2UE High heels and space habitats

That's right Mike,
Some of your readers will be familiar with the air bag technology that professional athletes have in their shoes to cushion their feet from impacts.
Now researchers have found women wearing high heels are exposing their feet to very similar stresses because of the angle the foot hits the ground.
The result of the research is a high heel with professional airbags inside - sort of high fashion meets the basketball court.
They're a bit of a mystery to us men, but high heels create an illusion that a woman's legs are longer than they really are.
The feet of wearers are slanted down while the toes are forced to bend up.
This causes wearers to adopt what is regarded as a bit of a sexy stance, with the hips thrust forward.
But the stance also puts enormous stresses on the bodies of wearers.
Cole Haan, the makers of the new Tivona Air Sling heel, found women walking in 10 cm heels came down on their heel with the same force as they would if they were running.
They found wearers were regularly tottering forward because the thin, elevated heels required them to unevenly distribute their weight.
Over time the whole shape of women's feet was change.
The company worked with the athletic footwear manufacturer Nike to develop a solution to the problem.
Nike's Zoom air bag, which are normally used in basketball shoes, were adapted and inserted in the heel and under the front sole the new shoes.
The air bag consists two layers of fabric connected by thousands of fibres.
The fabric layers are surrounded with pressurised gas and encased in, and attached to, a flexible plastic capsule.
At rest the fibres between the fabrics keep the capsule from bulging.
When compressed by a foot fall the capsule compresses and then springs back into shape to provide cushioning.
The end result is apparently a comfortable high heel and women are raving about them in the States where they were developed.



That's right Mike.
The world's space agencies are looking at setting up temporary and permanent bases on the Moon and Mars and when they astronauts get there, they're going to need somewhere to live
Sending up steel structures is costly and inefficient and so a light and strong alternative is being sought.
Now a Sydney academic has come up with what he says is the answer and if you've ever seen an inflatable jumping castle at a fete, well that's kind of the idea.
Dr Alexey Kondyurin from the University of Sydney proposes we make space stations and Moon and Mars bases from flexible fabric, which can
be easily packed on a rocket.
Once in space or on a planet such as Mars, the structures would be unfurled, inflated and exposed to sunlight. A new resin he has developed would then cause the structures to harden in minutes, making them rigid, tough and suitable for use by humans in space.
The European space agency is looking at something along these lines and with NASA hoping to land on the moon the technology could come in very useful.
The process of making these space habitats would begin on Earth.
A modern textile such as carbon fibre would be shaped into the form of a space station or planet habitat module.
The polymer liquid resin would be applied to the structure, but would not yet harden.
The prepared habitat would be then placed in a capsule and launched into space.
At the required destination the habitat would be removed and inflated using compressed gas.
In the presence of ultra violet light or heat the resin would harden, creating a durable and strong shell. This could then be fitted out by
astronauts.
Kondyurin said a cylindrical habitat which could be packed to be 10-metres long and have a four-metre diametre, could be unfurled in space
to be 100-metres long and have a 10-metre diametre.
So solar system, here we come...