HOLDING A WINNING HAND

By Heather R. Smith

NASA Educational Technology Services

When Peter Homer sat down to build a better astronaut glove, he started with the fingers.

“I’m just going to try to design a finger, build a finger that is easy to bend,” Homer recalled thinking.

Months earlier, NASA astronaut Carl Walz talked about the problems with astronaut gloves, particularly the joints and flexing the fingers, at a meeting introducing Homer and others to NASA’s Centennial Challenges and the challenge to build a better astronaut glove.

Homer and the other competitors had the opportunity to put their hand inside a pressurized astronaut glove to feel for themselves the restrictions.

“It wasn't like I thought it would be,” Homer said. “The glove is rigid when it is pressurized. It was surprising to me because intellectually four psi (pounds per square inch) doesn’t seem like that much. I was surprised at how much a rigid shell it became.”

Right: Peter Homer demonstrates his glove design at the Astronaut Glove Challenge event. (Matthew Z. Homer)

With his hand inside the pressurized Phase VI glove, the glove used currently by astronauts, Homer tried to curl his fingers. “I was surprised at how difficult that was,” he said. “It was the Phase VI. It was the latest and greatest, and I was surprised.”

Homer, a former aerospace engineer from Southwest Harbor, Maine, took notes about which finger joints were easy to move and which ones were hard. For the next eight months he prepared for the challenge by thinking about the problems and of potential ways to address them. In January 2007 – five months before the contest deadline – he started to design and then build his glove, starting with the fingers.

The fingers he designed are what ultimately resulted in Homer winning $200,000 and becoming the first person to win one of NASA’s Centennial Challenges. The project, initiated in 2005 under NASA's Innovative Partnerships Program, awards cash prizes for innovations in space exploration and engages Americans in NASA missions. The seven challenges, which include building a personal air vehicle and a lunar lander, make awards based on actual achievements, instead of proposals.

The astronaut glove challenge was administered by Volanz Aerospace Inc. and sponsored by Hamilton Sundstrand, NASA's prime contractor for the current spacesuit, and ILC Dover.

The challenge required competitors to build two prototypes of their own design to compete against each other’s designs and the Phase VI glove in three tests. The first test measured the force required to move the gloves’ fingers and thumb. Competitors then had to use their glove to perform several dexterity tasks within a specified time in a depressurized glove box. Finally, the gloves were subjected to a burst test.

Entrants’ gloves not only had to beat their competitors’ gloves but had to perform better than the Phase VI.

Homer hoped initially to come up with a radically different design from the current glove. “I thought the way to beat the current glove is to build something very different,” he said. “But it’s interesting that I wound up very close to what they are now.”

The frame is made from a steel rod heated and bent to shape. The wrist is made from sheets of aluminum. The bladder of the glove is a thick latex glove like those used in the chemical industry.

The glove itself is made of ripstop Dacron, a fabric common in sails and kites. Dacron is also used in the thermal insulation layers of the International Space Station.

Left: Peter Homer used crisscrossed ribbon on the fingers of his glove to create a hinge-like effect and improve finger dexterity. (Matthew Z. Homer)

The key difference in Homer’s glove and the Phase VI is Homer’s finger joints. He crisscrossed one-eighth-inch craft ribbon into an “X” at each finger joint to create a hinge-like effect. The hinge helped to improve the fingers’ dexterity.

“When they measured the force it actually took to move the fingers, it was easier to bend my fingers than it was the Phase VI glove,” Homer said.

Once he was satisfied with the finger design he moved down the glove to the knuckle joint, the thumb and finally the wrist. He created each section as four individual pieces and put them together into the final design the weekend before the contest. “Getting the design refined where it could be put together that quickly was part of the process of simplifying the design, the iterative process,” Homer said.

Homer’s design was so fine-tuned he was able to construct the second glove in just two days.

“What’s interesting about this challenge is you have to make this," he said. “It’s not just how good of a designer are you or how good an engineer are you, but you have to make this. … You can have a great design but if you can’t make it or you can’t make it easily then it’s not great.”

Homer said he relied on knowledge and skills learned throughout his career as he prepared for the challenge.

He has a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering and a master’s degree in aerospace engineering. His career has included designing experiments for the space shuttle for Grumman Aerospace as part of the Strategic Defense Initiative to develop space-based protection systems and designing communication satellites and spacecraft structures for General Electric Aerospace, now Lockheed Martin.

Working on these projects gave Homer hands-on experience in engineering, but he said he learned the most from the people he worked with. “The folks that I worked with … a lot of them were the guys who worked on the Apollo program, specifically on the lunar module,” Homer said. “I was learning from and hearing stories by the guys who built the lunar module.”

He said the Apollo-era veterans taught him to design knowing that the safety of someone else’s life was in his hands.

One project Homer worked on was the development of the A2100 satellite, a modular satellite customizable to accommodate a range of missions. Homer said his approach to the glove challenge is similar to the way his company approached the A2100 project.

“That A2100 program was the first time our company said, ‘Let’s take a step back and let’s forget everything we know about how to design a satellite and start over with a clean piece of paper,’” Homer said. “Some of that (experience) played into my approach with the glove.”

Homer also has experience as a sail-maker, crafting sails for Maine’s popular sailboat industry. Homer grew up on the water, learning to sail in the eighth grade and working on a boat yard while in high school and college.

“I was able to take some of that knowledge and reconfigure it to something like a glove,” he said. “I was able to apply some of that knowledge about fabric tension and understanding fabric orientations so when it is pressurized it looks like a hand. A pressurized glove is a whole different glove than a regular glove, and you have to think about it different. The order you put it together is important. … That was something I was familiar with in the aerospace world.”

Homer involved his three children, ages 14, 11 and 6, in the challenge. His 14-year-old son Matthew documented the project with videos and photos and accompanied his dad at the competition. “One of the things I wanted to show them is that if you set your mind to something you can do just about anything,” he said. “I didn't know if I was going to win the contest or not, but I wanted them to see me see it through.”

Homer won the 2007 event but the challenge to build a better astronaut glove is not over. The prize money offered for the 2008 challenge totals $400,000.

The challenge is not over for Homer, either. “I see another two years of improving my design through the competition format, advancing toward flight-worthy hardware and pushing the bar up each year,” he said. “I will have to take my design a little further than it is now in order for it be worthy of NASA spending money on it.”

Homer said he hopes NASA will continue to involve the public in space exploration through projects like Centennial Challenges.

“I definitely think that’s something they ought to pursue more of,” he said. “I’m not an anomaly. I’m not just one guy out here. There’s a lot of people like me who have the training, background and experience and who, for whatever reason, are not in the industry but who are interested in contributing in some way. … There’s a lot of really intelligent people who can contribute in the way that I hope to contribute by bringing in new ideas in a way that NASA can take them over and bring them into their programs.”

On the Web:

Innovative Partnerships Program
http://ipp.nasa.gov/

Innovative Partnerships Program Centennial Challenges
http://www.ipp.nasa.gov/cc

NASA Education
www.nasa.gov/education

Heather R. Smith
NASA Educational Technology Services