This suit is made for walking (on Mars)

Ultimately, the BioSuit must maintain fairly constant pressure over the whole body as it moves. With three-dimensional mapping and scanning, Newman's lab studies how skin stretches and joints move.

"I just marvel at it," says Newman. "Every day, I look at the skin and say, 'How could this be designed so fantastically?' "

Making the BioSuit easy to put on is another challenge. It might feel a bit like squeezing into a wetsuit several sizes too small. It took two helpers 20 minutes to tug on the layered elastic suit Webb developed decades ago.

It still is a problem, which is why Newman and other researchers are looking to "smart" materials, metals and polymers that expand, contract, or change their properties in response to heat or electricity. Most of these technologies exist, but are too weak or power-hungry to use yet. So Newman is making prototypes with available materials and leaving how to put them on until later. "You need prototypes and demonstrations before people will believe you," she says. "Then we wait for some of the materials to come on board."

The NIAC-funded portion of the project ended in August, so the development of smart materials and additional prototypes may have to wait until NASA decides if the BioSuit will receive mainstream funding as part of the new moon mission. "I think NASA ought to be spending more time with those [BioSuit] people and less time flying 40-year-old technology," says Alex Roland, a historian of the space program, professor at Duke University, and critic of the space shuttle. "I think it's more in line with what we want them doing as a science and technology agency."

A skintight BioSuit spacesuit, a space elevator, and a weather control machine. Far-fetched projects, maybe, but all have been supported by the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts. The dozens of unusual NIAC-supported projects are conceptually possible but rely on materials or technology that do not yet exist. It is up to researchers with NIAC funding to show the projects are feasible within 10 to 40 years and describe the future technologies they will need.

The BioSuit, for example, will need "smart" materials that change their properties when electrically or thermally stimulated. One option is shape metal alloys, such as the nickel-titanium alloy, nitinol, used in cardiac stents. These alloys contract with great force when current is run through them and could, for example, be placed along a seam to pull the suit tight or along a limb to boost strength.

Smart polymers, which can change from rubber-band-like material to stiff plastic in response to heat, could shrink to fit as they are warmed by the body. But researchers need time and funding to make the technologies work: Today's shape metal alloys require too much power and smart polymers aren't very strong. But Bob Cassanova, director of NIAC, thinks the enabling technologies for the BioSuit are closer than we might think. "Something like this could be developed in the next 10 years," he says, just in time for the next planned moon landing.

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