Washington Space Grant Consortium

LIFESUIT Exoskeleton Gives the Gift of Walking so They Shall Walk. Recent studies have shown the majority of paralyzed people who participate in passive exercise therapy will regain mobility and learn to walk'." 111 The current medical system only pays for one session per week or month. i" The LIFE SUIT therapy system will allow a full therapy session to be recorded". By outfitting the therapist with a telemetry suit, the patient in the LIFESUIT can be moved through the entire exercise routine. The recordings are stored in a patient profile", for future use. The recorded session could be "played back" allowing the paralyzed person to exercise daily and get the exercise they need to fully recover. Collaboration between the They Shall Walk.org clinic in Seattle and other physical therapy clinics in India, Nepal, Kenya and other parts of the world will facilitate faster development of exercise and therapy recordings that can then be shared. The LIFE SUIT Exoskeleton prototype allows actual recovery from paralysis using the existing funded therapy and exercise sessions.

Highly loaded composite struts from a proposed truss-based Altair lunar lander descent stage concept were selected for development under NASA's Advanced Composites Technology program. Predicted compressive member forces during launch and ascent of over -100,000 lbs were much greater than the tensile loads. Therefore, compressive failure modes, including structural stability, were primary design considerations. NASA's industry partner designed and built highly loaded struts that were delivered to NASA for testing. Their design, fabricated on a washout mandrel, had a uniform-diameter composite tube with composite tapered ends. Each tapered end contained a titanium end fitting with facing conical ramps that are overlaid and overwrapped with composite materials. The highly loaded struts were loaded in both tension and compression, with ultimate failure produced in compression. Results for the two struts tested are presented and discussed, along with measured deflections, strains and observed failure mechanisms.