On 17 Feb, 13:45, Andreas Maurer wrote:
On Mon, 16 Feb 2009 09:54:24 -0800 (PST), bildan
wrote:

All pressure suits undergo extensive testing without a human inside
but sooner or later, someone has to put it on and test it in a
vacuum. *I'm sure MIT is not careless. *The Bio-Suit project is well
funded and peer reviewed.

Indeed... but experience shows that things go wrong with prototypes.
If such a suit fails at FL 350+, the pilot is dead if he doesn't have
a pressure cabin... I knew extrenely few pilots who willingly choose
to do without redundancy.

There's a good cause why any application of a pressure cabin up to
Rutan's *Spaceship One relied on a pressure cabin with a pressure suit
(or, in the case of the XB-70, a second pressure cabin shell *around
the pilot's seat) as backup system.

As has been said I would think some kind of novel, lightweight, glider-
borne pressure cabin would be at least as likely to fail as the MIT-
developed and tested suit. However even if either/both failed as long
as the crew are getting pressurised oxygen to breathe they'd survive a
decompression, no? Humans don't pop in a vacuum (though bits might
swell up, re Kittenger) so consciousness might be maintained long
enough for a descent from high-level. Goodness how long that would
take in a glider though -- hours? I guess you'd have to bail out...

BTW though as I understand it the MIT suit works by applying
mechanical pressure rather than inflation, so there's not a lot to
fail in the first place.


Dan