Space Forum / Space Flight / January 2006

'best' how?
Cheapest, lightest, best vision, best radiation protection, fastest to
put on while wearing only waist length honey-blonde hair?

It's a compromise.
Consider that normally, you can turn your head easily +-45 degrees,
taking the visual arc to maybe 270 degrees horizontally to 160 degrees
vertically.
So, even 180 degrees will restrict vision a bit.

My ideal helmet would be something with eye position tracking, and some way
of darkening small spots of the helmet rapidly.
So that if a bright light appears, the helmet automatically darkens that
bit, to reduce the glare.
As well as gaze tracking, to allow activation of displays or other
features by glancing at them.

There are several other obvious helmet designs, some with practical
problems at the moment.
Featureless opaque bowl to physically protect the head, with some means
of transferring vision from external cameras or other sensors to the
users eyes.
This has obvious advantages from the radiation protection, and glare
points of view, as well as physical.

Closely fitting helmet - harder to put on, but only has very small
transparent eyeholes, possibly with mechanical eyelids.

This has big problems with the torso-neck seal.

Consider all possible things you might want in a helmet, and you'll
sooner or later find a few that conflict.