A round 230,000 votes were cast in a re-cent online competition held by nasa to choose one of three designs for the American space agency's new z-2 space-suit. It was not the technology that people were invited to vote for, but the style of the outer layer. The winner (pictured on the next page) features vivid-blue electroluminescent wire and patches, exposed bearings and natty collapsing pleats to improve an astronaut's mobility. Other new spacesuits are in development, including the one pictured above being modelled by its inventor, Dava Newman, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Instead of being pressurised to protect the body from the vacuum of space, it uses complex ribbing to hug the contours of the occupant's body.
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