In article opsia5gyicemtzlb@d3h1pn11,
D Schneider wrote:
[...] A quick-donning, one-size-fits-all,
lightweight emergency suit is most unlikely to be a high-pressure suit...

Are the "skin suit" designs a candidate for this? Perhaps with a
high-pressure helmet?

Nope. Aside from the fact that skinsuits are not yet a proven approach --
the basic concept works, but whether some detailed engineering problems
can be adequately solved is unknown, due to lack of funding -- they don't
work for this at all.

As things stand now, skinsuits most emphatically are *not* quick-donning
or one-size-fits-all. Donning is tedious and difficult, to the point that
this rates as one of the important unresolved problems. Moreover, they
have to be precisely custom-tailored, to the point that the intended
wearer has to avoid gaining or losing more than a pound or two if he wants
the suit to fit properly. Modern materials might help the tailoring
problem, but the donning problem is harder.

Finally, all skinsuits made to date are low-pressure. Helmet and body
pressures must match; there is a continuous liquid column between the lung
capillaries and the skin capillaries, after all. And the one attempt so
far at producing an 8psi skinsuit glove was unsuccessful -- techniques and
materials which work quite well at 3.5psi don't scale well enough.
--
"Think outside the box -- the box isn't our friend." | Henry Spencer
-- George Herbert |