[X] My Assistant

[MaxSt]

Is it possible to get into space suit without help?

[AndyG]

Thanks to the link to the paper, ngunn. It's excellent. Note how black the dustless Martian sky would appear.

For those wanting an insight into the NBS/ISCC colour system, here's a link. And for the CIE diagram, hyperphysics has a good one.

This is worth a thread on its own, imo.

Andy

[dvandorn]

Is it possible to get into space suit without help?

Depends, both on the suit design and the level of safety you're willing to risk.

You can get into a Russian EVA suit pretty easily -- you just open a hatch in the middle of the backpack, wriggle in, and close the hatch with a conveniently-placed lever. Attach your comm carrier into the suit comm circuit, turn on the backpack, don gloves, lower your visor, and you're ready to go.

An Apollo A7L suit, on the other hand -- you could put it on by yourself, but if you had to don and hook up a PLSS, your safety level might have been impaired. (The Apollo CMPs regularly donned and doffed their suits alone, perfectly safely, but they had no need to don a life-support system on top of that.)

By the time we send people to Mars, I would hope we will have designed suits that are relatively lightweight and easy to don, operate and maintain. And which have gloves that don't maim the fingers of the wearers...

-the other Doug

[lyford]

If you were going for the smallest possible crew, I'd suggest sending a wife and husband team, who have already lived together in close quarters for 20 years.

This sounds waaaaaay too much like a sitcom....

"Don't you drag all that Martian dirt in here after I just cleaned all our floors! We can't have nice things!"

Though maybe that could be an alternate source of funding - some sort of Big Brother To Mars show. Now that would generate interest in manned and womanned space flight!

Or maybe we can still get Lance Bass to volunteer for a one way mission.

[ustrax]

That link is in 'Opportunity', 'JGR-Planets . . .' post no. 16 from slinted at Oct 1 2006 10:18 AM. Must learn how to do this properly!

Thanks ngunn!

[climber]

Isn't death certain for all of us?...
If conditions were created for this astronauts/future martians to endure on Mars, being the ones opening roads for a future colonization why not?
There were other occasions when Mankind had to make decisions and then moutains were climbed....

I get the point Ustrax. Anyway, if we take the exemple of Mount Everest, there are some doubts of WHO get to the summit first. It could have been Mallory and Irvine back in the 30's but they never came back alive. Firsts to get back from summit where Hillary and Tensing. If YOU go to Mars on a one way ticket, everybody will know you'll be the first but I don't think people will associate your name to a Hero but to a suicide man instead. Exploration is inspiration and the followers needs inspiration, they need Heros. If you die on Mars while you are on a return ticket, you'll inspire people to do better next time (as for the Everest) but you'll not inspire people on a sucide mission, they'll think more of the sucide than on the benefits of what you'll do. This is a general point of view; I believe this but I agree personaly that I'll prefer to go for such an endeavour now than to die in an hospice at 95...

[Aldebaran]

Can't get the song "Ground Control to Major Tom" out of my head when I read this topic

[nprev]

This sounds waaaaaay too much like a sitcom....

"Don't you drag all that Martian dirt in here after I just cleaned all our floors! We can't have nice things!"

Though maybe that could be an alternate source of funding - some sort of Big Brother To Mars show. Now that would generate interest in manned and womanned space flight!

Or maybe we can still get Lance Bass to volunteer for a one way mission.

Can't I just volunteer either of my ex-wives as a solo...?

[Bill Harris]

The psychological stress of being alone for the duration of a voyage to Mars is not to be underestimated. I'm not saying the astronaut would go crazy; but a trip to Mars alone would be dreadfully boring...

And this gives me the mental image of Cosmonaut Andropov (from the movie Armageddon)...

A solo mission might work better if the astronaut stayed in orbit and directed landers/rovers/sample return robots. Less overhead to keep a human in orbit than as a lander.

--Bill

[ustrax]

Depends, both on the suit design and the level of safety you're willing to risk.

Found out this blog...

[Guest_PhilCo126_*]

Although we all know that a Mars mission will have a crew of minimum 4 and maximum 6, the idea of a 1 man mission would solve the problem of the " leader figure " in a crew and could save some money on wristwatches as well
http://www.expeditionexchange.com/omega/indexmain.shtml

[climber]

You're right Phil. I'll add :
One small shed for (a) man, one giant ship for Mankind