KVO Liquid Cooling Garment

KVO Liquid Cooling Garment

A KVO Liquid Cooling Garment designed to be worn underneath an Orlan EVA Spacesuit. A series of plastic tubes are inter-woven into a lightweight nylon knotted net suit, through which liquid is pumped to draw heat away from the wearer's body.

In the vacuum of space there is no heat convection to help the body to lose heat. Despite space being a cold place, inside a spacesuit heat eventually builds up to dangerous levels - as it can only be lost slowly through thermal radiation. To fix this problem a cool liquid glycol mixture is pumped through a series of polyvinyl chloride tubes sewn into the garment. This liquid then warms up as it passes around the body through the tubes - drawing the heat away. The liquid is then cooled again through a heat exchanger unit in the life support assembly inside the backpack of the Orlan Spacesuit, allowing the process to continually repeat and keep the wearer cool.

It is hard to pin down liquid cooling suit technology to a single inventor, as the American, British, and Soviets all looked to find ways of cooling down pilots and astronauts. An early liquid cooling suit was demonstrated to NASA by British Flight Lieutenant John Billingham, from the RAF Institute of Aviation Medicine. Billingham proposed a water-cooled system for astronauts, improving on earlier air ventilated garments and playing a key role in the development of the technology. The first liquid cooled suit had been developed by Burton and Collier in 1962 at the Royal Aircraft Establishment, and it was their work that led to NASA’s interest in the technology and the subsequent re-development for spaceflight purposes. Soviet liquid cooling suit technology was developed in parallel, although it is likely that espionage played a part in keeping up with NASA's designs.