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MIT Biosuit is a non-bulky spacesuit that is more like a diving wetsuit for space and the basis for a soft exoskeleton for people with cerebral palsy
The Biosuit is pressurized close to the skin–an advance made possible by tension lines on the suit (those are the Spiderman lines) that don't break when an astronaut bends their arms or knees. Active materials, like nickel-titanium shape-memory alloys, allow the nylon and spandex suit to be shrink-wrapped around the skin even tighter, getting Newman closer to her goal of designing a suit that has 30% of the atmosphere's pressure–the level necessary to keep someone alive in space.
Newman's BioSuit is also resilient. If the suit gets punctured, an astronaut can fix it with a type of space-grade Ace Bandage. That's not possible with today's suits. “With a gas-pressurized shell, it's game over with a puncture,” Newman tells me after her TED talk. And while today's suits can only be fitted to people 5' 5″ and taller, essentially eliminating short women and men from the astronaut program, the BioSuit can be built for smaller people as well.
Source: http://nextbigfuture.com/2013/12/mit-biosuit-is-non-bulky-spacesuit-that.html
