In my latest science fiction novel, Whispers from the Machine, I wanted to bridge the gap between realistic NASA gear and full-blown sci-fi power armor. I wanted to capture the hostilities of not just space, but the foreign planets we might one day visit.
Enter the EV (Extravehicular) suit.
I wanted to avoid the easy plot points where a ship lands, the crew puts on their best dress uniforms, and simply opens the door. I also wanted to avoid the streamlined “SpaceX pyjamas” you see in many modern sci-fi depictions of spacewalks.
No, I wanted the bulky, but realistic, EV suits of NASA. I wanted to capture the necessity of not just breathable air, but pressure management, heat dispersion, and biological contaminant mitigation.
The Human-Shaped Vehicle: 4 Critical Challenges
In reality, a space suit is a human-shaped vehicle designed to keep you alive. Treating it this way created many fun plot challenges that had to be managed:
- Ergonomics: How do you make a suit streamlined enough not to be in the way, without limiting a character’s ability to perform tasks?
- Sizing: Do you make the suit fit everyone, or does everyone have custom-made suits? Custom suits create logistical problems for larger crews, but “one size fits all” limits who can do what.
- Biological Needs: If a team must live in the suit for extended periods, how do they eat? How do they go to the toilet? How do they sleep?
- Range: Do you give them a large battery capacity or a short range? Both create interesting narrative tension.
Medical Emergencies
The suits also posed interesting questions regarding injuries. The obvious danger is a hull breach, but what about treating a medical incident when someone is locked inside a pressure vessel? How do you treat a wound when the patient cannot be removed from their suit?
The Industrial Origins of Sci-Fi Power Armor
While we often associate sci-fi power armor with warfare, think Halo or Warhammer 40k, the reality is that the technology will likely start in industry.
Constructing a habitat on Mars or the Moon will involve heavy lifting in awkward environments. A human worker in a standard pressurized suit would exhaust themselves in minutes. However, by integrating hydraulic or electric actuators into the suit’s limbs, you remove the physical strain.
We are already seeing the precursors to sci-fi power armor in modern logistics warehouses, where workers wear passive exoskeletons to prevent back injuries.
In Whispers from the Machine, I took this logic to its natural conclusion. If a suit is built to smash rocks and lift girders, it is also durable enough to stop a bullet (or a claw). The jump from “industrial exoskeleton” to “combat-ready sci-fi power armor” isn’t a massive technological leap, it is just a matter of bolting on some steel plating.
The Evolution from EV Suits to Sci-Fi Power Armor
One major element I had to tackle was weight and varying gravities.
My conclusion was that heavy-duty suits would require power-assisted frames, essentially an exoskeleton, to help modulate lifting. Even in low-gravity or zero-gravity environments, this adds necessary resistance and control back into the process.
Quickly, my somewhat bulky EV suits started to resemble Power Armor more than traditional spacesuits. Stick some armor plates on that thing and you have a Space Marine in no time (ignoring the genetic modification, of course).
It made me realize that the challenges I encountered are grounded in the realities of physics and space travel today. If we want humans out there exploring, we will need EV suits that can tackle these problems while remaining functional for day-to-day work.
So, does space exploration inevitably lead us to Power Armor? To me, they seem extremely close to being one and the same.
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