Search Results

Firefighters want to go to work, do their job well, and go home alive and uninjured. For their most important job, saving lives, firefighters want protective equipment that will allow more extended and effective time at fire scenes in order to perform victim search and rescue. A team, including engineers at NASA JSC and firefighters from Houston, has developed a list of problem areas for which NASA technology and know-how can recommend improvements for firefighter suits and gear. Prototypes for solutions have been developed and are being evaluated. This effort will spin back to NASA as improvements for lunar and planetary suits.

In the Lunar-Mars Life Support Test Project chamber, crewmembers collected various sound level measures starting with the entry day ceremonies and ending with the welcome home celebrations. Crewmembers recorded sample decibel(A) levels in the 80s and 70s in the mechanical area; 70s and 60s in the common living and work areas; and 50s and 40s in the individual crew quarters. Medical personnel evaluated crewmembers for threshold hearing shifts comparing audiometry readings before and after the chamber experience. The discussion relates the chamber findings to the operational requirements for space stations and planetary habitation, as well as for long duration exposures on Earth.