I have a post that I really want to write.
Every time I do, it veers off in unintended directions.
So let's talk about vacc suits!
This applies to my Traveller universe, which is an amalgam of OGLBB and GURPS tech.
Most spacers wear "skin-tights" almost continuously. They are a counter-pressure style suit and would look like a leotard to we TL8'ers. Because such suits leave nothing to the imagination, spacers also commonly wear a flight-suit over them. The flight suit provides pockets as well as modesty. In one pocket is an inflatable helmet for emergencies. This attaches to the "neck ring", which isn't on a daily wear skin-tight. It would be uncomfortable and get in the way. There is an adaptor interface that runs below the neck and over the shoulders. A real ring can be attached to this interface or the collapsable collar of the bag-helmet can attach directly.
Most lifetime spacers wear a comm headset near continuously with a substantial portion of the population getting the equivalent implanted so that it cannot be knocked loose or become lost.
Some people are nervous about the bag helmet, but in fact the material it is made from is tougher than the helmets issued to infantry in the early 21st century.
The skin-tight is comfortable enough for daily wear, but it's decidedly lacking in protections for doing real work on the outside of a ship. They are intended as an emergency item only. There are various over-suits that can add physical, thermal and radiation protection to a skin-tight if there's no means at hand to change into what spacers would call a "hard" suit.
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I'm a firm believer in the need for space underwear (skinsuits) as a regular thing when we make it to space. I'm not sure which I prefer, having people switch out of the skinsuit for a vacc suit, or just layering on a vacc suit that's mostly just armor, radiation shielding, climate control and such, with the skinsuit providing the base vacuum resistance. I kind of like the Dead Space style of "anyone who might feasibly wind up in vacc or any other situation where the toughness of a full vacc suit would be useful, just wears that as their daily uniform"
ReplyDeletePlaces like Traveller where the environment is 99.99999999999% likely to be shirtsleeve barring some accident, wearing a real suit is chore plus it scares the passengers and puts them off their feed.
DeletePeople who work in vacuum wear the real suits, of course; and every spacer OWNS a full suit even if they rarely need or use it. If you have time to get ready, a full suit is far preferable to layering over the skin-tight. Wearing a real helmet is far preferable to the bag too. Kind of an orders of preferences thing. You wear the skin-tight because things can go wrong too fast to suit up. You carry the bag for the same reason. If you have more than "crap vacuum" to get ready, but not much more, you grab your hard hat and wear it on the skin-tight and add more layers as time allows. Just like a fighter pilot takes time to land and climb down the ladder if circumstances allow...
Yeah true. The other thing about the full vacc suits in the Dead Space series is that they're typically purposed to security, medic, or engineering, and only one civilian routine wear vacc suit is shown (they don't seem to have skinsuits particularly available, despite living on space stations and such with giant glass(?) windows that can be pretty easily broken). They also look pretty comfortable to wear, particularly the less heavily armored ones (except for the antique pressure suit models).
DeleteOn the other hand, in Dead Space from 2 on, the helmets fold up and take up almost no space. All the benefits of a hard hat with the portability near that of the plastic bag. I suppose in such a situation where a vacc suit it just basically work wear, it wouldn't be that much different from a modern service tech wearing a Carhartt jacket; it just goes with the job. Definitely making helmets available with the "compact" modification to get them collapsible.
I didn't start with film or video game when I started developing the look and feel of my tech. I started with much thumbed over manual for the real A7L suit and a copy of "Have Spacesuit, Will Travel".
DeleteThen lots and lots of talks with my military pilot friends. Some of those talks led to conversations about how ships work in the real world.
As visually entertaining as collapsible hard hats are... I don't see them at any playable TL. If you can do that with your helmet then why the hell are you JUST doing it with your helmet and why isn't that technology being applied to a myriad of other uses; and it would have to be toaster common before it'd be trusted with "this is what's between you and hard vacuum." And those applications rapidly push the game into "Safe at any Speed" territory. For example, why isn't the whole suit in a fanny pack looking thing and it just envelopes the wearer when there's a pressure drop?
The original GURPS Space had all manner of Vacc suit options. You started with a generic envelope and started adding things to it. You could make a commercial tourist two hour excursion suit with just about no frills all the way up to a professional spend a week in it asteroid miner suit. It was a lot of work for the GM in making some standard suits for the players to buy rather than watching them buy the suit and forget the helmet and tanks.
Yeah, the collapsible definitely adds a few points of failure depending on how it's done. Only way I can picture it working reliably is basically being one of the plastic bag helmets, with interlocking hard chunks on it. Definitely don't care for most of the dead space helmets with their eleventy jillion moving parts that will almost certainly get you exposed to vacuum, but I think the concept itself is a workable starting point to develop into something meant for functionality instead of cool. I'd expect full proper helmets to be used by anybody deliberately expecting to go into vacc for extended periods of time, with collapsible ones more for short jaunts where keeping a full and proper helmet handy wouldn't be possible but a plastic bag is insufficient protection. I can think of a few applications where it'd be preferable to have an armor plated bag instead of just a plastic bag, however tough it might be.
DeleteI've got some thoughts on how to work it in real life following the armored-bag method, all I need is time to screw around with things to see if I can get a workable prototype from my head into a physical object. If I can pull it off at this TL, I'll be damn disappointed in higher TLs if they can't make it work!
I do definitely like the basic, practical tech approach to space. I tend to default to Dead Space comparisons because it was the first time I ever saw a semi-practical solution to the fact that space is attempting to murder everyone in it at all times, and the first time I really started to sit back and ponder the challenges of the void with regards to future tech.
Also, "Have Spacesuit, Will Travel" is one of the oldest books I read for pleasure that I can remember by name. Need to track down a copy and reread it, been a long time. I remember it being good.
Stephen Gallacci in his Erma Felna series (hard sci-fi furry comic) had his suits have a hard bubble for pressure then the rest of the helmet was modular on top of that. Such an applique approach would work with the bag too.
DeleteStill, modular and flexible gives up something against purpose built with the same given technology no matter how great the TL. The folding helmet has much the same problem as the (really cool) iris valve in that once you solve the problem the more traditional approach STILL works better because simple. And I say this thinking of the helmet Matt LeBlanc had in "Lost In Space" which was also very cool. Stargate at least had the excuse that the collapsible helmets were largely for intimidation rather than practical protection.
One thing to bear in mind about my tech goals for my worlds. Practical, explainable tech for the practical conceivable problems. I shy away hard from magical or complicated solutions to problems we've already got solutions for. Evolutionary progression rather than revolutionary.
ReplyDeleteSpace is a place where conservative is going to be Rule Zero. Your life depends on this, how many points of failure do you want in it?