In article opsicy53faemtzlb@d3h1pn11,
D Schneider wrote:
Modern materials might help the tailoring
problem, but the donning problem is harder.

Dang. Modern materials might include some of the artificial muscle
materials, but these aren't going to be ready for *this* application for a
while; might as well be unobtanium...

You don't need to get quite that drastic. :-) Skinsuits benefit a lot from
materials with a non-linear stress-strain curve, and some of those already
exist.

With a normal elastic material, if you want to stretch it twice as far,
you have to apply about twice as much force. But there are some
materials, Spandex being one of them if I recall correctly, which are
different. They start out the normal way, but when you reach a particular
amount of stretch, the curve flattens out: the material stretches, and
stretches more, and stretches still more, with only the most minute
increase of force. Eventually the required force starts rising again, but
there's a wide flat section in the middle of the curve. This is exactly
what's wanted for a skinsuit: essentially constant force over a wide
range of stretch. Not only does this accommodate flexing of the body, but
if that range is wide enough, it can also accommodate some discrepancy
between the design size and the actual size of the body.

But at donning time, you're still trying to put on something that's
squeezing hard all the time. What's needed is a way to turn that off and
on, either on command or automatically in response to ambient pressure (a
fabric that shrinks in vacuum). Not simple.
--
"Think outside the box -- the box isn't our friend." | Henry Spencer
-- George Herbert |