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Description
This is a work in progress, and I'd appreciate any thoughts about the design you might wish to share.

I'm back to trying to put together some semi-realistic design for near-future space flight. In this case, I'm mainly trying to tackle a couple of problems. The first is the restrictions put on by current EVA technology. There's no such thing as being able to put on your spacesuit, go out the airlock and deal with an emergency these days. A minimum of about 20 hours of slow decompression and prebreathing pure oxygen is required before anyone goes out into space. Thats because the cabin environment of the Space Station, and the Shuttle is oxygen/nitrogen at sea level pressure, while the suits operate with pure oxygen at 5 p.s.i. They do that because, with present, vintage 1980 space suits, the arms and legs become impossible to bend if the pressure is any greater.
The other problem is radiation shielding. For long stays outside, or any meaningful work beyond the Earth's ionosphere, the present suits just have inadequate radiation protection.

The potential solution is MAWS. It will have the same internal pressure as the station, or whatever long duration habitat we have in the future, because it doesn't have flexible joints. Instead it uses a couple of miniature versions of the station's robot arm. Its possible to put much better radiation shielding around MAWS, too. Probably the first exploration of asteroids or moons of Mars will be done in something like this design.
So this is the baseline look of the MAWS, as loosely worked out by NASA. Should it have a second set of heavier arms? Where would EVA equipment be attached? In general, what do you think of the idea?

-Thanks!

Description
This is a work in progress, and I'd appreciate any thoughts about the design you might wish to share.

I'm back to trying to put together some semi-realistic design for near-future space flight. In this case, I'm mainly trying to tackle a couple of problems. The first is the restrictions put on by current EVA technology. There's no such thing as being able to put on your spacesuit, go out the airlock and deal with an emergency these days. A minimum of about 20 hours of slow decompression and prebreathing pure oxygen is required before anyone goes out into space. Thats because the cabin environment of the Space Station, and the Shuttle is oxygen/nitrogen at sea level pressure, while the suits operate with pure oxygen at 5 p.s.i. They do that because, with present, vintage 1980 space suits, the arms and legs become impossible to bend if the pressure is any greater.
The other problem is radiation shielding. For long stays outside, or any meaningful work beyond the Earth's ionosphere, the present suits just have inadequate radiation protection.

The potential solution is MAWS. It will have the same internal pressure as the station, or whatever long duration habitat we have in the future, because it doesn't have flexible joints. Instead it uses a couple of miniature versions of the station's robot arm. Its possible to put much better radiation shielding around MAWS, too. Probably the first exploration of asteroids or moons of Mars will be done in something like this design.
So this is the baseline look of the MAWS, as loosely worked out by NASA. Should it have a second set of heavier arms? Where would EVA equipment be attached? In general, what do you think of the idea?

-Thanks!