It seems to me our bodies are just not able to handle such thin proximity to the vacuum dependably, at least with current materials. This makes a great case for building dexterous proxy robots that astronauts or even someone on the ground depending on latency controls. Wouldn't need to be much more than a propellant based drone with human like arms on the side, a panoramic camera out of the top, and some form of tether. That and a headset and motion capture apparatus inside.

It's not like they'd lose a whole lot of dexterity and feeling, since their suits already limit those in person. With practice, wouldn't having realtime proxy hands like this:

Provide more or at worst roughly equivalent dexterity than operating through the current space mittens, and with less risk?

[–] FartsWithAnAccent@lemmy.world 13 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Reminds me of the old timey deep dive suits which had mechanical hands the "pilot" had to manipulate because the suit was too thick to use their hands

[–] WarmSoda@lemm.ee 8 points 2 years ago (1 children)

You just made me remember when I was I kid and at some museum they had a bunch of dive suits you could reach in and operate the mechanisms for the gripper hands. It was really cool.

[–] FartsWithAnAccent@lemmy.world 2 points 2 years ago

That's exactly what I was thinking of actually lol

[–] WHYAREWEALLCAPS@kbin.social 3 points 2 years ago

You mean an atmospheric diving suit. The most recently developed one by the US Navy cost a mere $113 million.