Space travel is not simple and even when you get to your destination, such as the closest planet, you may still be uncomfortable because of the bulky space suits that you need to wear. In an effort to make it easier to move around in what is sure to be an unfamiliar and somewhat hostile terrain, Dava Newman is working on a science project to design skin tight space suits.

The aeronautics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is hoping to create a liveable atmospheric pressure in the weightless vacuum of space. Currently the space suits in use by astronauts are gas inflated, bulky and weight over 300 pounds. The new skin tight suit that professor Newman is working on weighs just a fraction of that at about 45 pounds.

In the space suits in use today, a rip would cause a drastic drop in pressure in no time at all and would cause any mission outside the craft to be aborted. Another advantage of the new space suits will be the fact that a rip in the suit can be patched up in real time using a galactic elastic bandage. The suits will be constructed out of plastic, elastic and shape retaining “memory alloys”.