Cosmic Queries – Space Suits with Ana Diaz Artiles

What’s the future of space suits? On this episode, Neil deGrasse Tyson and comic co-host Matt Kirshen explore innovation in space suit technology with aerospace engineer Ana Diaz Artiles.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now.

• 0:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is StarTalk. Neil deGrasse Tyson here, your personal astrophysicist. And today, we're going to talk about spacesuits. Which, or we could retitle this, "How to Not Die in Space." And I've got with me co-host Matt Kirshen. Matt, good to have you, man.

• 0:32Matt Kirshen?

  Good to be here. I'm at home right now. I'm back home, which is another way to not die in space. It's just stay safe.

• 0:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, being on Earth is a way to not die in space.

• 0:41Matt Kirshen?

  Staying safely in Los Angeles. That's my tip for this episode.

• 0:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So this is kind of a hybridized, it's going to be sort of an info show on spacesuits, spacesuit design, what is protecting us from, why, why is it necessary? And then we're going to blend in some cosmic queries in the second and third segment. So I look forward to this. Well, I know a little bit about spacesuits. I don't know nearly enough to carry this show. So we combed the landscape of people with this kind of expertise, and they exist. Okay, and we found Professor Ana Diaz-Artiles. Ana, welcome to StarTalk.

• 1:23Speaker 02

  Hi, thank you so much for having me here. This is great.

• 1:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I love it. You're an assistant professor in the Department of Aerospace Engineering at Texas A&M. And you have developed, or in the process of developing, a new spacesuit? And it's called the Smart Suit, so I want to totally get into that. But in this moment, you're coming to us from Barcelona, is that correct?

• 1:46Speaker 02

  Right, I'm originally from Spain, although I was born in Canary Islands, but I'm now in Barcelona. My husband is from Barcelona, so I'm here visiting some family.

• 1:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, I love the Canary Islands. We have some telescopes there. It's volcanic and there's some good wine there, too. There's a wine industry. We've got to bring you back, we'll talk about the Canary Islands. A whole other show. And Matt, you're not just my co-host comedian. You host your own podcast, probably Science.

• 2:18Matt Kirshen?

  That's the one.

• 2:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I've been a guest on that show.

• 2:21Matt Kirshen?

  You have indeed. And yes, we've got that connection. The connection I have with Anna is I've sent in my designs for spacesuits many times to universities around the world. No replies so far, but.

• 2:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, she'll tell you why.

• 2:37Matt Kirshen?

  I'm wondering if the fishbowl is not using a high enough quality material. I think because I'm using Target, you know, just like a standard Target fishbowl. But maybe you need to go to one of like the specialist pet supply stores or.

• 2:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, yeah. I mean, the fishbowl inverted on your head. Is that what you're saying?

• 2:52Matt Kirshen?

  Yeah, exactly. You know, that's it's a fishbowl and jumpsuit. What more do you need? I can't imagine. I think that's the end of the science, right? We're done. Episode over.

• 2:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There you go. Okay, so Anna, why in just that moment was Matt a complete idiot?

• 3:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, Anna, what kills you in space? Why can't we just hold our breath until we get to our destination?

• 3:11Speaker 02

  There could be many things that can kill you in space. But if I had to pick one, I would say, you know, we do have a lack of atmosphere. There isn't any pressure putting on your body. So that lack of pressure is actually going to make all your fluids basically become gas and then you're going to boil in space pretty quickly.

• 3:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow. Okay, so that's not even about whether you can hold your breath.

• 3:36Speaker 02

  No, actually, if you hold your breath, like, that's not a good idea because that oxygen, that fluid that you're holding is going to expand also because of the lack of pressure. And then, you know, that is not going to be good for your lungs.

• 3:52Matt Kirshen?

  That makes. I've obviously, I've never been to space, but I have gone scuba diving. And one of the very first things they tell you that they drum into you very many times is you must not hold your breath as you come up to the surface for that exact reason. Because you've breathed in air at high pressure down in the depths. And then, as you come up to the lower pressure on the surface, you could basically burst, right?

• 4:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, so Anna, that sounds like exactly the same problem. Is that correct?

• 4:17Speaker 02

  That's, I was going to say, that's exactly the same problem. It's just the other way around. When we go into a spacesuit, we're generally going into lower pressures compared to the spacecraft that we're having. And there are many reasons why we want to go to lower pressures. And one of them is mobility. We can talk about it. But then if we think about scuba diving, the problem is not when you go down, but it's actually when you go up because you go from higher pressure to lower pressures. And this is why, I'm not a diver unfortunately, but this is why you need to do all these waiting times and you cannot just go up to the surface really quickly. You need to stage those.

• 5:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Anna, how did you get into this? I mean, were you a little child and said, "I want to design space suit"? I mean, like, who does this?

• 5:09Speaker 02

  Right.

• 5:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Did you watch some movie? Was like, did you have a visit someplace? How does one become a space suit designer? And maybe that's really what the question is.

• 5:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I am, I'm just a traditional aerospace engineer.

• 5:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just a regular aerospace engineer?

• 5:29Speaker 03

  The kind you just meet down the pub.

• 5:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just the kind you bump into? You bump into them on the street all the time?

• 5:34Speaker 02

  I've always been fascinated with space. And yes, there was a movie. It was actually a TV series, From the Earth to the Moon. I don't know if you remember this.

• 5:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, of course, yes.

• 5:47Speaker 02

  Like, 1997, if I remember correctly. And, you know, we didn't have Netflix or anything at the time. So you just had to be there on Saturdays at 7:00 PM. Otherwise, you missed the whole thing.

• 6:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or it wasn't streaming, yeah, not yet, yeah, yeah.

• 6:02Speaker 02

  And yeah, it was at the time that I was finishing high school and just like, what do I want to do with my life and said so. So yeah, certainly I said, this is what I want to do. I want to do space. And I started working my way into that. So I went into aerospace engineer. And then I went to industry for a while. So I didn't do research right after my degree. And I-

• 6:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But let's be clear, Matt, if you didn't know this. She could go on for more education or she can make a boatload of money going into industry immediately. And that is the choice. Is that correct, Anna? Tell, fess up, this is what happened, correct?

• 6:43Speaker 02

  Well, I was launching rockets. I was in operations and related to space. So very far away from research, but still space related. And I was there for a while. I was there for a few years, that's true.

• 6:58Matt Kirshen?

  That's always been my issue with, you know, whenever anyone, to take us marginally off topic, whenever anyone, there's like, you know, climate change or evolution arguments, and there was like, these academic elites, like, do you have any idea how un-elite academics are?

• 7:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's correct.

• 7:14Matt Kirshen?

  Compared to what they could be doing with their learning and their brains?

• 7:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How much money they don't make compared to how much money they could.

• 7:23Matt Kirshen?

  They turned down the C-suite for hacky sacks and sandals.

• 7:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, yeah, so I'm impressed that this TV series had an impact on you because do we fully, do we really know how much influence our media has on people's ambitions? I don't think we think about it enough. We just think of it as entertainment. But my gosh, if it puts you on a path to where you are now, that, people need to know that.

• 7:52Speaker 02

  It did, and I feel like I've told this story before, I feel like I'm always repeating myself, but certainly was a game changer for me, and at the time also we didn't have this huge social media or social presence. So that's something that I definitely try to contribute, and with this podcast and, you know, trying to tell especially little girls, and, you know, STEM and girls in particular, because they, you know, it has been shown, they sort of start not becoming interested in STEM disciplines anymore. So I'm trying to do my part on that.

• 8:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right, right, right. So, okay, so getting back to the inventory of all that will kill you in space. So, so one of them is your blood begins to boil and outgas, okay? That can't be good for what's going on inside your skin. So what about the temperatures?

• 8:53Speaker 02

  You start getting very cold, to the point that eventually you will freeze. But I believe you will die way before that.

• 9:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So don't worry about freezing.

• 9:08Matt Kirshen?

  The temperature will just preserve the corpse that's already there, I guess.

• 9:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, you will die because of asphyxiation in two minutes or less. And then you start getting cold, and eventually you will be like a freeze rock in there. I don't think it will happen very, very quickly, but it will eventually happen.

• 9:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, because all the heat has to still come out of your body, and that would take time, I guess.

• 9:35Speaker 02

  Right.

• 9:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But wait, so do you asphyxiate before your blood boils? What happens first?

• 9:43Speaker 02

  Well, I don't have an experience with this, thankfully.

• 9:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I guess you can't just put a person out there and say, "Will you be a test case?"

• 9:53Speaker 02

  Right, right. So I've been reading a little bit about it too, to see what we think this will happen. But I believe you will asphyxiate first, and you will pass out first, and then eventually die 30 seconds later. Because you don't have any more oxygen going anywhere, because there is no oxygen to take from. Also, your blood is not liquid anymore, it's not bringing oxygen to your tissues anymore.

• 10:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So this is a matter of minutes, you're saying?

• 10:27Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 10:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So here's what I really, a question I really wanted to get to.

• 10:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I grew up a little bit before you, or a lot before you, and astronauts wore spacesuits. So I didn't think to myself, "I need to go into spacesuit design," because they already had them. So did you see a flaw or a need that others didn't in spacesuit design for it to attract you as one of its students, and then ultimately, one of its researchers?

• 10:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, and I have to give all the credit to my PhD advisor, one of my PhD advisors, Dr. David Newman. And this is how I did get into spacesuit design. Going back to that I was in industry, then I decided to go back to academia and get a PhD. And I was lucky enough to get into MIT, where I started working with Dr. David Newman. And she has been doing-

• 11:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, Anna, just wait, Anna, Anna, Anna. Anna, it wasn't luck, right? If you're good, they'll take you. There's no luck involved. Now, let's be clear about this, okay? Okay, I'll reword that sentence for you.

• 11:34Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 11:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They realized how important I would be to their group, so they brought me on, okay?

• 11:39Speaker 02

  That's it.

• 11:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now, pick it up from there.

• 11:41Speaker 02

  That's it, that's it. So I joined this amazing group of individuals. And for my first two years in grad school, I worked on a project on spacesuits and trying to understand how humans interact with these spacesuits. So the human spacesuit interaction, like spacesuit as a system, you put this system around a human, and this human has to move and not get injured, and being able to do all these tasks and do them really well.

• 12:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, because they did look a little bulky on the moon. That looked like, that's a lot of spacesuits they're wearing there, yeah.

• 12:15Speaker 02

  Right, so these injury aspects, it was the one that I started looking into at the time. And unfortunately, it's really hard to move inside the spacesuits. It's like this big pressurized balloon that causes a lot of problems and musculoskeletal issues. And lots of astronauts actually had surgeries in their shoulders because of the spacesuits. It's a big, big issue that maybe, you know, we don't think often about it. And this is how I got first exposed to start thinking about all these issues with spacesuits.

• 12:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so now, before we go to a break, we've seen new designed spacesuits, like a SpaceX, I guess. Those look kind of even stylish, right? And they're not so bulky as we saw the astronauts going to the moon wear. So- Does anyone care like what they look like? Is their style involved as well?

• 13:08Speaker 02

  There is, but before getting into the SpaceX spacesuits, these are spacesuits designed for inside these spacecrafts. So these are IVA spacesuits, intra vehicular activity. And the bulky ones that you imagine when going back to the moon and all those big ones, these ones are EVA, so extravehicular activity. So these are very, very different type of spacesuits. And it's normal that the ones for inside the spacecraft are way, way thinner and way, way

• 13:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, I understand. Okay. Okay, so Matt, I heard tell that this extravehicular activity term, NASA has finally, at some level, simply called it spacewalking. Okay?

• 13:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:59Matt Kirshen?

  They've just cut out, yeah, there's too many acronyms already or initialisms.

• 14:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Too many, too many syllables. Just, just tell it like it is, spacewalk. But then they're floating, really, they're really space floating, so.

• 14:09Matt Kirshen?

  Space swimming?

• 14:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I never really liked.

• 14:11Speaker 02

  Or now, they are just floating. But when we are going to the moon, we need other things.

• 14:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, she's ready. Okay, excuse me. Okay.

• 14:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Excuse me, I don't mean to hold you back. Okay. Go into the, all right, so do you think much, and we'll get more of this in the other segments, do you think much about how the role of the spacesuit, depending on how strong the gravity is on the object you're going to use it? So on the moon, it's like one-sixth gravity, right? So the suits they wore on the, you know, the Apollo astronauts were very heavy on Earth. And but when you divide by six, it's not, it's not so bad. So I presume there's a different design for what would be a moon suit versus a Mars suit? With Mars, you weigh like forty percent of your, of your current weight. So how do you think about the, the gravity field that you're in?

• 15:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, I know. That's a great question. And I don't think we have been thinking about that very much, because it's not like we go to different gravity levels every day, and we can just pick the gravity level that we want. But yeah, certainly now, we are starting to think about, or the last few years, to think about moon spacesuits. And I think they want to do those spaces a little bit lighter.

• 15:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, because a spacesuit that might be too heavy for Mars might be just right for the moon. I guess that's really all I'm commenting on here. So somebody has to go in there and figure that out for that. Well, why don't we take a quick break? And I just want to talk a little bit more about the design of current spacesuits, and any specific changes you are making to them, or any more interestingly, I think, any particular innovations that no one even thought to do, that would make going into space that much more pleasurable than anyone had experienced before. So we're on StarTalk, all about spacesuits. And we'll get to cosmic queries in a minute. And I'm with my co-host, Matt Kirshen, and Dr. Anna

• 16:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Diaz-Artiles, aerospace engineer and expert on spacesuits, when StarTalk continues.

• 16:32Speaker 03

  Hi, I'm Chris Cohen from Hallworth, New Jersey, and I support StarTalk on Patreon. Please enjoy this episode of StarTalk Radio with your and my favorite personal astrophysicist, Neil deGrasse Tyson.

• 16:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back. StarTalk, Hybrid Cosmic Queries Edition. We're really trying to learn about spacesuits. And we have one of the world's experts on it, Professor Anna Diaz-Artiles at the Texas A&M Department of Aerospace Engineering. And remind me what town at Texas A&M is in?

• 17:12Speaker 02

  It's in College Station, Texas.

• 17:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Of course, College Station, Texas. That's right. That's right. And A&M, of course, stands for agriculture and mining, I guess?

• 17:23Speaker 02

  Mechanical.

• 17:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, yeah, so this is one of the land-grant institutions where science for better living has been a fundamental part of their mission statements. There's a bunch of them across the country. And so, uh, so there it is. And you know, in Texas, because Texas has the Johnson Space Center, and it's the seat of the manned space program, you'd expect Texas to be a little more up on just what you're telling us and what you specialize in, because it's in their backyard, right? So, uh, so I love it, I love it. So what about the threat of sort of ionizing radiation from the sun? When we think of sort of the solar wind, we think of them as sort of innocent charged particles

• 18:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  deflected by our magnetic field on Earth, and you get the aurora. But if you're bare-assed in space, or, sorry, if you're in a space suit in space, are the space suits you're designing protecting astronauts from that as well?

• 18:19Speaker 02

  That's the million-dollar question. So I'm gonna start by saying I'm not a radiation person. But what I understand from radiation is that we don't really know what to do about it very much. Basically, we just hide whenever we know radiation is coming.

• 18:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That works every time.

• 18:40Speaker 02

  And I apologize if there are radiation people out there with better answers than me. I apologize for that, but...

• 18:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, but hiding works, is what you're saying.

• 18:50Speaker 02

  Hiding works, and we do have the means to know when there is something coming from the sun, and a coronal mass injection or a flare. We know when those are coming, and, you know, we can just seek shelter. We don't do EVA's or spacewalks when we know there's sun activity coming our way. So that's, that's the way to deal with it today, as far as I know.

• 19:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And what's interesting is we do call it, NASA calls it, space weather. And just like if it was thunderstorms outside, you would... You either wouldn't go out until it stopped, or you would bring on special protection. So I guess in terms of how you would react to that information, it's not fundamentally different from what we do daily, just in life, when we're preparing for the weather.

• 19:37Speaker 02

  Absolutely. And the other, you know, the other way to deal with it, and I guess this is more transportation. If we want to go to the moon or we want to go to Mars, the other way is just go faster. So you are exposed less time to it.

• 19:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, of course.

• 19:52Speaker 02

  That's the other way.

• 19:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That takes more fuel. Takes more fuel to go faster.

• 19:56Speaker 02

  And we don't know how to go that fast yet to Mars. But I guess other people are looking into those new technologies to get faster.

• 20:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Matt, what we need is a wormhole between Earth and Mars. You just step through it and enjoy it. And then, and then, and then the, you know, the coronal mass ejection comes, you just step back to Earth, protected by our atmosphere.

• 20:16Matt Kirshen?

  See, it's easy when you put it that way. My, my, my idea was just to move Mars closer.

• 20:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, yeah.

• 20:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I love your ideas, Matt. They're really.

• 20:27Matt Kirshen?

  I'll show you, I'll show you my drawings later.

• 20:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, of course. And you did them in crayon, I bet, right?

• 20:33Matt Kirshen?

  Well, you've got to make an effort. Well, this is science. This is, you know, I can't just do black and white. Let's, you know.

• 20:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exactly. Full color crayon.

• 20:41Matt Kirshen?

  Full color, there's dragons, there's swords. It's really, it's really colorful.

• 20:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Do you have questions from our Patreon members?

• 20:46Matt Kirshen?

  So as well as, as well as radiation, a couple of our listeners, Salvatore Sciri and Alan in the Stars are both asking about micrometeorites, like the one that knocked the mirror out of the JWST out of alignment. And also Salvatore says, what are the chances of micro-sized meteors puncturing space suits? And what could be done to mitigate the consequences? And how do they, how does it feel to them? Alan wants to know.

• 21:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I want to add to that, is there presumably a trade-off between how much protection a suit gives you and how less useful it becomes? Because you could just put people out there in a cement block or whatever, and they'll be fully protected, but you can't do anything in it. So do you ever think about those kind of engineering trade-offs between safety and utility?

• 21:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So in terms of protection, the current spacesuit has up to 14 different layers. And one of them, or a few of them, are just for protection. There's thermal protection, and there is this other one, which is exactly what this listener is asking for, micrometeorites. That doesn't mean every, you know, there's like a big thing coming your way, it's gonna make you a hole in the spacesuit. That's a risk that we know that exists. And actually, that's one of the risks that we want to attack from, you know, the kind of smart suit things that they were doing. But there is always a risk for that, although there is some layer of protection in there.

• 22:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, so what is a smart suit, then?

• 22:22Speaker 02

  So the smart suit is our new spacesuit architecture that we are studying. And we got some NASA funding to do some research on this. So this smart suit, it's still a gas pressurized suit. And we haven't talked about mechanical counterpressure suits. We can do that, too. But basically, we're adding cool technology to the current spacesuit. And one of those technologies is to have a self-healing membrane on the outside of the spacesuit. So for example, in the case of a puncture...

• 22:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, Hannah, I've only seen that in science fiction movies. What are you talking about?

• 23:00Speaker 02

  Well, this is a little bit science fiction. We are making this a reality. And when you have a hole, you can just put some pressure on it, and then it's just gonna self-heal. So you can come back to safety and maybe later do better repairs. But at least it keeps you alive, and you can come back to your shelter to do that.

• 23:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so actually, if you get punctured, and then it self-heals, you'd be a collecting device for micrometeorites.

• 23:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You'd be full of micrometeorites and you just bring them all back down for analysis. That could work, right?

• 23:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, it depends if it passed through. Maybe it just goes away from the other side.

• 23:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So the little bit I know about ballistic protection, clothing protection, is if you have many, many layers, if an impactor hits the top layer, that energy now has to work its way to the next layer. And there's a lot of dissipation at each layer. So is that why there are so many layers, to spread the energy out?

• 24:03Speaker 02

  I think it's more about all the functionalities that we need in this spacesuit. So we definitely need temperature management. So the first three layers are for something that we call the liquid cooling and ventilation garment, which is a garment that has water circulating. So then you can regulate, if you are too hot, you can increase the flow and then that's going to help you with temperature regulation. Then you have another layer that it's for the pressure. It's the pressure bladder, like the one that holds the pressure of your spacesuit. Then there is another one that it's called the restraint layer.

• 24:45Speaker 02

  And that's basically to avoid the bladder to be like a balloon in any shape and form.

• 24:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, interesting.

• 24:55Speaker 02

  And then you have all these other like thermal protection, micrometeorite protection.

• 25:01Speaker 02

  And I think it's more about that. The case of puncture, again, this spacesuit was designed like 50 years ago. But there are some layers to protect you or trying to protect you from that. But unfortunately, this happens regularly or sometimes in the ISS too. There is like a hole just coming and we just need to put it. So it's one of those risks that are up there and we try to manage it the best we can. But if there is like a big one coming really fast. I'm not sure we can do something about it, at least today.

• 25:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If it's big enough to knock your head off, the spacesuit is not going to be that helpful, right?

• 25:47Speaker 02

  Right.

• 25:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, there's got to be a category of meteorite, that meteor, that just like, the spacesuit does not help. But, but let me ask this another question. At what point can the spacesuit become kind of, I'm not using the right word here, but it's the word that comes to my mind, an exoskeleton? Where the spacesuit is empowered with tools and machinery, or software, whatever, so that it's not just smart because it's keeping you alive better, it's smart because it's an extension of what it is you need to do in your environment?

• 26:29Speaker 02

  So the answer is, us today, there isn't any sort of exoskeleton helping you out. But that's the second feature, I guess, that we are, I mentioned three different features. So we talked about the self-healing membrane, and then the exoskeleton, soft exoskeleton, is the second one that we are trying to implement. And that's exactly what you said. It's just so hard to move within this highly pressurized environment that we can use a little help to bend your arm, or bend your knee, walk around. And even, we can think a little bit more smarter than that, right? Like the suit can anticipate your movements

• 27:12Speaker 02

  and just helping you walk naturally. If the suit knows that you're gonna walk and do certain tasks, or something like that.

• 27:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exactly, I mean, why not engage the suit in part of what your body is trying to do? So it's not just an enclosure for you, it becomes an extension of you.

• 27:31Speaker 02

  Right, right. So and and instead of the traditional exoskeletons that we can think about, which are typically hard, you know, hardware and hard and hard and humans are never, never good with one another. So we are looking into soft exoskeletons. So these are very compliant materials that you can put inside your spacesuit and can make that human spacesuit interaction a little bit easier, avoid injuries and all those things.

• 28:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I just realized just in this moment, but of course, it's surely something you guys think about all the time, that advances in your field often depend on advances in material science. You've got to read their journals to find out if there's something that you could exploit for your own needs. Right? So how much do you guys talk to material scientists?

• 28:20Speaker 02

  Yes, I'm glad you brought that up because I definitely want to mention my colleague and co-investigator, Professor Rob Sheppard. He is a professor at Cornell University. I used to be at Cornell, so this is why I know him very well. And this is a project from both of us. And he's the materials guy and he's the robotics guy that it's

• 28:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 28:41Speaker 02

  You know, this technology. And then I'm bringing more of this space knowledge and the space components on it.

• 28:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So he's got a foot in both camps. You see, Matt, I keep thinking, you know, if do comedians have material comedians?

• 28:55Matt Kirshen?

  They're called prop comics.

• 28:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Prop comics. Oh, prop comics. Those are the ones that have that pull stuff out of a, out of a bin.

• 29:04Matt Kirshen?

  Yeah.

• 29:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then use it for their jokes.

• 29:06Matt Kirshen?

  They'll collaborate with like an umbrella glued to a phone guy at a different

• 29:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, okay. So those are the, those are the material science comedians.

• 29:15Matt Kirshen?

  The material comedians. We do have, while we're talking about pressure, John David Newman wrote in saying, why does our current spacesuit have 4.3 PSI? Is that a consequence of the suit itself? Or was 4.3 PSI a health and safety requirement granting better mobility from lowering the PSI is great, but are there any health risks of lowering the pressure on our body in space?

• 29:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, wait, so regular pressure is like 15 pounds per square inch, right?

• 29:40Speaker 02

  14, 14.7, I think, PSI.

• 29:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, okay. I was way off.

• 29:48Speaker 02

  What is one number we need to remember?

• 29:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so 14.7 at sea level. And so this person clearly like they either know what they're talking about or they don't. They're just coming in saying 4.3, which is obviously much less than sea level. So if that's correct, are we susceptible to this boiling problem under such low pressures?

• 30:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, so then going back to your question about trade offs. So here we have a really, really interesting trade off between pressure in the suit. You want to have less pressure because it's easier to move. Decompression sickness that you mentioned.

• 30:31Speaker 02

  You know, we need to be careful if we go very low. And if we do, we need to make sure we are going to. We are gonna make sure we do it safely. And that requires lots of time of pre-breathing pure oxygen.

• 30:48Speaker 02

  And then the third aspect, I guess, is mobility. So pressure, mobility and decompression sickness, which translates into operations. People in the space station now can pre-breathe pure oxygen during up to four hours just to make sure they don't experience decompression sickness. So that's a huge investment.

• 31:08Matt Kirshen?

  So that's the bends you're describing. That's what scuba divers.

• 31:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I think so.

• 31:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly.

• 31:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But a scuba person would say it was the bends, right?

• 31:17Speaker 02

  It is, yeah. It is exactly what it is. So we don't know of any incidence of the bends in space. But yeah, it's definitely a risk and the lower you go is great for mobility. But then you need to be more careful with this sort of thing.

• 31:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so it's the trade off that you're describing. Very interesting. Okay. All right, why don't we take another break? And when we come back, we'll go all cosmic queries from our fan base and just find out how they're thinking about our future in space when StarTalk returns.

• 32:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back, StarTalk, talking about spacesuits. And we've got Professor Anna with us to tell us all about it. And of course, Matt Kirshen. Just to find out where everybody is on social media. Matt, how do we find you on social media?

• 32:15Matt Kirshen?

  I'm @MattKirshen on Twitter. I'm @Matt_Kirshen on Instagram, which I almost never use. And if you just Google something vaguely close to my name and bang the keyboard, Google will find me.

• 32:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. And your podcast, where can we find it? At a podcast dealer near you?

• 32:31Matt Kirshen?

  Yeah, probably Science on all the podcast places.

• 32:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's where we find you on social media. But do you also do stand-up and things? We see you like in person?

• 32:38Matt Kirshen?

  Yeah, I tour around. I'm mostly in the US these days, but I'm sometimes internationally. So yeah, find me. I normally tweet out when I'm gigging. You can...

• 32:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, good. Excellent.

• 32:46Matt Kirshen?

  You can find me at a Pester Comedy Club near you to have me on.

• 32:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And Anna, how do we know about what you do from a social media perspective? Are you guys active? Is your group active online?

• 32:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, so we have Twitter. I have my own personal Twitter. And then the lab at Texas A&M, it's called the Bioastronautics and Human Performance Lab. And again, I think if you Google my name, or the lab's name, or Texas A&M's spacesuits, it's just gonna pop up.

• 33:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You should find it. And your name, Anna with one N.

• 33:18Speaker 02

  With one N, yes.

• 33:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Diaz, and Artiles with one L. Artiles, yeah. And, okay. So excellent. So I want to bring back up your smart suit. And just to learn from you, what's the smartest thing you're putting in the smart suit that wasn't there before, that Neil Armstrong didn't have as he bounded around the lunar surface?

• 33:41Speaker 02

  Right, so as I mentioned, the smart suit has three technical innovations that current spacesuits don't have. The first one, I guess I'm gonna start with the soft robotic layer that we mentioned. So imagine this internal layer that is a smart soft robotic that helps you move around. It's really hard to move inside. People basically have to fight against the spacesuit. And as Jeff Hoffman mentioned to me, former astronaut, he said, "The spacesuit is always going to win."

• 34:16Speaker 02

  It's a brilliant sentence.

• 34:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you don't want that to be the case.

• 34:20Speaker 02

  You don't want that to be the case.

• 34:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You want the human to win. So, okay, so if the suit senses that I want to bend my elbow and then helps me do it? Is that what you're saying?

• 34:31Speaker 02

  That's, that's the future. That's the idea. And this project also, I would mention, this is really futuristic. We were funded by NASA with a NASA innovative advanced concepts, projects.

• 34:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 34:46Speaker 02

  And this is a program that I've only found really crazy ideas, like 10 years down the road.

• 34:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  High risk, I'm familiar with them. It's great. And in fact, that wasn't always there. I mean, I think people had to lobby for that. And I don't mean literally lobby, but just, you know, describe why it's so valuable. And to fund a crazy idea, because sometimes they'll come true. And the person who does it has to be a little crazy themselves, and that's okay, too.

• 35:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, and sometimes things don't work. And I guess that, that's fine. This is what they want to do. They want to fund. So they are a wonderful people and program. So we were, we were funded for, with these guys. And all that to say that we are in the very early stages. And we are getting great research and really promising results. But it's still a little bit down the road to have this, you know, fully functional smart space that anticipates your movements and business.

• 35:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Got it. So when are you going to have a prototype?

• 35:46Speaker 02

  We do have a couple of new self robotic prototypes that we have been characterizing, but just on a table, not on a humans. That would be the next, the next stage.

• 35:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, when can I try one on?

• 36:01Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, if we get more funded, we were planning to do, to do a glove prototype. So we can, we can implement all this, you know, we, we need to start small and fast, but sort of integrate all these technologies that we're talking about. And I guess I never told you the third one. So we have the self robotic layer, the self healing membrane on the outside. And then embedded in the self healing membrane, the idea is to have optoelectronic sensors that are displaying visually pressure of movement or able to.

• 36:41Speaker 02

  To enhance your interaction with the environment. Because with these bulky gloves, like you can't feel anything. It's really hard to do things with your hands, or even with the rest of your body. Maybe you have portions in your body that are stretching too much, and the self-healing membrane is going to break. Well, you want to know about it, and we can put sensors all over that helps you with that.

• 37:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, and sensors today are very small compared to the old days. So you can be sensing everything you need, right?

• 37:12Speaker 02

  Right, absolutely.

• 37:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Pressure, stress, everything. No, that's good. That's good. Okay, so you're saying I can come by next week and I can try on a suit.

• 37:22Speaker 02

  Right, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 37:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I heard you say that, I thought.

• 37:24Speaker 02

  Come to the lab and we can show you around.

• 37:27Matt Kirshen?

  And once again, the second. Whenever you come to LA, you can try on my design, and it's a...

• 37:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Your new design, yes, yes, man.

• 37:36Matt Kirshen?

  I'm just gonna say, does the MIT Cornell one have a little bit of elastic that joins the two gloves together, so you can't lose them? I don't think so.

• 37:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, I see.

• 37:47Matt Kirshen?

  Goes through your jacket.

• 37:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That would be funny, like for little children.

• 37:50Matt Kirshen?

  Yeah, it's got their names sewn into the back. I've thought of everything.

• 37:55Matt Kirshen?

  You have, by the way, with your questions and answers, you've covered a bunch of the Patreon questions that have come in, like Jesse Desmond from Alaska was asking about having visual data within the helmet and voice commands.

• 38:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Nice, nice.

• 38:08Matt Kirshen?

  So it sounds like that is something you're implementing, very much so.

• 38:12Matt Kirshen?

  Loads of people, I think I'd be doing them a disservice if I didn't push you further about this self-healing thing, because...

• 38:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It'd be good if you can mention their names, too.

• 38:20Matt Kirshen?

  Yeah, absolutely. So Anthony Shana from Plymouth, Alejandro Jo Reynoso, it's one of the people who's asked about this. And I hope there are other people as well. I'll throw in the extra names in a second, but they all want to know basically how this... How this self-healing works, where the nanotechnology is involved? Oh, Tom Lindelius also wants to know. I read it's supposed to have an outer layer of self-healing material and heard about it being used in things like Rotablaize, but yet to understand what this material actually is. What does self-healing mean for material and how does it work? And what are its limitations? Asked Alejandro.

• 39:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Anna, I think everyone wants to know about this self-healing material, but your co-researcher is the expert in that, correct?

• 39:07Speaker 02

  Yes, yes, he's the expert.

• 39:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so my sense is if anyone is not an expert in the self-healing material, it's just magic.

• 39:16Speaker 02

  Well, I would say it's a little bit of magic to me as well, but it's really great. And the work that we have been able to do, he has been able to do in his lab, we had, you know, it's a little piece like this, this big of self-healing material with a sensor, optoelectronic sensor embedded on it. And you can get a knife and cut through it. So you're gonna carve the membrane and also the optoelectronic sensor on it. You can see that the signal is just going away. And then pretty much two minutes later, you get all this signal back up to 80%.

• 39:59Speaker 02

  And if you wait 24 hours, the signal was completely back up to 100%.

• 40:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Matt, like I said, it's magic.

• 40:05Matt Kirshen?

  Yeah. So the Office Clark.

• 40:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Okay, so to everyone but Anna and her colleagues, it's magic. We'll take that. We'll take magic, Anna. We're fine. So is this, is this an ingredient that you can tell us what, I mean, is it, is it a substance we've seen or encountered or not?

• 40:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think you need to know the right formulation and be able to know how to put it together and then make it in the lab. And it's what we were able to do. The next steps will be to really figure it out if this is going to work in extreme temperatures or extreme.

• 40:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, yes. The environment. Oh, my gosh.

• 40:53Speaker 02

  That's another thing we don't know yet.

• 40:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I have to emphasize there, when we build space vehicles, it's not good enough just to work in the lab. It's got it. You got to shake it and bake it and heat it and cool it. And all the lubricants have to work under all those conditions and the metals can't expand too much or too little. I mean, yeah, you can't emphasize that too much about testing it in actual, in real cases.

• 41:24Speaker 02

  Right, real conditions.

• 41:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Case studies, real conditions. I've just recently been binging on the Isaac Asimov story, Foundations, now streaming. And a big part of it, it's just in the background, there are people you can infuse your body with nanobots and they know how to heal an injury for you. And so, because they just work their magic, they're like healing nanobots. And so I think that's why, Matt, that person asked about nanobots.

• 41:52Matt Kirshen?

  Yeah, there's definitely been a couple of questions, yeah, about that, whether it can sort of fix people as well.

• 41:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right, okay.

• 42:00Matt Kirshen?

  There's a really interesting question that comes in from Ruhan Periachary from the Bay Area, says, is there anything we are sacrificing to make this suit so light? I find it incredible we're able to ramble the tech from the old space suits into this new smaller model, but were there any features cut during the process?

• 42:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait, I have to interject. Interject, I must interject.

• 42:20Matt Kirshen?

  Smaller was my addition, by the way. Sorry, that.

• 42:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. Oh, was yours? Okay, so 100 years ago, the radio was a piece of furniture in your living room.

• 42:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. And now it is an uninteresting addition to your smartphone. So I refuse to believe that you made things smaller, but somehow lost effectiveness. So Anna, I don't, I will not believe you if you say, "Well, 10 things we couldn't do because we made it littler." So tell me, where are we on this?

• 42:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, I wonder if the question goes more towards a different space suit concept, which is called the Biosuit. And it's about all mechanical counterpressure. Because though, when I think about that, that's a very slim, small space suit. But the technologies that we are developing in the concept of a smart suit are, are sort of added to the current size of these spaces. So it's not going to be smaller. But the Biosuit or this idea of mechanical counterpressure, which is something that we are also implementing in the smart suit, is this idea of providing the pressure with mechanically, just with some garment really, really, really tight.

• 43:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, like they do for fighter pilots, right? When they go into high G turns, something squeezes their legs to put pressure so that the blood doesn't go someplace where you don't want it or doesn't leave your head when it shouldn't.

• 43:51Speaker 02

  Right.

• 43:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is that what you mean? Yeah, so these are engineering solutions to the pressure problem.

• 43:55Speaker 02

  That's, it's the same concept, just putting pressure, really, really elevated pressure. But for the space suit, you need to get up to 4.3 PSI, remember? So that's a lot of pressure. And that's another concept that has been out there for a while. And actually, Dr. Damon Newman, my former advisor, she, she has been the one pushing that idea, which is like literally get rid of all the gas and all the bulkiness and all the problem with mobility. And then just put this like super tight garment that actually looks really good. Going back to your question about like, we want this space suit to be good and to look, you know. And, and that's another concept that is out there.

• 44:38Speaker 02

  And I don't think we are ready to do that much pressure in an equal way in your entire body. We don't know how to do it yet. It's like the concept is great. We just don't know how to do it. But, so we're, we're borrowing some of that concept a little bit in the sense like. Remember that um um exoskeleton, soft exoskeleton layer that we are trying to do. So that soft exoskeleton layer can also provide some mechanical counterpressure to help a little bit with that. So we we are not um looking for replacing the entire gas of this space suit with just mechanical pressure.

• 45:20Speaker 02

  But we can add a little bit of mechanical pressure so we can get a little bit less of gas pressure and help with mobility too.

• 45:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh huh.

• 45:29Speaker 02

  That's another trade off that we are trying.

• 45:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 45:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 45:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And by the way, any good engineering project will always have trade offs. I mean, that's part of it. How to how to become clever as an engineer is figure out how to minimize the trade off, but you're always giving up something. Uh, so Matt, just a couple more minutes left. Will you get some some fast ones there?

• 45:46Matt Kirshen?

  I'll chuck in two two quickies and I apologize to the people that we haven't. There's so many really great questions that came in this week. James Smith from Indianapolis says, I wonder if the smart suit has any other utilization out of space. Could a football player or swimmer, for example, take components from your invention? And use them in their suits to gather any physical or outside data to use to their advantage?

• 46:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I love it. I love it. Cool.

• 46:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, so any any use of an exoskeleton that help you with human movement or human motion. It's it's a great application for this, a great spin on for this.

• 46:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And and for data gathering, I mean, if you have your sensors in a football helmet. And then I can measure by the end of the game, how much how much impulse or how much, you know, acceleration your head goes through. That's got to be very useful.

• 46:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, so my and actually would mention this remind me, my colleague Professor Shepherd. Um, he is spinning off some of that technology also for his core applications. I didn't mention that.

• 46:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, good. So it is happening.

• 46:45Speaker 02

  It is happening.

• 46:46Matt Kirshen?

  I would have thought also that stuff would have had uses for people with disabilities as well, uh, down on earth and.

• 46:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, interesting.

• 46:52Matt Kirshen?

  On that same note, Nicholas Lenson says in Scott Kelly's book, Endurance, he mentions the hassle it is for an astronaut. Who has to wear glasses when they do a spacewalk. Uh, contact lenses weren't an option, so he had to glue his glasses on his head in one of his spacewalks to prevent them from falling. Are you taking visual impairments into account in the smart suit? How would that work?

• 47:11Speaker 02

  Oh, that's a great question. And I haven't thought much about it, but that's that's correct. And astronauts experience a lot of visual changes in space. And that's another area of research that I'm interested in. But I, yeah, no, that's a great comment. I'm actually taking it as a as a good idea for for future implementations, for sure.

• 47:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cool. So you know, you don't think about it. If you're wearing glasses inside of a space helmet, and the glasses fall off, there's nothing you can do.

• 47:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They're stuck on your chin. Yeah, I mean, there's a lot that none of us have thought of that. I'm glad somebody out there is on top of the situation, Anna.

• 47:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Guys, we got to we got to call it quits there. But this has been fun and enlightening, and very hopeful for what the future of space might be like. And I presume that you were describing the good looking space suit. It can't make you look better than you otherwise would without the space suit. So

• 48:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm just presuming that, right? Right? Well, get rid of my man, middle aged man belly. This is the design so well.

• 48:20Matt Kirshen?

  Sort of like vertical stripes. That's all it needs, just some.

• 48:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, Anna, it's been a delight to have you. And Matt, good to have you, as always, on StarTalk.

• 48:32Matt Kirshen?

  Lovely being here.

• 48:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Excellent. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist, as always. Keep looking up.