Spacesuits in fiction

Buck Rogers outfit

Skintight spacesuits (skinsuits) come into view in the original Buck Rogers comics. The Buck Rogers scenario has become well-known enough to cause expressions such as "Buck Rogers outfit" for real protective suits that look somewhat like spacesuits. Skinsuits are more general in modern science fiction. On the other end of the spectrum one can find the thoughts of heavy powered armor. Robert Heinlein's novel Have Space Suit, Will take a trip draws on his experience designing pressure suits during World WarII.

It is potential that fictional spacesuit design influenced real spacesuit design somewhat, at least in getting real spacesuits to use a hard helmet and not a soft pressurized hood.

Alien spacesuits in the Gerry Anderson UFO sequence are filled with a breathable liquid to resist acceleration stresses.

After NASA started, fictional spacesuits often followed real spacesuit design, in such features as having a huge rectangular backpack.

Contributing technologies of Spacesuite design

Related preceding technologies contain the gas mask used in WWII, the oxygen mask used by pilots of elevated flying bombers in WWII, the high altitude or vacuum suit required by pilots of the Lockheed U-2 and SR-71 Blackbird, the diving suit, rebreather, scuba diving gear and many others.

Spacesuits in fiction

Fiction authors have been frustrating to design spacesuits since the beginning of space fiction, as far as there was need to describe them in their stories. Most of them are flexible stress suits, but usually not as bulky as in real spacesuits. Design was influenced by the real old-type Siebe Gorman customary diving dress, including sometimes such features as side windows on the helmet. In H.G. Wells's The First men in the Moon (publ. 1901) Standard Diving Dresses are fixed with a big backpack cylinder each and used as spacesuits. Many fictional spacesuits have two big backpack cylinders as their only life-support gear, as if the wearer breathes out to space like in normal sport open-circuit scuba. In the well-known Dan Dare series which on track in April 1950 in the `Eagle' comic, the usual Spacefleet spacesuit has no backpack, and a corselet like in Standard Diving Dress. Comic-strip space story authors often do not know about the belongings of internal pressure inflating the spacesuit in space, but draw the spacesuit in space hanging in folds like a boilersuit: that can repeatedly be seen in the Dan Dare stories.

There are three theoretical approaches of Spacesuite design

Flexible force suits are the type most in use. They combine all the bad features: heavy weight, the require for a cool suit and hard motion because the suit wants to blow up like a balloon. Their one saving refinement is that they do not limit the range of motion.

Hard-shell suits are generally made of metal or composite materials. While they resemble suits of protective covering, they are also planned to maintain a constant volume. However they tend to be complicated to move, as they rely on bearings instead of bellows over the joins, and frequently end up in odd positions that must be manipulated to regain mobility.

Mixed suits contain hard-shell parts and fabric parts. NASA's Extravehicular Mobility Unit uses a hard-shell upper body and fabric limbs.

Skintight suits, or mechanical counterpressure suits, use a weighty elastic body stocking to compress the body. The head is encompassed in a pressurized head covering, but the rest of the body is pressurized only by the elastic effect of the suit. This eliminates the invariable volume problem, and reduces the opportunity of a space suit depressurization. However, these suits are extremely difficult to put on and face problems with providing a constant pressure everywhere. Most proposals use the body's natural be anxious to keep cool. See space activity suit for more information.

One inconvenience by means of some spacesuits is the head being fixed facing forwards and being unable to turn to look sideways: astronauts call this effect "alligator head".

Theories of spacesuit design

A space suit should permit its user natural and unencumbered movement. The only way this is achievable is for the space suit to maintain a constant volume no matter what position the wearer is in. This is since mechanical work is needed to change the volume of a constant pressure system. If moving an arm or hand causes a change in the volume of the space suit, then the astronaut has to do additional work every time he bends that joint, and he has to maintain a force to keep the joint bent. Even if this force is very small, it can be critically fatiguing to constantly fight against your suit. It also makes delicate movements very difficult.

All space suit designs try to minimize or do away with this problem. The most general solution is to form the suit out of multiple layers. The bladder layer is a chewy, airtight layer much like a balloon. The moderation layer goes outside the bladder, and provides a specific shape for the suit. Since the bladder layer is bigger than the restraint layer, the restraint takes all of the stresses caused by the pressure of the suit. Since the bladder is not underneath strain, it will not "pop" similar to a balloon, even if punctured. The moderation layer is shaped in such a way that bending a joint will cause pockets of fabric, called gores, to open up on the outside of the joint. This makes up for the volume lost on the surrounded by of the joint, and keeps the suit at a constant volume. However, once the gores are opened all the way, the joint cannot be bent any longer without a considerable amount of work.