From bras and baby suits equipped with monitors to tough suits to protect sportspeople and adventurers from the hazards of life on earth, space technology is boldly pushing back fashion frontiers.
”The space programme has over the years provided a catalyst for a lot of the progress we are seeing today in textiles,” says David Raitt, technology transfer and promotions officer with the European Space Agency (ESA).
”We are using the software, experience and know-how of space technology for a purpose for which it was not originally meant.”
The extremes of the space environment — temperatures ranging from searing cold to furnace hot, cosmic radiation, low gravity and blinding sunlight — have all set scientists huge challenges.
About â,¬400-million out of the agency’s average annual â,¬3-billion budget is spent on research and development, and now many on earth are reaping the benefits of such specialised technology.
ESA has spent years developing lightweight fabrics to reduce the cost of space missions, with every kilogram launched into space costing â,¬10 000, Raitt said at the opening of an exhibition of space technology clothing.
The result has been some materials which are 100 times stronger than steel but which weigh almost nothing at all, many of which are capable of withstanding great extremes of temperature.
In 2002 the McLaren Formula One pit crew in the British Grand Prix wore special overalls ”in an idea adapted from space suits”, which had 50m of 2mm plastic tubing stitched into the lightweight suit.
”It can get very hot, between 40 to 70 degrees in the pits. So McLaren came to us and asked us if we could cool down their crews,” said Raitt. Cold water was piped into the tubes and could keep the wearer cool for up to 90 minutes.
The Anatomic Intercooler System (AIS) jacket was then more widely developed by Italian bike clothing company Spidi and used in 2004 by Spanish rider Sete Gibernau at the world’s hottest motorbike Grand Prix in Qatar.
Although such clothes are for the specialists, Italian designers Grado Zero, working with ESA, aim to market commercially, from September, a leather motorbike jacket with an in-built rider protection.
A special gel system in the shoulders and elbows ensures the jacket is supple when worn, but those areas immediately harden on impact, cushioning the wearer. At the back, a strip incorporated into the jacket shines with a blue moving light at night.
The jacket, which will retail at about â,¬1 000 and be personally fitted, has also been treated to keep the wearer warm in winter and cool in summer, even though it is made of ultra-thin leather.
”The idea was to create a jacket for all seasons,” managing director Filippo Pagliai said.
The company is also working on commercialising a lightweight jacket for climbers that can protect them up to temperatures of minus 50 degrees Celsius, using a special compound called Aerogel.
Developed by ESA, it is made of about 80% glass and is the lightest solid known on Earth, but also the most insulating.
It was used for insulating probes sent to Mars, but could be in shops near you from next year, worked into nanoporous jackets.
Space suits that had monitors built into them to keep an eye on astronauts’ heart and respiration rates have provided the inspiration for clothes that could prove lifesavers on terra firma.
A new, washable baby suit should be marketed next year, which could help spare parents the anguish of cot deaths.
Thanks to a pattern-recognition system, it could also end those heart-stopping seconds when traditional monitors beep alarmingly as the infant rolls off the pad in its sleep.
A bra is also in development that could have monitors built into it for women suffering from breast cancers.
There is also a suit that protects wearers from ultra-violet rays, developed after the agency was contacted by the mother of a child who suffers from a rare genetic condition, not allowing him to be exposed to sunlight. — AFP
