>> Amiko Kauderer: Hi welcome
to the International Space Station Flight Control Room.
I am here today with a special guest to talk to us a little bit
about some testing that was taking place this week
on Monday and on Wednesday.
It was on a Suitport.
A Suitport is a new technology that is being developed here
at the NASA Johnson Spec Center
that will eventually allow astronauts who go
out on a space walk to do that without going into the air lock
so here with us is Rob Boyle he is the project manager
of the Suitport and welcome thank you for coming.
So before we get into the Suitport and what all
of that is I want to talk a little about you.
So tell me first how in the world did you make your way here
at NASA and then to be working on this cool, cool technology.
>> Rob Boyle: Mechanical engineer
from Texas ANM University, came out and got one job,
was able to move to JSC in 1990, have worked space suits
for about 13, 14 years, mostly on the Life Support Backpack,
mostly specialist on the Life Support Backpack and then
when return to flight came on I worked the goo gun
for repairing the bottom of the ship
and then I worked then I've moved
around a little I worked the Altair Lunar Lander during the
Constellation Phase and now I'm working
through the Advanced Exploration Systems I'm working Suitport.
>> Amiko: So you've been working
on some really really fascinating,
interesting things what was it I mean were you always a space you
know had some interest in space
or how did you make your way here?
>> Rob: I've always had an interest
in space yes you know anybody who grew up or was young
when the Apollo landings were happening had an interest
in space so I always had that and once I got to JSC
and started working on the space suit I fell in love with EVA
so if you look at all those tasks they're all EVA centered,
they all involve what would we do while space walking.
>> Amiko: And by EVA you're talking about space walk,
the extra-vehicular activity.
Ok so now let's get into Suitport.
I briefly explained it but can you go into a little more detail
about what the Suitport is.
>> Rob: Sure the Suitport is to replace the traditional air lock
on a space craft so what we can do is we can hang the suits off
the side or the back of a space craft and that allows us
to have the suits ready, pressurized
and the crew members can open the space craft door,
open the back of a suit,
assuming it's a rear entry suit and jump in.
So they can jump into the suit, close the hatch
on the space suit, close the hatch on the vehicle
and very quickly depress the space between,
which we call a vestibule and walk out,
walk off the space craft so you can imagine in an asteroid
if they were exploring in a small vehicle
and they said oh I want to get that rock.
Instead of what we do on space station
where it takes a few hours to get
out they can just set their drink down,
go jump in the space suit, go get that rock,
put it on the back of the space craft, back in the space craft
and they may only be out a total of an hour
so that's what we're trying to do.
>> Amiko: So far out and I'm really just so intrigued
by this technology so it's a lot of fun
but now also there are other people who are interested
in this so we asked Twitter and we have a few people on Twitter
who came with a few questions
and just very very simply the first Twitter question comes
from IBHappyhopi How do they do that?
>> Rob: So the way we do that is we've designed a clamp system,
its similar to what's used standardly in space craft
and sea operations as a Marmon clamp and so that is
where a couple of clamps come in
and they clamp the space suit to the vehicle.
One of the innovative features how we've implemented
that clamp is we don't have to compress an O-ring,
our standard hatches all use tremendous clamping forces.
I can't do that on a light weight space suit that I want
to be able to move around and walk walk on the moon,
or be on an asteroid, or do whatever
so what we've done is we've replaced that O-ring
or that seal with something similar to a bike inner tube
so after we clamp it to the space craft we inflate a seal
against the space suit, between the space craft
and the space suit and that allows us to seal the suit
to the space craft, then we can open the doors and come
in so there was a lot of innovation
that made this possible by a lot of people.
>> Amiko: Wow so how long have you been working
on this project how long has the project been in work?
>> Rob: So the project Suitport was patented in 1989 actually
out at AIMS so it's been around for a long time
but it needed a home, it needed a space craft to be on so
when they started working originally the lunar rover
and now the Multi Mission Space Exploration Vehicle
when they started working those vehicles we realized
that hey we could really change the operations we
that the crew do in space
and we could make exploration really efficient if we had
that Suitport so we put some mock ups on the back
of those vehicles and those vehicles have really been able
to show how cool it would be to have Suitport,
what we could do with it.
What we're trying to do in chamber B what we're doing
with this week's testing is not what would we do with Suitport
if we had it, its can we really make Suitport work?
For a couple of years we tested it assuming we could make
it work.
Hey what would we do if we had it?
Now we're really striving
to show yes I can pressurize a space suit against a bulk head,
I can put a crew member across that bulk head,
I can separate them, depressurize
that pressurized seal and I can step off the wall and we did
that both Monday and Wednesday
and we've done glove boxes before
but we've never had a human dawn a pressurized suit
>> Amiko: So this is the first test that it was a manned
because I know that we did an unmanned testing what last
like June
>> Rob: Yeah a couple of weeks ago.
Yep we did an unmanned test.
We put a blanking plate or just a big aluminum plate in place
of a space suit and we went ahead and ran the Suitport
through its paces, that made sure the test team knew what
they were doing, it checked our procedures out
and it made sure all of the hardware was
in place before we put a human in the loop
and then we came back this month, we added the space suit,
repeated all of that without a human again
with just the space suit in place
and then got prototypes basically the Z1
and then we dropped a human in and we've had 4 test subjects
so far and we've had a lot of fun with it.
>> Amiko: Wow very well and so I assume the testing went well.
>> Rob: The testing did go well.
The one thing we found we learned it's harder to get
out of the space suit than we expected
and so we have another test series we're going to try
in September and we'll have different space suit docking
aids for that test so that we're able
to assist the crew members much much better
in getting out of the suit.
>> Amiko: Ok.
Well great and so that leads me to the next Twitter question.
This Twitter question is not one question, it's like a lot
of them so be prepared.
I don't know how they got this in 140 characters
but we'll go with this one.
Will the visor have a heads up display?
Why are we currently fitted in an airlock
and what are the other benefits of the Suitport; safety,
convenience, time, and is the suit used more than one mission?
>> Rob: Ah very good
so the first one why are we fitted in an air lock?
So for like space shuttle or space station you don't want
to depress the entire space craft,
you want to depress a very small area of the space craft
and let them go EVA from that.
You also don't want all the crew members to have to put on a suit
so like on space station where we might have or a space shuttle
where we might have 7 crew member
in the space craft I only want to send 2 people outside
so I put those 2 people in the air lock,
I'm able to depress that and go out.
One shuttle, the suits actually,
I believe we built 18 suits total and we've done we did all
of the shuttle missions and supported all of the ISS USCVAs
with those 18 that's Life Support Backpacks that we built.
The suits last about 8 years and we do numerous EVAs on them
through those 8 years so that's for shuttle station.
For exploration it'll depend on the mission, it'll depend
on whether we have the down mast to bring the suits back,
or whether the easiest thing to do is you know
like on Apollo they kick the life supports
out the vehicle just before they took off and left them
on the surface of the moon.
I've seen some pictures of them laying there it's kind of neat.
>> Amiko: Wow.
>> Rob: and so we may have to do that for exploration missions
where we're mask constrained or we may be able
to bring the suits back.
What were the other two?
There were four.
>> Amiko: So we have also well we were talking
about the benefits of safety convenience and time.
What are the benefits
of the Suitport why not just use the air lock
that we already have.
>> Rob: Well what we're really striving
to do we think we can get them out of the craft
in under 30 minutes compared to the 4 or 5 hours
that it takes us to get out right now
with conventional air locks
and conventional non-rear entry suits so we need space craft
to use a 8PSI atmosphere instead of the 14, 7 we have here
and on station but if we can get an 8 PSI vehicle then we think
we can get them out in under 30 minutes
and then our second goal is
to reduce contamination brought back into the vehicle.
You've probably seen pictures on Apollo
when they explored the moon how much dirt came back
on the suits, how much [inaudible] came back
with the suits, you can imagine in an asteroid
where there wouldn't be gravity to resettle any dirt or regula
if we saw that you might have an electrostatic cloud of dust
around you, if you brought
that into an air lock its coming into the space craft.
If I use a Suitport the only piece of the suit that comes
in is the nice slick back part of the life support system
so I significantly reduce the contamination that comes in
and you can think of that in terms
of where we've had contamination like hypergolic fuels or ammonia
on space station, the same thing applies.
I can significantly reduce the surface area that I have
to worry about in coming back into the space craft so I get
that and then consumables, the smallest air lock we've had
on shuttle is about 150 cubic feet
so on shuttle we just let that gas go to space.
On space station we have a pump that pumps it back
into space station with Suitport the volume between the suit
and the space craft that I have to depress is about 1 cubic feet
so say I put 2 people out that's 2 cubic feet, that's a factor
of 75 so I significantly reduce that gas and I don't really care
if you're talking about whether I vent it into space,
or whether I use power to pump it back into the space craft,
either way I saved that consumable.
So I can significantly save consumables.
We get 1 side benefit of being able to go out
and do very very short EVAs, what we find
with the 7 hour EVAs sometimes maybe something will be rubbing
somebody's elbow or something and by the time they come
in it's a hot spot and they might need to put a band aid
on it or something like that.
What we find over in the water tank is
if I can limit their EVA duration,
then those hot spots never develop because they're not
in the suit for 8 hours, 9 hours and so if I can get them in
and out that quick they start seeing a hot spot they can put a
piece of tape on it before they get in the suit
and we'll alleviate that whole irritation to the crew.
>> Amiko: I understand the space suits aren't the most
comfortable garments to wear so.
>> Rob: The space suit people would like you
to not know you're wearing a suit, that would be ideal
but we're not there yet.
>> Amiko: Yeah exactly so and I think the last part of this
and I think you did answer this was basically
if the suit could be used for more than 1 mission.
>> Rob: Yes.
>> Amiko: Congratulations on the testing
>> Rob: Oh thank you.
>> Amiko: and the good results that you have and continue with
but let's go ahead and talk to me a little bit
about what's next for the Suitport.
>> Rob: So we built the Suitport based on the Marmon clamp and we
like it, it's our second generation Suitport we've built
based on Marmon clamp and we about halved the part count
between the first generation and the second generation
but while we've been doing this someone came up with a good idea
for what we call a pneumatic flipper Suitport
and that Suitport cuts the part count again maybe by 75%
so we've been building that.
It's in the lab being assembled now.
We're going to come back in August and test that Suitport
and we're going to decide which clamping mechanism we prefer.
When we're done with that we're looking
to right now the testing we're doing has the chamber
at about 21,000 feet altitude and the man lock at sea level,
that gives us about an 8 PSI delta across the suit.
What I want to do is come back and take the chamber
to space vacuum and hold the man lock
at 8PSI space craft pressure and go ahead and repeat this test
with the crew member at vacuum and with the chamber at vacuum
and that will truly show hey we're ready
to start integrating with a space craft.
Assuming we can do that,
our advanced exploration systems Advanced Extra-Vehicular
Mobility Unit Group is trying to have a prototype suit ready
that can go to a thermal vacuum,
that's where we pull the chamber walls down to minus 300 degrees,
we put heat lamps in to simulate different environments
and we have the crew member walk into the chamber
and it's a big deal, it's almost as hard
as a space EVA except we don't have to get there and we'd
like to see Suitport be part of that test when they do
that in say 2016 or 2017.
>> Amiko: Wow fascinating.
Extra-vehicular Mobility Group that's a mouthful.
Only at NASA.
>> Rob: So I would have said it AESEMU.
Oh well.
>> Amiko: So again congratulations.
A lot of work has been done, a lot of work still to do.
Thank you guys for your questions.
This is Mission Control Houston.