Noah

Noah

Well Known Member
In the 1960's NASA pioneered closed coolant loop garments to keep astronauts cool. These are undergarments with small diameter tubing sewn in to circulate cold water and which are strategically located to pull heat away from the body. Lots of tubing in the underarms, torso, and head, where there are a lot of blood vessels close to the skin. The military uses these as well. http://defense-update.com/features/du-2-07/infantry_armor_cooling.htm
http://nsrdec.natick.army.mil/media/fact/techprog/AW_MCC.htm

As I sat in my hot cockpit in the direct sun yesterday I wondered why we aren't doing the same thing in our RVs (or maybe somebody is).

I have looked into some of the ice chest coolers available but these seem horribly inefficient in that they attempt to cool the entire cabin when all I really need to do is control my core temperature. Cool core temperature = no sweat / happy camper. Controlling core temperature would also mean a lot lower coolant load than coooling the entire cabin, meaning a lot less ice and lower weight, obviously very important for aircraft use...

Some of these are marketed to the motorcycle crowd, others for medical use. Veskimo has a nice unit:
http://www.veskimo.com/personal-cooling-system-9quart.html

And Vitalwear's has a medical version called the RecoverWrap which has several different wraps that go on various parts of the body:
http://www.vitalwear.com/recoverywrap_system_product_info.cfm

Here is another from Taclights:
http://www.taclights.cn/PCS.htm

And another marketed for aviation use:
https://www.pilotcooling.com/shop/index.php

Seems like these might be well suited for our unique application. Anybody got a PIREP on any of these personal cooling devices that are on the market?
 
I've been prepping parts in the garage today. 95* and high humidity feels like over 100. The cockpit would be nice as I flew down the Hudson low level yesterday and the vents felt like hair dryers pointed right at me but still better than stagnant air. I could see these being useful for building AND flying.
 
Ultrachiller

I wear an Ultrachiller-brand water-cooled T-shirt under my 2-layer Nomex fire-resistant suit at races at SoCal auto racing tracks like Buttonwillow. A recent race in 110F weather approached the limits of the technology, but only because we had to run the cabin heater full blast to put us over the top on engine cooling capacity.

http://ultrachiller.com/

Thanks, Bob K.
 
tkatc said:
... I could see these being useful for building AND flying.
Click to expand...

At the race I mentioned above, one of my teammates would plug himself into the cooler system at intervals while working on the car. If we'd had a set of extension hoses, he would have stayed plugged in all the time while working on our red-hot engine in the 110F temps.
 
I had thought about brining up this same topic. I recently helped a friend of mine set up a unit for their endurance race team.

He bought a sealed cooler, and a small boat bilge pump. I fabricated a PWM motor speed controller for it. They bought commercially-produced shirts for the system with quick-connects to the cooler.

They used it at the races a couple weeks ago (around 110*F) and said it worked great. This was the first time where the driver was able to stay in the car at a stop. In fact, they didn't even run it on high.
 
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NASA Experience....

I have spent quite a bit of time wearing this type of underwear underneath the Launch and Entry pressure suits we used in the Shuttle. They work - really well - so long as you have a good source of cold water to pump through them. During
training sessions, the suit techs had a great big ice chest with water pumps installed inside - they'd fill it full of ice, and we'd all plug into the chest during breaks in training. "Give me a hit off the hose!" was a common statement on a hot day.

They do work - just make sure you have a source of cooling or an ice chest! That could be a bit problematic if you don't have ice handy on a trip, or at your field.

Good technology transfer though.
 
They used to run cool suit in the Cup Series. Worked great-----until
A) the pump stopped pumping
B) the ice box ran out of ice.

When that happened in the middle of a 500 mile race in the summer, temps would be a bad problem. Yep---you could roast in one of those suits.
Tom
 
Water Leak Aborts Spacewalk; Astronaut OK

Hmmm, pretty serious consequences if one of these leaks in your spacesuit while on a spacewalk...

http://science.time.com/2013/07/16/helmet-water-leak-aborts-spacewalk-astronaut-ok/

(CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla.) — NASA aborted a spacewalk at the International Space Station on Tuesday because of a dangerous water leak in an astronaut’s helmet that drenched his eyes, nose and mouth. The leak was so bad that Luca Parmitano, Italy’s first spacewalker, couldn’t hear or speak as the spacewalk came to an abrupt end. He asked his spacewalking partner, Christopher Cassidy, for help getting back in. “He looks miserable. But OK,” Cassidy assured Mission Control in Houston. The source of the leak wasn’t immediately known but a possible culprit was the helmet drink bag that astronauts sip from during spacewalks, although Parmitano later reported the water had an odd taste. Water also is piped through the long underwear worn under a spacesuit, for cooling. Parmitano reported, “It’s a lot of water,” before he could no longer talk. His crewmates quickly yanked off his helmet, once he was back inside. NASA seldom cuts a spacewalk short. Tuesday’s problem left them with no choice. Parmitano could have choked on the floating water droplets in his helmet. The trouble cropped up barely an hour into what was to be a six-hour spacewalk to perform cable work and other routine maintenance that had stacked up over the past couple years. It was the astronauts’ second spacewalk in eight days. Parmitano startled everyone when he announced that he felt a lot of water on the back of his head. At first, he thought it was sweat because of all his exertion on the job. But he was repeatedly assured it was not sweat. Cassidy said it might be water from his drink bag; it looked like a half-liter of water had leaked out. The water eventually got into Parmitano’s eyes. That’s when NASA ordered the two men back inside. Then the water drenched his nose and mouth, and he had trouble hearing on the radio lines. Cassidy quickly cleaned up the work site once Parmitano was back in the air lock, then joined him back in the space station. The four astronauts who anxiously monitored the drama from inside hustled to remove Parmitano’s helmet. They clustered around him, eight hands pulling off his helmet and using towels to mop his bald head. Balls of water floated away. Parmitano looked relatively fine on NASA TV as he gestured with his hands to show his crewmates where the water had crept over his head. Cassidy told Mission Control: “To him, the water clearly did not taste like our normal drinking water.” A smiling Parmitano then chimed in: “Just so you know, I’m alive and I can answer those questions, too.” Mission Control praised the crew for its fast effort and promptly scheduled a radio hookup with flight surgeons on the ground. Engineers, meanwhile, scrambled to determine the source of the leak. It was the fastest end to a spacewalk since 2004 when Russian and American spacewalkers were ordered back in by Mission Control outside Moscow because of spacesuit trouble. That spacewalk lasted a mere 14 minutes. Tuesday’s spacewalk lasted one hour and 32 minutes. This was the second spacewalk for Parmitano, 36, a former test pilot and Italian Air Force officer. He became the first Italian to conduct a spacewalk last Tuesday, more than a month after moving into the space station. Cassidy, 43, a former Navy SEAL, is a veteran spacewalker midway through a six-month station stint.
 
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Fortunately, anyone who wants to try one of the cool suits in their RV has a great advantage over the guys in the EVA Suit.....GRAVITY!! ;)

That's the first "Terminate EVA" case in a US suit that I can remember in decades. It will be interesting to hear what was loose.
 
I work for a company that uses thermo-electric coolers to cool sensors... I've been wondering lately how many it would take to keep me cool in the cockpit... :)

But at $200 a pop for a 1" square sensor, it might not be the cheapest solution...
 
Snowflake said:
I work for a company that uses thermo-electric coolers to cool sensors... I've been wondering lately how many it would take to keep me cool in the cockpit... :)

But at $200 a pop for a 1" square sensor, it might not be the cheapest solution...
Click to expand...

Removing your helmet and flightsuit works!
 
In Vegas I would fill a camelback 3/4 full and freeze it. Put it on and start flying. Benefit of cooling plus available water. Cheap easy solution.
 
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