Space station future adrift (Soyuz purchase crisis)

Greg D. Moore (Strider) wrote:


"Henry Spencer" wrote in message
[...]
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.


No, something simpler. Something that reacts to a piezoelectric force.

Done a nice loose fitting suit, plug in the battery, bamm... skin tight.


Piezoelectric probably won't do it, for various reasons (mainly amount of
movement; piezo's are very good a t samll movements). EAP might. See the
SciAm article on plastics being developed for muscle use:

From the October 2003 issue ,
quote
Artificial Muscles
Novel motion-producing devices--actuators, motors, generators--based on
polymers that change shape when stimulated electrically are nearing
commercialization
By Steven Ashley

It's only a $100 toy--an aquarium of swimming robotic fish developed by
the Eamex Corporation in Osaka, Japan. What makes it remarkable is that
the brightly colored plastic fish propelling themselves through the water
in a fair imitation of life do not contain mechanical parts: no motors, no
drive shafts, no gears, not even a battery. Instead the fish swim because
their plastic innards flex back and forth, seemingly of their own
volition. They are the first commercial products based on a new generation
of improved electroactive polymers (EAPs), plastics that move in response
to electricity.
/quote

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