Kickstart A Spacesuit

 Space

Final Frontier Design, a Brooklyn-based company is designing a safe, functional and affordable pressurized space suit. Unlike some of NASA’s suits, which are designed with extra-vehicular activities such as space walks in mind, their suit is intended only for Intra Vehicular Activity. The company has now turned to Kickstarter to fund the latest phase of development.

B rooklyn-based company Final Frontier Designar is working to bring a lightweight, inexpensive, and highly functional space suit to the new commercial space industry. The company is using Kickstarter along with support from NASA to develop their FFD Third Generation (3G) Suit. The suit will be built to conform to the standards of NASA flight certification, and will feature upgrades to their 2011 Second Generation (2G) Suit, including a higher operating pressure, a carbon fiber waist ring, a retractable helmet, and improved gloves and glove disconnects.

Final Frontier plans to complete construction of this 3G Suit before 2013.

The 3G suit is intended for IVA, or Intra Vehicular Activity, that is, launch and re-entry, for commercial space providers both suborbital and orbital. Basically IVA suits are a safety backup in case of an emergency loss of cabin pressure, like the oxygen masks in commercial airliners. The future commercial space industry (SpaceX, Boeing, Sierra Nevada, Virgin, Armadillo, XCOR, etc) will need these suits for the basic safety of manned flights.

Current NASA suits cost well into the millions, while the FFD 3G is intended to retail for a small fraction of this. Final Frontier Design was founded by Ted Southern and Nikolay Moiseev.

Moiseev has worked as a space suit engineer for over 20 years, developing suits for groups such as NASA, the European Space Agency and the Russian Space Agency. Southern’s background lies in the area of special effects and costumes for theater, movies and television. Together, they designed a glove for use in outer space, which placed second in the 2009 NASA Astronaut Glove Challenge. They went on to work as technical residents at New York’s Eyebeam art and technology center, and were awarded a NASA contract last year, to continue development of their pressurized glove.

The pair is using Kickstarter to raise funds for this latest step in their project. Different pledge amounts will get backers different parts of the suit to call their own, when and if the funding goal is met – US$100 will get them a Valsalva Device, used for plugging the nostrils in order to clear the ears, while a complete suit can be had for $10,000 or more.






SOURCE  Kickstarter

By 33rd Square

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