Category Archives: Living in Space

Living in Space, Spaceflight & Parabolic Flight

Video: New spacesuit designs

Here’s a NASA video about new spacesuit designs that the agency is developing:

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Elon Musk talks in this interview about the spacesuits that SpaceX is designing for the company’s astronauts who will fly in the Crew Dragon vehicle: How Elon Musk Plans on Reinventing the World (and Mars) – GQ

.. And so this Monday evening, his mind is on space suits. Right now, specifically, he needs to go see the latest secret prototype of a new kind of space suit—the first to be made by a private rocket company for astronauts to wear into orbit and beyond, which he hopes will go into use in 2017.

“We’re trying to have a good balance between aesthetics and functionality,” he explains, sitting in his office at SpaceX. “It’s tricky to have something that works in reality and looks good.”

As with much of what Musk does, there is a plan, but then, behind that, there’s often a bigger plan. To Musk, it’s obvious that this new space suit not only needs to work well but also needs to look cool, because he needs people—regular people like you and me—to imagine themselves wearing it.

Living in Space, Space Settlement, Space Systems

Video: “Gravity is a Massive Problem”

Many space advocates would like to see permanent human settlements on the Moon and Mars. However, no one knows if it is possible to live healthfully for long periods of time in gravity that is 16% (Moon) or 38% (Mars) of what we experience here on the surface of earth.

The following video from the Space Studies Institute (SSI) shows a talk given by Gary Hudson at the Space Access Society‘s annual meeting last May in which he discussed the need to do partial gravity studies in orbit to investigate partial gravity questions. He discusses SSI’s proposed G-Lab, a facility in earth orbit that would rotate at different rates so as to generate artificial spin-gravity at levels of interest for animal and human studies: SSI G-Lab at Space Access 2015 – Space Studies Institute

If Mars gravity isn’t sufficient to support a long healthy life, that does not mean we cannot live in space. Large in-space settlements can produce 1g via rotation:

Bernal Interior. Interior including human powered flight. Art work: Rick Guidice. Credit: NASA Ames Research Center. NASA ID AC76-0628

Living in Space, Space Systems, SpaceCasts

Video: ‘Space to Ground” ISS report – Dec.11.2015

The latest “Space to Ground” report from NASA on activities related to the International Space Station:

This video shows Int. Space Station Expedition 45 Commander Oleg Kononenko of the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos), Flight Engineers Kjell Lindgren of NASA and Kimiya Yui of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency leaving the station and returning to earth on Friday morning:

Living in Space, Space Systems, SpaceCasts

Video: “Space to Ground” report on the ISS – Dec.4.2015

Here is this week’s Space to Ground report on activities related to the International Space Station:

Living in Space, Space Systems, SpaceCasts

Video: ‘Space to Ground’ ISS report – Nov.27.15

Here is the latest NASA Space to Ground report on activities related to the Int. Space Station:

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The ISS astronauts should be happy they have a much improved toilet over what was available on the Space Shuttles: A Broken Toilet in Space is a Special Brand of Horror – io9.com