Personal cooling kits for extreme climatic conditions

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January 2, 2006 The human body is a remarkable thing, as is evidenced by its ability to adapt to less than ideal conditions. The temperature in the cockpit of a Formula 1 racing car sometimes reaches 120 degrees Fahrenheit, with the driver required to drive consistently within the 99th percentile of perfection for up to 90 minutes under this overwhelming heat stress whilst racing wheel-to-wheel, experiencing enormous G-forces and constantly processing large amounts of additional information. Now consider the equivalent stresses experienced by combat soldiers in Iraq. HMMWV crews in IRAQ are experiencing temperatures as much as 10 degrees more than this, for up to 12 hours at a time, while people are trying to kill them. The problem has been exacerbated in recent times by additional armour fitted to the HMMWV and has resulted in the rapid development of personal cooling kits. Each HMMWV cooling kit consists of four water-filled vests known as, Air Warrior Microclimatic Cooling Garments (MCGs). The vests fit over a soldier’s normal body armor and are connected via hoses to a vehicles’ on-board air conditioning system. One wonders if Fernando Alonso, Kimi Raikkonen and Michael Schumacher might be able to squeese an extra tenth of a second here and there if they were fitted with such parephenalia.

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