Hands on the Moon

In general, hand/arm fatigue is an ongoing problem for all astronauts when using their hands in a pressurized spacesuit. Imagine trying to squeeze a football for several hours over multiple days.

It can lead to finger, wrist, and arm pain including cramps and black fingernails.

Apollo missions were brief - 75 hours for the longest mission.  Now imagine you're an Artemis astronaut spending weeks in and out of a pressurized suit, not just a few days.

Gloves for the Apollo program were customized using plaster hand casts from each astronaut.
These are casts from Apollo 11 astronauts on display at the
US Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, AL. Photo: Mickey Kulp

A rubber inner-glove was made from the plaster cast. 
The knuckles were artificially enlarged for easier bending. Photo: NASA

Dave Scott, the commander of Apollo 15, and Jim Irwin, lunar module pilot, spoke to reviewers in 1971 about their experiences using gloves in a pressurized suit on the moon. 

Scott's 50-year-old advice still has application for Artemis astronauts and designers.

Dave Scott making statements immediately after splashdown. 
Note his blackened fingernails. Photo: NASA

SCOTT

I ended up with a compromise solution on my arm length and my gloves. I had requested, just prior to the flight, for the people to shorten the arms so I could have mobility close to my chest, where I had to do most of the work.

If the arms were too long and the fingers were extended at that point, I got hand cramps trying to work the gloves. If the arms were shortened , when my arm was outstretched my fingers were pushing against the inside tips of the gloves.

My feeling before the flight was that I'd rather have the tight arms than the cramps in the hands. It resulted in too much pressure on my fingertips, but I'll accept that compromise because it enabled me to continue working without any hand cramps.

I never got any hand cramps at all throughout the whole operation. I felt like I had good mobility in cinching up the geology sample bags and in doing all that ALSEP [Apollo Lunar Surface Experiments Package] operation. Driving the Rover was also quite comfortable, except for my fingertips.

Other than that, I thought the PGA [Pressure Garment Assembly] was excellent.

Apollo 15 crew (L-R): CDR Dave Scott, CMP Al Worden, LMP Jim Irwin.  Photo: NASA

IRWIN

I think I had the same fit that you did on EVA-1, certainly. At the end of the EVA, my fingers were really sore -- the fingernails and the end of the fingers.

After that, I cut my fingernails back to the quick, just as far as I possibly could with the scissors; and then on EVA-2, my fingers didn't bother me at all . That solved it for me. I didn't have any cramps either.

Neil Armstrong's lunar glove from Apollo 11.  Photo: NASA.

SCOTT

I surely think that a better glove could be made which fits tighter. I think the gloves, in my case, are still too bulky, and there is too much easement inside the glove.

I think for an EVA operation you need to have a glove which has a smaller easement than for an IV [Intravehicular] operation when you don' t plan to pressurize. 

Scott gives some sound advice for our era of space exploration:

When you plan to run pressurized all the time, as you do an EVA glove, I think they should be designed and built for that operation alone, and not try to compromise by having it comfortable in an IV situation.

Neil Armstrong's lunar glove from Apollo 11.  Photo: NASA.

Further Reading

[1] "Apollo 15 Technical Crew Debriefing"; 14 AUG 1971; PDF scan by Glen Swanson; https://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/a15/a15tecdbrf.html

[2] "Neil Armstrong's Flown Suit"; https://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/a11/A11NAAFlownSuit.html

SpaceX Crew 3 Suiting Up

 Here are some photos from the Crew 3 pre-launch suit up taken from the SpaceX live feed.

The crew consists of Raja Chari, Thomas Marshburn, Matthias Maurer, and Kayla Barron.

Matthias Maurer and Kayla Barron

Thomas Marshburn

Raja Chari

Suit Room

Matthias Maurer and Kayla Barron

Kayla Barron

Matthias Maurer

Shenzhou 13

On October 15, 2021, the Shenzhou 13 spacecraft carried Chinese astronauts Zhai Zhigang (commander), Wang Yaping, and Ye Guangfu into orbit. They will dock with the Tianhe space station and live aboard for six months.

Full video here: https://youtu.be/-xcTjosgtfE

Images below are from the launch coverage from Space.com.

Cross-pollination in Space

I also write space fiction with a heavy real-science slant.  Today, I wanted to show an example and get a little cross-pollination going.

This "Ramone Rocketeer" post started out as a notion about visiting a fictional lunar gateway station, but it morphed into a discussion about partial pressures in breathing gasses...

"Here, Oleg and I are under the decontamination light at Lunar Gateway 5 . He was coming up and I was going down."

The full post is here: 

https://ramonerocketeer.blogspot.com/2021/10/cislunar-travel-and-breathing-gas.html

AMADEE-20 is Making Mistakes on Mars

AMADEE-20 is a Mars analog simulation in the Negev Desert, Israel, managed by the Austrian Space Forum hosted by the Israeli Space Agency.

More info: https://oewf.org/en/amadee-20/

Before you do most important things, you practice. It works this way in sports, music, and missions to Mars. For missions to Mars, the practice time is called a simulation.

For twenty days (Oct 11 to 31, 2021) six researchers in the Negev Desert will simulate living on Mars in complete isolation from other humans.

The goal is to discover how to live and work safely on Mars. And to do that, the researchers hope to make lots of mistakes.

Yep.

Each mistake they make in the generally safe simulation means one less surprise in the harsh reality of Mars.

Dr. Gernot Grömer, Administrative Director of the Austrian Space Forum said the simulated mission "is designed to test concepts, working procedures and equipment to find the weak spots so the actual mission can be realized as safely as possible."

The six researchers, along with 200 others from 25 countries, plan to work on 20 different experiments to "prepare for future crewed missions on the Red Planet."

From left: Anika Mehlis, Carmen Köhler
(c) OeWF (Florian Voggeneder)

Donning and Doffing

 

Gene Cernan, Apollo 17 commander.  Source: NASA

More info: https://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/a17/AS17Tech2.pdf

Astronaut Gene Cernan, commander of Apollo 17, commented about dressing ("donning") and undressing ("doffing") in the confined space of the Lunar Module.  But first, a vocabulary lesson.

LCG is a "Liquid Cooled Garment."  This was worn under the big moon suit.  It had small tubes sewn in to circulate water and keep the astronauts cool.  

CWG is a "Constant Wear Garment" like long-johns.

* * * * *

"When we doffed the suit, we went into a drying mode as the checklist suggests prior to the sleep period. I'm really glad we did because our suits stayed relatively fresh and clean on the inside.

We doffed our LCGs every day and slept in CWGs rather than the LCG. And I'm glad we did that because it was much more comfortable.

We made it a buddy system in the entire donning and prep when it came to the suit operations, except for putting on the gloves. We found it easier to put them on in parallel and get them locked and verified locked.

We actually, each individually in almost all cases, put our own glove dust covers and ring dust covers on. Maybe we had to help each other once in a while.

And contrary to some of our initial desires, we decided to go ahead and put those dust covers on for every EVA. After the first EVA, we found out what the dust problem really was."

[Excerpt from "Apollo 17 Technical Debrief, Manned Spacecraft Center Document MSC-07631" dated 4 January 1973.]