Slate on making electricity through breast power / Crear electricidad con los senos

I've been meaning to write about this article for a while but electricity's not my area of specialty so take anything I write here with a grain of salt; it's pretty much just me thinking out loud. It's about an article from Slate.com about harnessing the power of breast motion to power an iPod. The author was curious one day whether this would be possible since bras are used to keep a moving object as still as possible, and if breasts are always moving down and to the side, and forward (this motion stopped by the cup and the strap, respectively), then it should be possible to harness that motion to create electricity. It's interesting because it parallels a lot of other ideas that you have from time to time, when you see a few hundred people walking up a flight of stairs for example and think shouldn't there be a way to harness all that energy to create electricity? What about an escalator-like staircase that instead moved in reverse, pushed down ever so slowly by people walking up? Or tiles on the ground that generate electricity when pushed down by people walking on top? The author of the piece had a similar idea:

Then one day recently I had an idea. As I rode public transportation to the office, my messenger bag slung uncomfortably across my chest, I thought, "Why not put the girls to work?" Human-powered devices are showing up everywhere, from Rotterdam's sustainable dance floor to human-powered gyms in Hong Kong. The time seemed perfect—perhaps even overdue!—for a bra that could harness the untapped power of breast motion.

Unfortunately I don't have access to any of the specialists she was able to consult for their opinion on the idea:

Then one day recently I had an idea. As I rode public transportation to the office, my messenger bag slung uncomfortably across my chest, I thought, "Why not put the girls to work?" Human-powered devices are showing up everywhere, from Rotterdam's sustainable dance floor to human-powered gyms in Hong Kong. The time seemed perfect—perhaps even overdue!—for a bra that could harness the untapped power of breast motion.

I decided to run the question past some scientists. It turns out that the physics of breast motion have been studied closely for the last two decades by a gamut of researchers, most of them women. LaJean Lawson, a former professor of exercise science at Oregon State University, has studied breast motion since 1985 and now works as a consultant for companies like Nike to develop better sports bra designs. Lawson was enthusiastic about my idea but warned it would be tricky to pull off. You would need the right breast size and the right material, she explained, and the bra itself would have to be cleverly designed. "It's just a matter of finding the sweet spot, between reducing motion to the point where it's comfortable but still allowing enough motion to power your iPod," she said.

This may seem like a bit of a frivolous article but it's actually not when it comes to something like space, where power can be a rare commodity and every bit of weight you can take off before flight counts. Here's the new space suit NASA is designing:

The suit, when worn in its "Operation One" configuration, resembles the current ACES pressure suit worn by NASA astronauts on Space Shuttle flights, but will have new bearings at the shoulders, elbows, knees, ankles, and wrists, making the suit more flexible than the current ACES suit. In addition, the new ACES-based suit will feature a closed-loop enviornmental system, similar to that employed on the Gemini space suit that will give the astronaut complete and total protection (for up to 120 hours) in the event the Orion crew vehicle or the Altair lunar lander undergoes a sudden depressurization.

I know nothing about the details of the suit, but a suit that is able to take advantage of the movement of the user to recharge somewhat in the same way that a Prius recharges a bit while braking couldn't be a bad thing.