Space Voyage #1 Chatter

[TheFaithfulStone]

If you're on the outside of the ship, you could be in pretty big trouble.

 

You know those little things they have at carnivals where they spin around and the seats lift up and fly out? Imagine walking around on the outside of that. You'll be hanging by your arms as the ship tries to fling you into outer space.

 

Fun, fun, fun.

 

TFS

[cwes99_03]

DANT DANT DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

 

Sounds like it is turning into a sci fi movie of the week, BD. GET OUT OF THERE!!!

[TheFaithfulStone]

Yeah, now it's gettin' excitin'!

 

I think we need to remember that we're only writing the exciting parts. I mean, the six days or whatever that we took getting back from the moon, and an eighteen hour boost past earth were just kinda glossed. With good reason - that stuff is boring. When we put together the digest, we should add dates or something so that it doesn't seem like our spaceship is the crossroads of plot devices or something.

 

I think we're doing pretty good about not introducing a plot thread per post, honestly (much better than our first little adventure!)

 

Just to Recap:

1) There was an engine misfire which caused an EMP.

2) KAC is EVA (why? He knows the ship, why would he go EVA for a simple rescue? Maybe he knows something we don't.)

3) There is someone else who's doing some sneaking around.

4) I'm in sickbay with Radiation Sickness

5) Ronthepon took a hit to the head.

6) The buggers appear to be malfunctioning, but the ship is coming back on line.

 

Technical Notes:

What is our balk line for firing in reverse before we end up on a long trip to Delta Pavonis?

 

The buggers are of extremely limited intelligence - they have some pathfinding routines, but they're not any smarter than a say... a Roomba. Most of the processing is offloaded to the mainframe.

 

 

TFS

[TheBigDog]

TFS, I know you are unconcious in the ER, but are you going to write in a little action from the point of view of the buggers?

 

Bill

[TheFaithfulStone]

Yeah, I can do that.

[Janus]

2) KAC is EVA (why? He knows the ship, why would he go EVA for a simple rescue? Maybe he knows something we don't.)

TFS

 

Just a little technical note on EVAs. In real life, KAC wouldn't have been able to just don a suit and jump out an airlock. Our ship (for one reason because we are running an active ecology in the ag modules) runs at a normal air mix. The suits however do not. they run at 4.1 psi pure oxy. The reason for the lower pressure is that, even with constant volume joints, at 14 psi, you would tend to splay out like a Macy's parade balloon, and movement would be difficult.

 

The problem is this: If you go directly from a normal oxy-nitro air mix at 14 psi to 4.1 psi you will suffer from the same effects as a diver who rises to the surface too quicky, the nitrogen in your blood will form bubbles and you will get the bends.

 

The solution is to "wash" the nitrogen out of your blood. You do this by breathing pure oxtgen for 2 hrs prior to your EVA. This means that there is a minimum lag time of 2 hrs from the time you decide to go EV, and the time you actually step out of the ship.

[TheFaithfulStone]

Could we open a new thread for tech talk? I know that some of us get the big charge out of the plot, but I suspect others find it more fun just to fill in the technical details....

 

Or is it too much like running parallel stories?

 

Just a little technical note on EVAs. In real life, KAC wouldn't have been able to just don a suit and jump out an airlock. Our ship (for one reason because we are running an active ecology in the ag modules) runs at a normal air mix. The suits however do not. they run at 4.1 psi pure oxy. The reason for the lower pressure is that, even with constant volume joints, at 14 psi, you would tend to splay out like a Macy's parade balloon, and movement would be difficult.

 

Awesome. Is there a proposed fix for this? It isn't really germane to this thread, but I can see as how it would be a REAL PITA to have to do this if you wanted to say, evac a moon base or something.

 

In other words, is there some technical solution to "fix" this issue? What about rigid suits with waldos?

 

TFS

[IDMclean]

I have a Ridgid Semi-Powered Exoskeleton, and An ecclectic mix of microweave (to help with Radiation Shielding), I am not the most manueverable of Cadets, but My suit is for performing Medium to Heavy duty and is designed specifically for emergency deployment.

 

I based it's design after the Mark III, heavy I know but hey, I want to be able to go places that might have higher than average danger indexs. It has Zero-Prebreath capabilities, and some nifty tweaks and customizations.

[TheFaithfulStone]

So, is that real technology?

 

I think one of our real strengths so far is that we've kept the science in check. I mean - we haven't had death rays or FTL drives or anything. I'd like to keep it that way.

 

TFS

[TheFaithfulStone]

You guys post more often! I'm all excited now!

 

TFS

 

ps: who's the new guy?

[IDMclean]

I would think so. What I have is no more crazy than a ship like ours, or little buggers walking around.

 

Here are the capabilities of my suit as I see them:

Zero-Prebreath (nessessary for Emergency, like imminent decompression event)

Radiation Shielding (Engineering Duties, and Rad-cleanup)

EM Shoes (walking on the outside of the ship without the risk of fling.)

Toe Bola (For catching unwarry friends or foes whom may or may not be going Extra Orbitial, or EO for short)

Standard Mechanics kit (for structural work and hotwiring vehicals that I may or may not have permission to operate... also the Torch and the Thermite could come in handy for other uses)

Vector Thrusters (these are for maneuvering while disconnected from the main body. In case I get into orbit about the ship or another craft, such as the Wrangler.)

Light Halbatch Array Magnetic High-radiation Shielding (Activates only when Enviromental Radiation goes higher than 1 gray and it requires a confromation before it goes online. can also be used to attempt to get back on the ship, if the ship isn't drifting to fast.)

Life Support(30 minutes without the Buddy system, up to 90 minutes with the Buddy system)

The Exo-skeleton is driven somewhat by Photo-Electric Effect and P-magnetic jointed actuators.

 

Kinda hard to explain, and starting to cross into speculation, but hey if TFS can have his nifty bugs why can't I have the Space suit I always wanted...

[TheFaithfulStone]

Got it.

 

 

So uhh... how does the zero-prebreathe thing work? Anybody?

 

TFS

[cwes99_03]

Well, if I may interject some info. The reason stated above for the need of a 2 hour pre-breathe is that the pressure outside the ship is well near vacuum. Thus a non-rigid suit could only support so much internal pressure without blowing up like a balloon. Since the human body is normally under about 14.5 psi on earth (is that correct people?) then the human body needs to be slowly decompressed and have the nitrogen removed from the blood as already stated.

What clown is suggesting is a rigid suit, comparable to a submersible or something like that, so that the suit can be pressurized at 14.5 psi with regular earth mixture air. I would imagine the joints to have some pretty neat technology for it to be a semi-powered suit with the exoskeleton serving the purpose of protection from without and within. Also the magnetic shoes on this much larger suit can be electromagnetic run off of batter and solar power. Then little switches in the soles of the shoe can measure the movement of your foot to determine if you are wanting to lift your leg to move.

 

Your other option would be that the entire ship be pressurized to near 4 psi all the time. I know that for deep sea studies where the pressure is much higher that they pressurize the living situation to much higher pressures and introduce helium instead of oxygen. This would be the opposite, where air is replaced with oxygen and the entire ship is depressurized to 4 psi.

This would actually be a great help to the astronaughts as any damage to the ship that vented atmosphere would be much less critical at low pressure than if the ship were pressurized at a much higher pressure.

[TheFaithfulStone]

Pure oxygen atmosphere = major risk of fire. We learned that one the hard way.

 

What about a Space activity suit which is basically a space leotard with a pressurized helmet. That might be better - then you could wear whatever you want over it.

 

TFS

[Pyrotex]

If you (KAC) are walking around on the top of a module....

Here is my feeble attempt to draw what I mean in Visio. This is my very first attempt to do ANY drawing in Visio. It's not quite as versatile as Canvas, but then, it's far more expensive, so go figger.

And nowhere even close to what Janus can do. {sigh}

[Pyrotex]

You guys post more often! I'm all excited now!

ps: who's the new guy?

I certainly don't know.

But I repped him good on that first post.

I have a sneaking suspicion that mister /bin is gonna do us proud.

:hihi:

[IDMclean]

I certainly did look at the Space Activity Suit, however the issue with that one is that it's harder to obtain a zero-Prebreath, which for me is important. If my room suddenly springs a leak or is showing higher than safe levels of raditation, I want to be able to spring into and zip up in no prep-time (with exception of donning the outfit).

 

Further my suit is ment for somewhat Hazardous Enviroments. (HEV mark VII Medium Opertations) I do alot of things, I can do flight sims, I can perform Maintainence, and in an emergency, like now for instance, I would like to be able to assist in whatever way possible. Therefore I opt for a heavier suit for added protection and increased carrying capacity...

 

 

I like that helium suggestion also. I have to admit that I am not the sharpest Atmospheric engineer. I was concidering just having a Fluid Life Support System, but that would increase the mass of my suit to higher than acceptable tolerances.

 

The NASA Mark III was an advanced NASA space suit design of the 1990's. The Mk III hybrid advanced suit assembly consisted of a hard upper torso, brief and hip transition elements, and rolling convolute shoulder, waist and hip abduction/adduction joints. It also offered upper arm, shoulder, hip, waist, and ankle bearings. The Mk III was intended to be pressurized at the relatively high pressurization of 0.56 atmospheres.

 

Although heavier than other suit designs, it offered superior mobility. By combining soft suit joints, hard joints, and bearings, all of the expected lunar or Martian surface mobility tasks could be performed within acceptable levels of effort. The task of kneeling and picking up an object could only be done by the Mk III in comparison with the Apollo A7L or Shuttle EMU suits. Handstands and somersaults could also be performed in the suit. Despite the success of the tests aboard a KC-135 on zero- and reduced-G flights, the NASA EVA Project Office at Johnson Space Center made the decision to pursue a soft suit design (the M-Suit) for future astronauts. The Mark III suit weighed 59 kg and its PLSS Portable Life Support System, 15 kg.

 

The MK III (H-1) space suit represented an 8.3psi technology demonstrator model of a zero-prebreathe suit. The basic torso shell, brief, and hip areas of the suit were composed of a graphite/epoxy composite layup. The lower arm and leg/boot areas of the suit were fabric. The suit contained a series of high-mobility joint assemblies in the shoulder, elbow, waist, hip, knee, and ankle areas. The MK III (H-1) suit incorporated either a 4-bearing joint system or a 2-bearing, rolling convolute joint arrangement that provided multi-axis motion. Single axis, all-fabric flat patterned joint systems were utilized for the elbow, knee, and ankle joints. Advantages of the fabric joint elements in the arm and leg areas of the suit included wearer comfort, less-cost, simpler construction features, and good mobility capabilities. A 3-bearing hip assembly and a single-axis rolling convolute waist joint coupled with a waist bearing provided excellent torso mobility. Sizing accommodations were provided by quick changeout sizing ring elements utilizing a wire cable attachment and interface method. Donning and doffing of the suit was achieved through a vertical rear-entry closure. Due to the structural nature of the torso shell, a portable life support system (i.e., backpack) could be directly mounted or integrated into the basic suit structure. In its 0.56 bar design configuration, the MK III (H-1)suit weighed 55 kg. However, since future planetary suits will be designed to operate at 0.26 bar, it was felt that the MK III (H-1) suit re-designed weight could be reduced to 36 kg with the incorporation of lightweight structural materials.

 

Mass: 74 kg (163 lb).

 

That's the Basis. I have some pretty heavy customizations to my own suit, as it is approaching Extreamely Light Powered Armor. I compensate for the Mass concearns with the Semi-Powered Exoskeleton to assist in operation, it would certainly suck if I got hit by something massive/fast enough to throw my P-Magnet joints out of Alignment (Imagine trying to ply apart 1:50 pound ratio Neodymium magnets apart... Lets just say it would a hell of a jam. luckily the Skeleton gives it some strength against such occurances. Still.) The main concearn is the fact that I have only between 45-90 minutes of breath time. I would figure to be at the 75 minutes range, as I have to exert a little more than your average 'naut.