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Showing help on 'space suits'
Space suitsA space suit keeps you alive where the air can't: wear it, seal the helmet, and you breathe the suit's own oxygen.
Suiting up: take a suit from a suit locker and 'wear suit'. The helmet starts open. 'suit seal' (or 'seal suit') closes it.
Sealed in ship air, the suit fills with pure oxygen at cabin pressure. Stay like that a while to prebreathe (see help breathing).
Then 'suit pressure low' drops it to about 30 kPa, soft enough to move in. 'suit pressure high' goes back up. Near a locker its hose supplies the oxygen.
Commands while wearing one: 'suit' shows oxygen, scrubber, battery, leaks and time left. 'lamp on|off'. 'boots on|off' (magnetic boots).
'radio <message>' talks to every sealed suit nearby with its radio on; 'radio on|off'. 'suit unseal' opens the helmet; 'remove suit' needs it open.
Supplies: about 8 hours of oxygen, CO2 scrubber and battery. The battery runs heater, fans, lamp and radio; when it dies the fans stop and CO2 builds up.
Alarms warn you at 30 minutes of oxygen, low battery, a spent scrubber and falling pressure. A hard suit weighs about 60 kg: heavy under gravity, nothing in free fall.
Damage: the suit is armour everywhere. A hit that gets through punches a hole; air leaks out through it, faster the bigger it is.
The tank keeps topping the suit up until it runs dry, so a small hole costs time and a big one costs minutes.
'patch me with kit' (or 'use kit') closes a hole up to a couple of centimetres. Bigger than that: get inside.
Suit lockers refill oxygen, charge batteries and bake scrubbers clean while suits sit inside. 'look locker' shows each suit.
Other suits: a skinsuit (mechanical counterpressure) is light and only leaks if the helmet is holed.
A gelfield suit (Culture tech) shrugs off small hits, closes its own holes, seals itself in bad air and lasts for days.
See also: help breathing, help eva.