beth (defunct)

space man practicing spiking a football

I... This must be bait, my FoF senses are going haywire, but I'm not a flighted creature, so...

It's... It's a before-and-after of a person in a suit pitching a baseball overhand, right? I'm not... Missing something for the joke, am I?

It's a weird space suit because it's unlike all of our in-service suits - it's hard-shelled, while our service suits are basically just... Fabrics and other soft materials, save couplers and the visors and the backpacks and such.

The weird design element here is that every major rotation point that needs to be as-if-not-more dextrous than existing space suits is on a sealed bearing, allowing for some rotation in a hard-shelled suit. The problem is often that our joints obviously don't rotate in nice circles or any clean shape, so no matter how many angles we divvy up into bearings, it won't ever be natural movement, but it can be enough for what we need in space (and a lot more than what we get now.)

The ability to even throw a baseball overhand with any kind of leg or hip rotation in a fully sealed hard-shell suit is wild, IMO. I dunno if bearings are the way to go in the end, I hold no expertise in engineering of any kind, but like, maybe! That's a big step up from current suits, and it's a hard-shell - more protective, and most likely easier to manufacture than hand-stitched suits.

... Sorry if I fell for the bait. he says, danging out of the hunter's snare.