea what was going on in modern space flight, they'd have left the place having gotten entirely the wrong impression. It was the opposite of educational. Then again, most of it that wasn't run-down and/or broken just felt like a big, ugly, defense contractor trade show (complete with the kind of hilariously-terrible graphical collages & infographics that end up in military powerpoint slides), so that's in keeping with the rest of the vibe. Gross, definitely do not recommend. If you can convince them to let you into just the Saturn V hangar at half-off the normal ticket price, that'd be worth it.
  - 96llort 4y ago
    [dead]
  - zokier 4y ago
    Artemis has been generally proceeding well, but I understand OPs attitude, considering that the progress before Artemis (i.e. pre-2017ish) was really faltering, the whole Constellation/SLS/Orion trifecta was largely a mess even if bits of them are now getting finally some use
  - kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
    > scheduled for 2025 There is no way they'll have a lander ready by then. They spent 10 years and $1B just to develop a suit before giving up. The lander RFP only went out in 2019. Their primary selection is a massive tower that's going to land on an uneven rocky surface and use the same engines to take off. There's way too much risk involved for them to ever meet that date. Apollo 12 landed on the edge of a crater with enough tilt that they were close to aborting the mission. If that happens with a starship they're all dead.
- guerrilla 4y ago
  Did you miss that we've already been back to the moon with Artemis 1? The crewed mission is still Artemis 2 scheduled for 2024 now, only 3 years late (but that's 12 years of development, hardly problematic.)
- kurthr 4y ago
  They really need to work on reducing the glare on the visor and illuminating the face in the dark. Otherwise we won't be able to see their emotions on camera as they're attacked by aliens. Maybe just full MR and forget about the visor? That way we can see the aliens sneaking up on them as they blindly bumble around deceived by their advanced technology. Yes, I'm joking. But really there are reasons to do MR/VR in space due to the huge dynamic range and availability of non-visible spectra. The huge clear face shield looks like a point of failure (as are joints etc). At the same time, I expect once there is MR for some cheesy horror movie to use it to arouse innate human fears of the unseen. One could always flip a covering visor up to see, if there were a failure... and once part of your space suit is failing, you've already got problems!
prai1SE 4y ago
Is there any specific reason why the suit is not white/reflective? It looks like that would be thermally not ideal, and a departure from all previous designs.
- batmenace 4y ago
  Colours of the company that's been developing it, presumably the final version will be nasa / white color scheme
- TigeriusKirk 4y ago
  And I imagine it will blend into the lunar background, which also seems like an odd choice.
- dblohm7 4y ago
  Apparently they are keeping that under cover for competitive reasons: https://twitter.com/skrishna/status/1635998864531439617 https://twitter.com/skrishna/status/1635998864531439617
- sobrenien 4y ago
  According to the NYT article linked above, the final suit will be white for thermal reasons. This color scheme is just for the prototype.
- hnburnsy 4y ago
  >Though this prototype uses a dark gray cover material, the final version will likely be all-white when worn by NASA astronauts on the Moon’s surface, to help keep the astronauts safe and cool while working in the harsh environment of space. https://www.nasa.gov/feature/spacesuit-for-nasa-s-artemis-iii-moon-surface-mission-debuts https://www.nasa.gov/feature/spacesuit-for-nasa-s-artemis-ii...
SV_BubbleTime 4y ago
[flagged]
- waynesonfire 4y ago
  My thinking is the scope of the mission has increased. They're going to try to play a game of tennis on the moon and need a more mobile spacesuit.
- geuis 4y ago
  YES we (well some highly trained and lucky astronauts) went to the moon. It's like your assuming all of the landers NASA and other countries have landed on Mars and Venus are fake too.
  - taylodl 4y ago
    Not only that but the moon missions happened during the height of the Cold War. The Soviets were watching very closely and would have loved to have shown the world the US faked the moon landings.
  - SV_BubbleTime 4y ago
    I don’t think those points make comparable reason for the question asked. Landers and rovers to mars make sense to most people. Not having to deal with life support and being very familiar with the mechanics of cars and robots and drones helps. I think the crux to me is that we did a thing six times, and then stopped for 50 years, no one else even tried, and only now after tech has drastically improved are we doing it again. I think the better argument is that while some things are easier, some are harder than say Mars. Between the solar day and temp extremes.
- rtkwe 4y ago
  Reasons we never went back: 1) It was principally a national pride competition between the US and USSR so when the US succeeded there wasn't much of a reason to go there. We gathered loads of rocks for all the science we could want to do for a long time (they're still cracking open fresh samples to this day). 2) There's not that much economically or scientifically on the moon to really investigate that needs people there we can get new data pretty simply through orbiters or rovers 3) NASA's budget is much smaller portion of the overall budget and it's no longer singularly dedicated to the Moon 4) Longer term stays are much more intensive on resources than the short sprint to the Moon and back done by Apollo. The main goal of the moon now is to use it as a stepping stone to test for a Mars mission.
dharmab 4y ago
Upstream source: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/spacesuit-for-nasa-s-artemis-iii-moon-surface-mission-debuts https://www.nasa.gov/feature/spacesuit-for-nasa-s-artemis-ii...
- ccooffee 4y ago
  Thank you. This is an actual article with details, not just a few photos in some social media website.
geuis 4y ago
I don't like this link. I've never heard of "forth.news" and the article is extremely brief and weird looking. Here's the official NASA channel video: https://youtube.com/watch?v=5KnOtI4fS3U https://youtube.com/watch?v=5KnOtI4fS3U Also NYTimes and CBS News articles: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/15/science/nasa-moon-suit-astronauts.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/15/science/nasa-moon-suit-as... https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/nasa-axiom-space-spacesuit-artemis-iii-moon-mission/ https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/nasa-axiom-space-spacesuit-...
- pndy 4y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=forth.news https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=forth.news - 6 links total, all uploaded by OPs account
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - jaredwiener 4y ago
    OP here. Yes, this is my site -- though I am not the author. We are a news feed for news, trying to recreate the social media experience (brevity, following who you want, etc) with a feed populated exclusively by journalists. You can click on any author's name to see their bio, affiliations, and other threads.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - MisterTea 4y ago
      > We are a news feed for news With a name like forth.news I expected the programming language but instead I found a namespace collision.
seabass-labrax 4y ago
I love the idea of the Lunar Gateway space station's extreme orbit, which will allow astronauts to travel quickly between the station and the surface of the Moon with relatively low power consumption. "Attention all taking the 9:30 to Mare Serenitatis, please mind the gap between the platform and the capsule!"
908B64B197 4y ago
Am-I the only one to be completely uninterested by Artemis? We're still using the same approach as in the 1960's. No reusable rocket, no in-situ resource utilization, no new breakthrough tech. What's the point of returning? To prove we haven't regressed since the 60's?
- zw123456 4y ago
  I have to agree, I was 11 years old when Apollo 11 landed, I thought that by now you could fly there in something like an airplane or that we would have been to Mars. It feels a bit disappointing for sure.
- zokier 4y ago
  > What's the point of returning? To prove we haven't regressed since the 60's? Essentially the same point that we had in 60s, to be stepping stone for greater things. Artemis is basically rebooting the manned space program, and that inevitably includes retracing some past steps to regain the position. Progress is not always a linear straightforward thing, occasionally there are setbacks and losses. So the exitement for Artemis is not just for the mission itself, but more for it being a sign of manned space programs getting attention again, hopefully this time on a more sustainable basis than Apollo.
- kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
  The gateway station will provide experience operating outside LEO. That's a valuable thing to pursue. Lunar operations give gateway something to do while advancing the tech stack.
poniko 4y ago
Great choice of color, that lunar dust smudges are a pain to get out of the old white suites.
- mz00 4y ago
  > The main difference between the prototype shown today and what will be going to the moon is that the ones going to the moon will be white instead of dark. “That’s really for thermal reasons,” Mr. Ralston said.
rnernento 4y ago
It doesn't look evil enough for this timeline...
Merad 4y ago
Any idea of the suit in the presentation was actually pressurized to represent what wearing it will be like on the moon?
wernerb 4y ago
It stands out to me that it is not white but black with red accents. A pure white suit would surely be more visible right I'm guessing. If an accident occurs and you are lying half in the regolith with the red accents as the only visual guide, i can't help but think a white suit would be better. Maybe a white suit gets dirty easily from the regolith anyway so they went with dark to start with ?

55 points by jaredwiener 4y ago

I feel like over the past few decades I have seen tons of news like this or that at least feels like this where there is some announcement about tangible progress that is made towards our returning to the moon -- some new prototype capsule announcement, a new unveiling of a rocket plan, the new suits, the "biosphere" stuff, etc. -- only to then see a published time horizon for the moon return which seems to always be "five years out." Any reason to expect THIS time around is different?

cecilpl2 4y ago
Artemis 2 is scheduled to send a crew around the moon in 2024 and Artemis 3 is scheduled to land a crew in 2025. SLS has already launched its test flight. Starship HLS (the lander) is funded and in development.
idopmstuff 4y ago
NASA's Artemis program is generally on track - Artemis 1 (uncrewed test flight into lunar orbit which then returned to Earth) was successful in 2022. Artemis 2 (humans going into lunar orbit) is scheduled for next year, and indications seem to be that it's on track. Artemis 3 (humans landing on the moon) is scheduled for 2025. So there has been very tangible progress in the form of Artemis 1, plus the schedule is to get people back on the moon in two years. Obviously it could be delayed, but we're pretty clearly out of the realm of a theoretical moon landing and into planning/implementation for a specifically planned and approved NASA mission. I would definitely put money on humans on the moon in well under 5 years. Wikipedia article about Artemis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemis_program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemis_program
- gibolt 4y ago
  Starship will be the rocket delivering them to the surface. It is likely to have a first orbital test within the next 3 months. That will be a major milestone, approaching the capability to once again land and return humans from the lunar surface.
  - 96llort 4y ago
    [dead]
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - chrisco255 4y ago
    What I don't understand is why is the SLS being used to transport the humans to lunar orbit but the Starship HLS is supposed to take them to the surface? Why not just ride the Starship the whole way?
    - grecy 4y ago
      Because then there would be no reason for SLS, and all the jobs it creates. At this point it's widely accepted the SLS design is already obsolete with no reuse, is wildly expensive, and is extremely delayed. But it creates a lot of jobs in areas where congressmen want to get reelected, so they keep it going. Sooner or later it will die and Starship will take over, but it's going milk many more billions before then.
      - whatshisface 4y ago
        SLS is not obsolete until Starship flies. That's probably coming soon, but it hasn't happened yet. If the delays hadn't happened it would have been around a few years before Starship and gotten some good use.
        grecy 4y ago
        > If the delays hadn't happened it would have been around a few years before Starship and gotten some good use It costs $2.2 BILLION per launch, and it only launches ~once per year. That doesn't sound like "some good use" to me.
      - yamtaddle 4y ago
        When I visited the US Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, AL a couple years back, it was full of stuff promoting the SLS as the future of space flight, without any mention of other, non-NASA platforms. It felt like the kind of propaganda-driven alternative reality one might encounter in the Soviet Union—it's been plain for years that, at best, it's gonna be obsolete by the time it's ready, but here are all these pieces of marketing pretending it's not a giant waste of money and carefully avoiding mentioning any more-promising rockets. If a person came in without any idea what was going on in modern space flight, they'd have left the place having gotten entirely the wrong impression. It was the opposite of educational. Then again, most of it that wasn't run-down and/or broken just felt like a big, ugly, defense contractor trade show (complete with the kind of hilariously-terrible graphical collages & infographics that end up in military powerpoint slides), so that's in keeping with the rest of the vibe. Gross, definitely do not recommend. If you can convince them to let you into just the Saturn V hangar at half-off the normal ticket price, that'd be worth it.
- 96llort 4y ago
  [dead]
- zokier 4y ago
  Artemis has been generally proceeding well, but I understand OPs attitude, considering that the progress before Artemis (i.e. pre-2017ish) was really faltering, the whole Constellation/SLS/Orion trifecta was largely a mess even if bits of them are now getting finally some use
- kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
  > scheduled for 2025 There is no way they'll have a lander ready by then. They spent 10 years and $1B just to develop a suit before giving up. The lander RFP only went out in 2019. Their primary selection is a massive tower that's going to land on an uneven rocky surface and use the same engines to take off. There's way too much risk involved for them to ever meet that date. Apollo 12 landed on the edge of a crater with enough tilt that they were close to aborting the mission. If that happens with a starship they're all dead.
guerrilla 4y ago
Did you miss that we've already been back to the moon with Artemis 1? The crewed mission is still Artemis 2 scheduled for 2024 now, only 3 years late (but that's 12 years of development, hardly problematic.)
kurthr 4y ago
They really need to work on reducing the glare on the visor and illuminating the face in the dark. Otherwise we won't be able to see their emotions on camera as they're attacked by aliens. Maybe just full MR and forget about the visor? That way we can see the aliens sneaking up on them as they blindly bumble around deceived by their advanced technology. Yes, I'm joking. But really there are reasons to do MR/VR in space due to the huge dynamic range and availability of non-visible spectra. The huge clear face shield looks like a point of failure (as are joints etc). At the same time, I expect once there is MR for some cheesy horror movie to use it to arouse innate human fears of the unseen. One could always flip a covering visor up to see, if there were a failure... and once part of your space suit is failing, you've already got problems!

prai1SE 4y ago

Is there any specific reason why the suit is not white/reflective? It looks like that would be thermally not ideal, and a departure from all previous designs.

batmenace 4y ago
Colours of the company that's been developing it, presumably the final version will be nasa / white color scheme
TigeriusKirk 4y ago
And I imagine it will blend into the lunar background, which also seems like an odd choice.
dblohm7 4y ago
Apparently they are keeping that under cover for competitive reasons: https://twitter.com/skrishna/status/1635998864531439617 https://twitter.com/skrishna/status/1635998864531439617
sobrenien 4y ago
According to the NYT article linked above, the final suit will be white for thermal reasons. This color scheme is just for the prototype.
hnburnsy 4y ago
>Though this prototype uses a dark gray cover material, the final version will likely be all-white when worn by NASA astronauts on the Moon’s surface, to help keep the astronauts safe and cool while working in the harsh environment of space. https://www.nasa.gov/feature/spacesuit-for-nasa-s-artemis-iii-moon-surface-mission-debuts https://www.nasa.gov/feature/spacesuit-for-nasa-s-artemis-ii...

SV_BubbleTime 4y ago

[flagged]

waynesonfire 4y ago
My thinking is the scope of the mission has increased. They're going to try to play a game of tennis on the moon and need a more mobile spacesuit.
geuis 4y ago
YES we (well some highly trained and lucky astronauts) went to the moon. It's like your assuming all of the landers NASA and other countries have landed on Mars and Venus are fake too.
- taylodl 4y ago
  Not only that but the moon missions happened during the height of the Cold War. The Soviets were watching very closely and would have loved to have shown the world the US faked the moon landings.
- SV_BubbleTime 4y ago
  I don’t think those points make comparable reason for the question asked. Landers and rovers to mars make sense to most people. Not having to deal with life support and being very familiar with the mechanics of cars and robots and drones helps. I think the crux to me is that we did a thing six times, and then stopped for 50 years, no one else even tried, and only now after tech has drastically improved are we doing it again. I think the better argument is that while some things are easier, some are harder than say Mars. Between the solar day and temp extremes.
rtkwe 4y ago
Reasons we never went back: 1) It was principally a national pride competition between the US and USSR so when the US succeeded there wasn't much of a reason to go there. We gathered loads of rocks for all the science we could want to do for a long time (they're still cracking open fresh samples to this day). 2) There's not that much economically or scientifically on the moon to really investigate that needs people there we can get new data pretty simply through orbiters or rovers 3) NASA's budget is much smaller portion of the overall budget and it's no longer singularly dedicated to the Moon 4) Longer term stays are much more intensive on resources than the short sprint to the Moon and back done by Apollo. The main goal of the moon now is to use it as a stepping stone to test for a Mars mission.

dharmab 4y ago

Upstream source: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/spacesuit-for-nasa-s-artemis-iii-moon-surface-mission-debuts https://www.nasa.gov/feature/spacesuit-for-nasa-s-artemis-ii...

ccooffee 4y ago
Thank you. This is an actual article with details, not just a few photos in some social media website.

geuis 4y ago

I don't like this link. I've never heard of "forth.news" and the article is extremely brief and weird looking. Here's the official NASA channel video: https://youtube.com/watch?v=5KnOtI4fS3U https://youtube.com/watch?v=5KnOtI4fS3U Also NYTimes and CBS News articles: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/15/science/nasa-moon-suit-astronauts.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/15/science/nasa-moon-suit-as... https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/nasa-axiom-space-spacesuit-artemis-iii-moon-mission/ https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/nasa-axiom-space-spacesuit-...

pndy 4y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=forth.news https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=forth.news - 6 links total, all uploaded by OPs account
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- jaredwiener 4y ago
  OP here. Yes, this is my site -- though I am not the author. We are a news feed for news, trying to recreate the social media experience (brevity, following who you want, etc) with a feed populated exclusively by journalists. You can click on any author's name to see their bio, affiliations, and other threads.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - MisterTea 4y ago
    > We are a news feed for news With a name like forth.news I expected the programming language but instead I found a namespace collision.

seabass-labrax 4y ago

I love the idea of the Lunar Gateway space station's extreme orbit, which will allow astronauts to travel quickly between the station and the surface of the Moon with relatively low power consumption. "Attention all taking the 9:30 to Mare Serenitatis, please mind the gap between the platform and the capsule!"

908B64B197 4y ago

Am-I the only one to be completely uninterested by Artemis? We're still using the same approach as in the 1960's. No reusable rocket, no in-situ resource utilization, no new breakthrough tech. What's the point of returning? To prove we haven't regressed since the 60's?

zw123456 4y ago
I have to agree, I was 11 years old when Apollo 11 landed, I thought that by now you could fly there in something like an airplane or that we would have been to Mars. It feels a bit disappointing for sure.
zokier 4y ago
> What's the point of returning? To prove we haven't regressed since the 60's? Essentially the same point that we had in 60s, to be stepping stone for greater things. Artemis is basically rebooting the manned space program, and that inevitably includes retracing some past steps to regain the position. Progress is not always a linear straightforward thing, occasionally there are setbacks and losses. So the exitement for Artemis is not just for the mission itself, but more for it being a sign of manned space programs getting attention again, hopefully this time on a more sustainable basis than Apollo.
kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
The gateway station will provide experience operating outside LEO. That's a valuable thing to pursue. Lunar operations give gateway something to do while advancing the tech stack.

poniko 4y ago

Great choice of color, that lunar dust smudges are a pain to get out of the old white suites.

mz00 4y ago
> The main difference between the prototype shown today and what will be going to the moon is that the ones going to the moon will be white instead of dark. “That’s really for thermal reasons,” Mr. Ralston said.

rnernento 4y ago

It doesn't look evil enough for this timeline...

Merad 4y ago

Any idea of the suit in the presentation was actually pressurized to represent what wearing it will be like on the moon?

wernerb 4y ago

It stands out to me that it is not white but black with red accents. A pure white suit would surely be more visible right I'm guessing. If an accident occurs and you are lying half in the regolith with the red accents as the only visual guide, i can't help but think a white suit would be better. Maybe a white suit gets dirty easily from the regolith anyway so they went with dark to start with ?