Design for Change - Development of Initial Ideas

Development of Initial Idea

After seeing a story on the New Scientist website about The First Hiking Maps on Mars, I started thinking how would people eventually be able to use this data in the future when you could actually hike on Mars or on the Moon.

I also looked at Virgin’s development for space tourism flights which will be up and running in less than 3 years. I felt that this would be the catalyst for more endeavors in the business and tourist market to get their slice of the space pie.

Using today’s technology you could view the maps on a PDA and use them for hiking using GPS technology, but if your wearing a spacesuit your not going to be able to hold a PDA and you definitely wouldn’t be able to control a stylus or touch screen.

My idea is to develop a concept for using and viewing electronic data using maps and GPS so that you could find your way round an unfamiliar planet or moon whilst wearing a space suit.

Technologies to consider

• Electronic textiles for use as buttons that can be incorporated into the suit
• Heads up display to be viewed on the inside of a helmets visor
• GPS (Global Positioning System) using satellites
• Speech Recognition Software
• Touch Screen Technology to be able to use the helmet itself as a touch screen
• TV Camera and viewer
• Hardware and Software

Links
Motion-sensitive spacesuits could generate power
The first hiking maps of Mars
Virgin boss unveils space trips
'Personal spaceflight revolution' beckons
New face on space flight
'No experiments' for SpaceShipOne
Unknown future of space tourism
Virgin Galactic: The logical next step
Virgin Galactic
HowStuffWorksSpacesuits
wikipediaSpacesuit
wikipediaGPS
wikipediaHeadsupdisplay
wikipediaEyeTap
wikipediaTouchscreen
wikipediaSpeechRegognition
Moon colony 'within 20 years'
Colonize the Moon before Mars
Colonizing The Moon
Holographic projector for your future PDA
Sportvue MC1
MiVu