An assessment of habitat pressure, oxygen fraction, and EVA suit design for space operations
At high cabin pressure [e.g. 1013 hPa (14.7 psi) 21% O 2] there are serious issues relative to specification of suit pressure and the need for prebreathing. A high pressure suit will be costly but use of the existing, flexible suit requires up to 6 h of prebreathing. Or one could use a cabin pressur...
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Published in | Acta astronautica Vol. 32; no. 1; pp. 39 - 49 |
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Main Authors | , , |
Format | Journal Article |
Language | English |
Published |
England
Elsevier Ltd
1994
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Subjects | |
Online Access | Get full text |
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Summary: | At high cabin pressure [e.g. 1013 hPa (14.7 psi) 21% O
2] there are serious issues relative to specification of suit pressure and the need for prebreathing. A high pressure suit will be costly but use of the existing, flexible suit requires up to 6 h of prebreathing. Or one could use a cabin pressure of 700 hPa (10.2 psi) prior to extravehicular activity (EVA) in order to use the existing suit with only 1 h of prebreathing. If these normal cabin pressures and O
2 levels are utilized, existing physiological and medical databases apply, providing a known basis for evaluating effects of long duration space missions. If a 345 hPa (5 psi), 70–100% O
2 atmosphere is adopted the existing suit can be used with no prebreathing required. However, there is no reference database on physiological effects under the conditions of lower pressure and higher O
2 concentration. This paper considers the major issues involved in defining habitat pressure, O
2 fraction, and EVA suit design for operations in space. A preliminary model for evaluating habitat/suit pressure and O
2% strategies is presented. |
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Bibliography: | SourceType-Scholarly Journals-2 ObjectType-Feature-2 ObjectType-Conference Paper-1 content type line 23 SourceType-Conference Papers & Proceedings-1 ObjectType-Article-3 ObjectType-Article-1 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 |
ISSN: | 0094-5765 1879-2030 |
DOI: | 10.1016/0094-5765(94)90146-5 |