Poor Mickey doesn’t have any alternatives for sourcing spacesuits, given his unique proportions…
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gordo!stevens!
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“Why NASA Will Pay $3.5Billion to Rent Space Suits Instead Of Building Their Own.”
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They did this in For All Mankind. It didn’t work all that well.
ETA: look like the video references this already.
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Guess what this video is about?
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I don’t know… The current SpaceX “EVA” suits (soon to be tested in a polar orbit by people who pay for the privilege, hope they can cope with the extra bit of radiation that comes with it) are bespoke. If they can fit all the various doodads that are part of a functional suit in such a small frame, Mickey is in with a good chance. A lot goes into the helmet and they would have to make that part of the suit larger anyway.
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Yup. Edited my post. Great video. Thanks for sharing!
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In Europe, Tesla were forced by the governments to adopt the same charging standard as everyone else long ago, rather than doing their own thing.
(I wonder what the analogy could be here…)
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Yeah. Tesla was a wrong turn in electrification of transport.
May it die on the vine and its toxic influence with it.
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And yet they managed to muscle through their proprietary charger as the official standard in North America. So now everyone else has to change to their tune. I’ll never understand the US government’s worship of the free market
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Surely that’s a mandated monopoly market?
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Yeah. I should have said “free” “market”.
The problem isn’t actually the market, it’s this deep-seated belief that government is bad and inefficient and that private enterprise is preferable in all cases
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Yeah. You should meet Ireland’s minister for public expenditure. He’s a profit fundamentalist whose every response to multiple housing crises is another tax cut/subsidy for landlords and “vulture funds are a vital part of the solution to the problem (that our policies are responsible for)”
Hardcore swivel eyed fundamentalist ideologically pure loon.
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I have never been to a big city with a more relaxed housing market than Vienna. They had a social democratic government in the 20s and 30s that built public housing on a massive scale. This one decade and a half still affects the housing market today (both directly and because people see it’s working, so the city still invest in social housing). It’s incredible what a city government 100 years ago still means for today’s quality of life by rejecting exactly that private market ideology in housing.
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it kind of worked well enough to get the job done…
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Now is exactly the right time to standardise some core functions.
Try doing it when there are 14 different suit makers! (See xkcd above)
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After watching the video, since I couldn’t fathom what would make the suits not compatible, it turns out my assumed perspective was very off from reality. For some unclear design decisions that still confuse me why they would be made.
First, reading spacesuit, I was picturing a self contained system. Similar to the suits used on space walks that are completely self supported, but for within the space craft not external. From the video context, this is an incorrect perspective. The suit is effectively part of the spacecraft. Dependent on working directly with the spacecraft, and unclear which functions are wholly within the suit and which are within the spacecraft. Thinking of it more like a chair, wall panel, or other mechanical system, it makes more sense that they would be different on different craft.
Second, why would they make that design decision that the suit isn’t self supported? I’m sure there’s a reason I’m just not understanding.
Thinking of the suit as something the astronaut wears and just sits in a seat then is clearly the wrong perspective though. The suit is a part of the spacecraft and the spacecraft having different designs (and different failure modes) was the goal.
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Yeah, I would think that there’s no fundamental reason why agreeing on certain pneumatic and power connectors would be unduly limiting for future innovation. And if SpaceX insists that they have a better connector design then just make them provide adapters that allow the other types to connect to it. There’s certainly precedent for that in the electric car business.
It seems like coming up with a standard docking ring system that works with different spacecraft would be at least as big of a challenge as making standard connectors for spacesuits but the international community did manage to do just that:
Edit to add: they’d better take care to ensure that the connectors aren’t too standardized though. You wouldn’t want to be able to accidentally (or intentionally) swap the air supply with the waste lines.
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