How to build a better spacesuit for a human mission to Mars | Allison Anderson | TEDxMileHigh

The spacesuit is one of the greatest technical engineering feats ever achieved. But did you know it causes significant injuries to astronauts? Bruises, sprains, pinched nerves, lost fingernails and even torn rotator cuffs. If we're going to send astronauts to Mars safely and successfully, we must redesign the iconic spacesuit first. Aerospace engineer Allison Anderson will show us how.

Dr. Allison Anderson is an Assistant Professor at the University of Colorado Boulder Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences and an Adjunct Professor in Integrative Physiology. Her work focuses on aerospace biomedical engineering and human physiology in extreme environments, with the goal of enabling a human mission to Mars. She received a Ph.D. from MIT and a postdoctoral fellowship from the National Space Biomedical Research Institute. She grew up on a farm in rural Missouri, is the fourth child of five, and is now a private pilot.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx

Fifty years ago, this past July,

humans set foot on the moon for first time

and redefined how we think
about our planet.

Every time you've ever seen a person
waking on the moon or in space,

they've been wearing a spacesuit.

The spacesuit embodies what it means
to be a part of human kind -

to explore and to achieve
something we thought was impossible.

But it's not just
a simple piece of clothing.

The spacesuit is one of the greatest
technical engineering feat ever achieved.

It does everything a spacecraft does

to keep a person alive

except it's wearable.

But despite how advanced it is,

the spacesuit is
surprisingly dangerous to wear.

You'd never know just by looking at it,

but this suit injures astronauts:

bruises, sprains, pinched nerves,

and even lost fingernails.

23 astronauts have needed
shoulder surgeries

to repair injuries
like torn rotator cuffs.

If something like that happened
on the surface of the moon or Mars,

it could destroy the mission.

Bottom line - improving the spacesuit

is one of the biggest barriers
to human space exploration

that no one's talking about.

I believe one of the most important things
we can do to advance science

is to send a human to Mars.

We've learned so much
from our robotic explorers,

but they're so limited.

One person on that planet's surface

could unlock the history
of how our solar system formed,

or possibly even how life began.

It'll take billions of dollars
to send people to Mars,

but you don't just go to Mars to stay
inside your habitat the whole time.

Astronauts will be exploring
and wearing the suit

a lot.

With current NASA plans,

if you sent five people
to the surface for 500 days,

that'd be about 1,000 space walks

over the course of one mission.

For perspective,

we've done just over 400 spacewalks

in the entire history
of human space flight.

That's an insane jump in capability.

If we're going to pull this off -
and I believe that we will -

we need to radically
redefine the spacesuit.

I became interested in space exploration

in the third grade

when my teacher spent the day
telling us about astronauts.

It was the first time I really understood
that people could go there.

Since that time, human space flight
has been the driving passion of my life.

But I only began to understand

how hard it is for astronauts
to work inside their spacesuits

when I went to graduate school.

The spacesuit is pressurized with oxygen
to allow people to breathe,

but that pressure
makes it stiff and rigid.

Think about trying
to make a balloon animal.

When you bend the balloon,

It wants to spring back
to its original position.

Engineers have tried to solve this problem

by designing the suit's joints
with pleats and bearings,

but it still forces people
to move in awkward and unnatural ways.

To move in the suit,

first you have to move your body
until it makes contact with the suit.

Only then does the suit
itself start to move.

You can't just reach up
and touch your head,

like this;

instead, astronauts
have to roll out their shoulder

and then bend their elbow
to touch their helmet.

That's hard enough to remember
how to do here on Earth,

let alone when you're
outside your spacecraft,

travelling at over 17,000 miles per hour.

Fit is another major issue.

In March 2019,

NASA had to cancel
the first all-female spacewalk

because the suits available
didn't fit the crew members,

and it would have taken too much time

to put together a different suit,
on orbit, that was the right size.

So pressure plus fit
is why astronauts get beat up

every time they work inside the suit.

And that's why I've dedicated my career
to designing a better spacesuit.

The first step is to understand
how people move while wearing the suit.

You can't just see inside

to understand how and why
astronauts are getting injured.

So, together with
my students at CU Boulder,

we're developing wearable sensors

to go inside

to measure how people move
and interact with the suit.

With this data,

we hope to be able to predict

whether or not the suit
will be comfortable

or cause injuries

after someone wears it
a couple hundred times.

When humans take their first steps
onto the surface of Mars,

their boots will make the first impact.

Astronauts haven't needed
to walk in their spacesuits

since Apollo astronauts
left the moon in 1972.

Because the boot is also pressurized,
the foot isn't secured inside of it.

It'd be like wearing
a pair of hiking shoes

that are several sizes too large for you.

Every time you take a step,

the heel lifts out of the back,

causing blisters, wasted energy
and awkward movement.

The thing is,

if you get a blister on a hike,
you just have a bad hike.

If you get a blister
on the surface of Mars,

it's hard to do your job.

And it can be even more painful than that.

One astronaut had a boot issue -

they said it felt
like a knife's edge of pain.

To design a better spacesuit boot,

my student Aubie has built
a four-dimensional motion capture system

that measures the shape
of the foot while walking.

With this data,

we plan to redesign
how the foot fits inside the boot

to ensure our astronauts
can explore further and further.

But if we really want to revolutionize
spacesuits for Mars,

we have to protect the body

in a fundamentally
different way than we do now.

I believe the solution
for a Martian spacesuit

relies on a skin-tight elastic concept,

first proposed in the 1960s
by Dr. Paul Webb.

It uses a concept called
mechanical counterpressure,

which means that rather than using
an inflated garment

to apply pressure to the skin,

the suit itself squeezes the body.

Unfortunately, these suits
have never really gained traction,

because it's so difficult

to create pressure
over the complex shapes of the body,

like the armpit.

When I was a graduate student,
my adviser sent me to Italy

to work with a company, Dainese,
that designs motorcycle racing suits.

David told me,

"These people are the best designers
you will ever meet."

I want you to use your engineering skills
with their design skills

and design some mechanical
counterpressure spacesuit prototypes."

So, off to Italy I went.

That summer was one of the most
creative and inspiring experiences

I have had as an engineer.

Every day, Stefano and I would whip up
some new spacesuit prototype,

test it and then change the design,

always getting closer to
a mechanical counterpressure spacesuit,

but we're still a long ways away
from something that's spaceflight ready.

Since that time, I've continued to work
with this team of friends from MIT,

the University of Minnesota,

the Royal Melbourne Institute
of Technology in Australia,

David Clark company and NASA

to continue pushing
on these design issues.

In my lab now,

we're challenging how we think about using
mechanical counterpressure in spacesuits.

Instead of choosing
either mechanical counterpressure

or gas pressure,

why can't we choose both?

If we cut the design problem in half

and apply, say, 50% of the pressure
with a tight elastic suit layer

and the other 50% with a traditional
gas pressurized suit like we use now,

we'd be able to protect our astronauts
with a suit that's less stiff and rigid

but also safer through redundancy.

And a suit like that

would enable a human mission to Mars.

I believe I will be lucky enough

to see people walking
on the surface of Mars before I die.

But to make a mission
of that magnitude worthwhile,

we have to ensure
our astronauts stay safe.

And we have to ensure
they're able to explore and do science

day after day after day.

It's time to imagine a new design
for our iconic spacesuit.

Thank you.

(Applause)