Slimming the Spacesuit

Fashion savvy astronauts may soon be flaunting their stuff as the bulky, pound-adding design of current spacesuits are replaced by a second-skin style that accentuates the body’s lines. The current 300 pound spacesuits used by NASA are designed to maintain pressure and temperature in the extremes of space.

A team of scientists at MIT have developed a suit that tightly wraps the body in nylon and spandex, allowing more freedom of movement while still supplying the necessary pressurization. The researchers report it will still be another decade or so before the BioSuits have been fine tuned for use in space. Who knows? Maybe choice of color and helmet style will be next, and Cape Canaveral will host its first Fashion Week.

Photo by Steven Huls used under a Creative Commons license.