Space Jackets Down to Earth

Roland Piquepaille writes "Several technologies used to design the space suits protecting astronauts are now being adapted to protect workers facing extremely hot and dangerous conditions. According to the European Space Agency (ESA), these 'space-cooled' jackets are using three different technologies: special 3D-textile structure, cooling apparatus derived from astronauts' suits, and a special water-binding polymer acting as a coating. Even if these protective clothes are primarily intended for firefighters or steel workers, several applications are possible, such as in sportswear or in cars as parts of air conditioning systems. Read more for additional details and pictures."

Page with the actual jacket

[HoneyBunchesOfGoats]

Page with the actual jacket. [gzespace.com]

Re:Sounds Boss

[TubeSteak]

Just as soon as they can ramp up manufacturing to bring the price down.

There are lots of cool (pun intended) technologies that aren't available because demand isn't high enough to justify investing billions in a manufacturing plant.

I am a firefighter - and I find this suspect.

[CFD339]

When I go into a building with uncontrolled fire I have gear currently weighing between 60 and 80 pounds. This includes a pants and jacket made with a gnomex fabric, traditional helmet, heavy leather boots with steel under the foot, in the toes, and at the shins (which is nice when you bark your shin on a ladder). I'm wearing on my back an air bottle and SCOTT pack good for 30 minutes or so (a full hour if I'm acting as a member of a Rapid Intervention Team - RIT). My face is covered with mask that allows me to use that air, and I'm wearing a carbon fiber hood that encircles the mask and covers my head and neck. Long leather gloves cover my wrists to the inside of my jacket. I am "Fully Encapsulated".

I am fairly safe from heat and smoke up to the point of a 'flashover' -- in which case I have between 4 and 16 seconds to be somewhere else before being incinerated. I am so well protected, that many of the guys refuse to wear the hood or else won't fold down the leather flaps on the helment to cover their ears further because their warning for when the heat is too intense is when their ears start to feel too hot even through the protection.

In addition to all this, I am carrying one or more of the following: Radio, Light, Axe (or other similar tool), Water Can, Thermal Imaging Camera, escape rope, hose line.

Exactly how is it that this fancy jacket or undershirt is going to help me? I'm hot, but not so much that I can't make it through the 20 minutes in there. When I come out, I am handed a 20oz bottle of water and expected to finish it on the spot while having my pulse and respiration checked before even considering going back in.

This jacket would supposedly protect me from flashover -- several thousand degrees where anything that can combust, will.

BULLSHIT.

Even if the jacket worked, my face mask would melt to my face while the straps on my airpack along with the protective clothing I'm wearing would literally disintegrate.

The way to be protected from a flashover is to jump out the nearest window or to use the axe you're carrying to make a hole in the exterior wall and dive through it. That's pretty much it. When it comes to flashover -- Don't be there. If you are there, get out. I've taken classes that involved practing the fine art of going out a second floor window head first onto a ladder and flipping over, or slamming an axe into a wall braced across the corner of a window, tieing off a big of rope to it and bailing out the window -- even if its just to hang 20 or 30 feet down from the room where the flashover is about to happen until someone gets around to moving a ladder to you.

Don't believe this crap that a little water held in that jacket is going to help.

Re:Synthesizers rule! It's THE FINAL COUNTDOWN!

[TERdON]

Yeah, Esrange indeed is the only place AFAIK in Europe where rockets are shot. Or perhaps you heard about French Guyana? Even if it's not exactly in Europe (well, it IS in France, so you could argue that politically, it is), it's a lot closer to the equator, where it is a lot more efficient to launch rockets - you can use the earth's rotation as a help to save rocket fuel. And indeed, ESA has a base there. Surprising.