NASA'S CENTENNIAL CHALLENGE FOR IMPROVED ASTRONAUT GLOVES SET

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http://www.ipp.nasa.gov/cc/cc_challenges.htm

The Astronaut Glove Challenge is designed to promote the development of
glove joint technology, resulting in a highly dexterous and flexible glove that
can be used by astronauts over long periods of time for space or planetary
surface excursions.

The Astronaut Glove Challenge will be conducted by Volanz
Aerospace/Spaceflight America in a format that brings all competitors to a
single location for a "head to head" competition. Each team will be required to
perform a variety of tasks with their gloves and will be scored on the glove
performance.

Snip
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Back in July of 2005 a challenge was issued to design a better space glove.
When you pressurize your space suit your gloves want to become balloons.
Bending your fingers or extending them can wear on your fingernails and tire you
out.

Coming up we will see who might be a winner of this competition.

We see in Science Fiction our space troopers wearing skin like exoskeletons that
respond to your request for action.

Maybe someone will come up with a smart glove that will curl and extend the
fingers at the slightest urging.

Would be nice to be able to hold onto your geologist hammer while picking at a
nice lunar sample.

It wasn't fun for Geologist-Astronaut Harrison H. Schmitt.
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http://history.nasa.gov/alsj/a12/a12.halo.html
Snip
/[The J-mission crews (Apollos 15, 16, and 17) each did three 7-hour
EVAs and experienced not only fatigue and soreness in the hands and
forearms but also varying degrees of abrasion and damage, particularly
to the ends of the fingers and to the fingernails. Jack Schmitt and
others, for example, had their fingernails lift off the quick as a
result of repeated contact with the inside of the gloves as he pushed
his fingers forward.]
Snip
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Now where did I put my memory metal, muscle enhanced, smart gloves?

Thanks for looking up with me.

Larry Kellogg

Web Site: http://lkellogg.vttoth.com/LarryRussellKellogg/
BlogSpot: http://kelloggserialreports.blogspot.com/
RSS link: http://kelloggserialreports.blogspot.com/atom.xml
Newsletter: https://news.altair.com/mailman/listinfo/lunar-update
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http://www.ipp.nasa.gov/cc/

April 27, 2007

David E. Steitz/Stephanie Schierholz
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1600

Alan Hayes
Volanz Aerospace, Inc., Owings, Md.
202-498-6804

MEDIA ADVISORY: M07-43 Corrected

NASA'S CENTENNIAL CHALLENGE FOR IMPROVED ASTRONAUT GLOVES SET

WASHINGTON - On Wednesday and Thursday, May 2-3, teams from around the
nation will compete for a total of $250,000 from NASA for an improved
astronaut glove design. The Astronaut Glove Challenge, one of NASA's
seven Centennial Challenges, will take place at the New England Air
Museum at Bradley International Airport, Windsor Locks, Conn. The
competition is free and open to media and the public. It begins May 2
from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. EDT and continues May 3 from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m.

NASA is offering a total of $200,000 for the team that can design and
manufacture the best astronaut glove that exceeds minimum
requirements. An additional $50,000 goes to the team that best
demonstrates Mechanical Counter Pressure gloves.

An astronaut's gloves are among the most critical pieces of the
spacesuit. After an extended time of work using the current gloves,
astronauts' hands have bled and been bruised, and fingernails have
been damaged. This competition seeks new glove joint technologies
that make the astronauts' jobs easier, more comfortable and safer
with stronger gloves that increase flexibility and dexterity.

At no cost to NASA, Volanz Aerospace, Inc., Owings, Md., is
administering the challenge. Hamilton Sundstrand, Windsor Locks,
Conn., and ILC Dover, Frederica, Del., are sponsors of the contest.

Centennial Challenges, an element of NASA's Innovative Partnerships
Program, promotes technical innovation through prize competitions to
make revolutionary advances to support the Vision for Space
Exploration and NASA goals. For more information about the Innovative
Partnerships Program and Centennial Challenges, visit:

http://www.ipp.nasa.gov/cc

For more information about NASA and other agency programs, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov

 
-end-

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http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2005/jul/HQ_E05189_Astronaut_glove_challenge.html

Michael Braukus/J.D. Harrington
Headquarters, Washington
(Phone: 202/358-1979/5241)

Alan Hayes
Volanz Aerospace Inc/Spaceflight America
(Phone: 301/812-0450)


 July 22, 2005
RELEASE: 05-189

NASA Announces New Centennial Challenge

NASA, in collaboration with the Volanz Aerospace Inc./Spaceflight
America (Volanz), today announced a new Centennial Challenges prize
competition.

The Astronaut Glove Challenge award will go to the team that can design
and manufacture the best performing glove within competition parameters.
The $250,000 purse will be awarded at a competition scheduled for
November 2006, when competing teams test their glove designs against
each other.

For the Challenge, teams must develop the bladder-restraint portion of
an astronaut glove that is strong, easy on the hands, and gives the
operator a high degree of dexterity.

"Reducing space suit glove fatigue is a critical technological goal
that, if successful, would have an important impact on astronaut
performance and mission planning," said NASA's acting Associate
Administrator for the Exploration Systems Mission Directorate, Douglas
Cooke.

Snip

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WHAT THE MIND CAN CONCEIVE, AND BELIEVE, IT WILL ACHIEVE - LRK

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REAPERS of the DUST - A Prairie Chronicle - And you want to go to the Moon!

REAPERS of the DUST - A Prairie Chronicle is a small book, a collection
of stories about the hard times of a North Dakota family during the
1930s depression and drought.  It is by my cousin, Lois Phillips Hudson,
who was born in 1927.  She gave me a copy back in December of 1995 and I
just finished reading it again.
http://shop.mnhs.org/moreinfomhspress.cfm?Product_ID=233

Why do I mention this if we are talking about setting up a colony on the
Moon?

Sometimes we just think about the adventure and forget what it takes to
overcome what nature throws at us.

The first story in the book is entitled "The Dust Storm" and I would
like to copy the first paragraph and while you read it, think about what
it will be like on the Moon, in a spacesuit, putting up with talcum
powder glass grit that will get into every nook and cranny.  Think about
what the gloves of the spacesuit will do to your fingers as you battle
the stiffness of a pressurized suit.
- LRK -
------------------------------------------------------------
Two SPRINGS AGO, according to local newspapers and to coughing, red-eyed
service-station operators in the Rocky Mountains, we drove through the
worst dust storm Wyoming had suffered in eighteen years.  The wind was
prematurely aging the young Rockies, pushing dusty fingers under the
loosening fragments of thin topsoil that covered the grazing plateaus,
picking up the small greenish gravel from the road shoulders, and
hurling dust and gravel into the air at sixty miles an hour.  If we
dipped into a trough between plateaus, its shelter enabled us to see the
laden wind rising over the mountains and the sky running in massive
dirty currents above us.  After reaching the Coast we replace the badly
pitted window glass, had the car repainted, and cleaned the seats, floor
mats, and window crevices.  Yet months after we thought we had breathed
the last Wyoming grit, we turned on the defroster and blew bits of the
Rocky Mountains all through the car
------------------------------------------------------------

There may not be any wind on the Moon but the fine regolith will electro
statically stick to whatever it contacts and as the terminator advances
you may find it rising into space and settling on items as the lunar day
begins.  This dust won't be rounded grains but rather sharp and
abrasive.  How will you work in this harsh environment?
- LRK -



http://esamultimedia.esa.int/images/aurora/Moonbase.jpg [2.8 meg]



http://moon.jaxa.jp/ja/gallery/moon_base/IMAGE/moon_base06_s.jpg [54 KB]

Will the Moon be a land of opportunity or hardship?
Still want to go?

Thanks for looking up with me.

Larry Kellogg

Web Site: http://lkellogg.vttoth.com/LarryRussellKellogg/
BlogSpot: http://kelloggserialreports.blogspot.com/
RSS link: http://kelloggserialreports.blogspot.com/atom.xml
Newsletter: https://news.altair.com/mailman/listinfo/lunar-update

==============================================================
http://shop.mnhs.org/moreinfomhspress.cfm?Product_ID=233

Reapers of the Dust

*By: Lois Phillips Hudson*
Format: Paper, xvi, 173 pp., 1984
Publisher: MHS Press
Usually ships in: 1-3 business days

ISBN 0-87351-177-8

/A Prairie Chronicle/
First published in 1965, her childhood recollections of living in North
Dakota are what Lois Phillips Hudson used to spin these unusual, moving
stories of simple, joyful days and of continuing battles with the
hostile elements on the Great Plains during the 1930s. Lois Hudson is
recognized as a major chronicler of America's agricultural heartland
during the grim years of the Great Depression.

New Introduction by the author

Snip
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WHAT THE MIND CAN CONCEIVE, AND BELIEVE, IT WILL ACHIEVE - LRK

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