Spacesuit adjusts for gravity, or lack thereof

This vintage illustration actually depicts a modern spacesuit in development at Draper Laboratory. The suit has built-in sensors for measuring inertia and flywheel gyroscopes to tweak the resistance of movement in the suit so that the experience is more Earth-like. From Draper Laboratory:

“This spacesuit concept will provide a platform for integrating sensors and actuators with daily activities to maintain and improve astronaut health and performance,” said Kevin Duda, a senior member of the technical staff in Draper’s Human Centered Engineering Group, and the principal investigator for the spacesuit project.

In addition to stabilizing astronauts in space, the suit could also be used to help reacclimate them to the feel of gravity upon return to Earth or other planetary destination. Outside of space, the suit could be adapted for uses including medical rehabilitation to assist in rehabilitation and physical therapy for individuals affected by stroke, spinal cord and brain injuries, as well as the elderly population, as they relearn the proper way to execute common movements by introducing strong resistance when they do not take the proper path.

"Draper Spacesuit Could Keep NASA Astronauts Stable, Healthier in Space"

• [Joe F]

  Wait… Why does NASA need spacesuits anymore?
  How well does Russian money exchange into American?

• [Sparrow]

  The time and motion studies people would probably love this, they could force employees to follow the authorized processes exactly by making it more difficult if you get off track.

• [Jerril]

  Concept art by Poser’s sketch mode and DAZ’s Michael 4. Nice.

• [Finnagain]

  Build in some electro pain compliance, and now you’re talking!

  as well as the elderly population, as they relearn the proper way to execute common movements by introducing strong resistance when they do not take the proper path.

• [William]

  Look at all those built-in iPods!

• [pjcamp]

  “No, young Luke. BE the Segway, you will.”

• [DouglasLucchetti]

  What ever happened to the idea of simulating gravity by rotating those stations that would require long term living environments…oh, yeah…we never got to that as we fell into the NASA/DoD belief that rockets had to be made to function like self-disintegrating swiss-watches the size of corn silos, costing billions, which we’d send up by the dozen instead of appropriately large scaled rockets made economiically at ship-yards, of durable and heavy duty materials intended to be re-used or incorporated into axially rotating space stations, and filled with cheap and easily handled propellants and launched from equatorial oceanic locations and requiring only one or two a year to provide our space station with enough fuel and cargo to last…oh, yeah.