Working Hand In Glove

That's not the title of my latest Fox Column, but it should have been.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,111821,00.html

h (Rand Simberg) wrote in message . ..
That's not the title of my latest Fox Column, but it should have been.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,111821,00.html

I agree with you about the importance of designing a better spacesuit
glove and that a competition (the 'G-Prize'?) would be a great way to
do it. But a small quibble: there's no need to build a vacuum box to
test the glove, just seal the sleeve pretty well around the user's arm
and run an air line and regulator to the glove to keep it pressurized
to 1/2 atmosphere. This would allow more flexibility in the choice of
test tasks.

(Bill Bogen) wrote in message . com...
h (Rand Simberg) wrote in message . ..
That's not the title of my latest Fox Column, but it should have been.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,111821,00.html

I agree with you about the importance of designing a better spacesuit
glove and that a competition (the 'G-Prize'?) would be a great way to
do it. But a small quibble: there's no need to build a vacuum box to
test the glove, just seal the sleeve pretty well around the user's arm
and run an air line and regulator to the glove to keep it pressurized
to 1/2 atmosphere. This would allow more flexibility in the choice of
test tasks.

Which brings to mind: for a G-Prize competition, what should the
task(s) or goal be? Type the most characters on a keyboard in X
minutes? Thread a dozen needles in a minute? If the major goal is to
reduce fatigue in the user, do we depend on a subjective judge as to
which glove entry is least fatigueing? But the glove must also be
judged on dexterity as well.

In article , Bill Bogen wrote:

Which brings to mind: for a G-Prize competition, what should the
task(s) or goal be? Type the most characters on a keyboard in X
minutes? Thread a dozen needles in a minute?

For some reason, this reminded me of the old Heinlein quote. [googles]

"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion,
butcher a hog, con a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance
accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give
orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyse a new problem,
pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently,
die gallantly. Specialization is for insects."

The reader is invited to suggest how many are appropriate tasks for
space-station assembly. The day people start worrying about how to pitch
manure and butcher hogs in LEO, the goal may be moot anyway.

If the major goal is to
reduce fatigue in the user, do we depend on a subjective judge as to
which glove entry is least fatigueing? But the glove must also be
judged on dexterity as well.

The effect on dexterity is reasonably easy to design metrics for, at
least to compare gloves against each other (draw circles, thread
needles, juggle - wait, no...). Testing fatigue is likely more
difficult; you'd need a reasonable number of trials by (some)
experienced users, which amounts to a lot of time - and if any designs
rely on specific ug or hard-vac tricks, a lot of hard-to-simulate time.

Disclaimer: I know nothing about gloves.

OTOH, it could be used as an equally interesting robotics-design goal -
build an instrumented "hand" to judge the workload of operating the
glove, bolt six to a panel, leave outside the airlock for a week.

--
-Andrew Gray

Andrew Gray wrote:

"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion,
butcher a hog, con a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance
accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give
orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyse a new problem,
pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently,
die gallantly. Specialization is for insects."

One suspects you mistyped. RAH as a former serving officer should
have known that you conn a ship, yet you con a mark.

D.
--
The STS-107 Columbia Loss FAQ can be found
at the following URLs:

Text-Only Version:
http://www.io.com/~o_m/columbia_loss_faq.html

Enhanced HTML Version:
http://www.io.com/~o_m/columbia_loss_faq_x.html

Corrections, comments, and additions should be
e-mailed to , as well as posted to
sci.space.history and sci.space.shuttle for
discussion.

Derek Lyons wrote:

One suspects you mistyped. RAH as a former serving officer should
have known that you conn a ship, yet you con a mark.


Maybe he pulled something on the whole ship's crew....

Pat

In article , Derek Lyons wrote:
Andrew Gray wrote:

"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion,
butcher a hog, con a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance
accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give
orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyse a new problem,
pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently,
die gallantly. Specialization is for insects."

One suspects you mistyped.

One thinks you overestimate my enthusiasm. Someone else mistyped, I just
pasted. ;-)

RAH as a former serving officer should
have known that you conn a ship, yet you con a mark.

And, so, we finally learn just *why* Heinlein never liked to talk about
how he left the Navy... rich...

(Wait, that was Nixon. I really must stop confusing those two.)

Attepting to steer this back on topic, what's the accepted term for
piloting a spacecraft on-orbit?

--
-Andrew Gray

What if one finger stops working properly and the astronaut starts flipping
the bird to everyone.

Andrew Gray wrote:

The reader is invited to suggest how many are appropriate tasks for
space-station assembly. The day people start worrying about how to pitch
manure and butcher hogs in LEO, the goal may be moot anyway.


I'd say that when NASA's original cost estimates for pound to orbit via
Shuttle, and number of Shuttle flights per year are taken into account,
the pitching manure challenge has been met triumphantly on their part;
and with NASA funding going to the study of the evolution of snakes, the
hogs have not only been successfully butchered, but well salted and
packed in a pork barrel.

The effect on dexterity is reasonably easy to design metrics for, at
least to compare gloves against each other (draw circles, thread
needles, juggle - wait, no...). Testing fatigue is likely more
difficult; you'd need a reasonable number of trials by (some)
experienced users, which amounts to a lot of time - and if any designs
rely on specific ug or hard-vac tricks, a lot of hard-to-simulate time.


Well, if we had an international crew test them...and one of this crew
were a lesbian from the Netherlands, we could check out the dexterity of
the gloves by having the crew take turns sticking their fingers into the
dy..... no, we won't go there.


Disclaimer: I know nothing about gloves.



And all I know about Dutch lesbians is what I read in the Happy Hooker's
Penthouse column


OTOH, it could be used as an equally interesting robotics-design goal -
build an instrumented "hand" to judge the workload of operating the
glove, bolt six to a panel, leave outside the airlock for a week.


Oh, nothing could go wrong with _that_ idea (image of crazed computer in
control of six mechanical hands.... tearing an EVAing astronaut's arms,
legs, helmet and gonads off all at once.)
No thank you sir! I'll take the Dutch lesbian; if she's good enough for
Xaviera, she's Gouda enough for me.

Pat Van Der Flan

Rand Simberg wrote:
That's not the title of my latest Fox Column, but it should have been.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,111821,00.html


Excellent column, Rand!

In addition to better suits, I think better remote controlled robotic
hands would be useful. Remote controlled robotic hands presently exist
but it's my understanding they're not nearly as dextrous as real hands.

It seems to me better robotic hands is an attainable goal. I should
think these would be useful in many non-space industrial applications.

They would be helpful to space exploration beyond orbital construction
also. For example, it would be good for the occupants of a lunar hab to
be able to do outside maintenance without opening and closing air locks.


I also believe something like an X-prize awarded to first people to
repair something complicated in a vacuum is a good idea.

--
Hop David
http://clowder.net/hop/index.html