Fuzz Gloves for Astronauts

Up there in the International Space Station (and later, when we build a *real* space station), astronauts are flying around with reckless abandon, careening into each other, bumping experiments, accidently hitting buttons, and generally making a nuisance of themselves -- and that's only on the inside.

Now, they could wear magnetic shoes, but then we'd have to lift up a chunk of iron the size of the Titanic into orbit to use them, and God help them if they used them around CRT's or magnetic storage media. Or they could use Velcro footwear, but shoes are not nearly as dextrous as gloves, and they might kick something they shouldn't.

The answer is to make fuzzy Velcro gloves. For inside the ISS, make them without fingers (like gloves used in weight training) so they can still do things like push buttons, flip switches, and toggle...er, toggles. For outside the ISS they could make the palm of the spacesuit gloves out of Velcro so astronauts could get a good grip on things -- wrenches, beams, the side of the space station -- so something doesn't fly into orbit. Then stick brightly-colored Velcro strips everywhere they would normally want to go.

To improve it a bit farther, color code the strips for each section of the station, perhaps making them elongated arrows with the point aiming toward the appropriate section (bright red for docking bays, green for life sciences, blue for sleeping quarters, etc.). That way even newcomers to the station know where everything is.