Speaker 1: Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: I'm an executive producer with iHeart Podcasts and How the
Speaker 1: Tech Are You? So? Currently, on August twenty six, twenty
Speaker 1: twenty four, there is a planned private space launch. SpaceX
Speaker 1: is going to be launching four people into orbit, in fact,
Speaker 1: a high orbit that human beings have not been in
Speaker 1: in quite some time. At least that's the plan. The
Speaker 1: four people include Jared Isaacman he is the billionaire founder
Speaker 1: of Shift four, Scott Petite, Ann Menon, and Sarah Gillis. Now,
Speaker 1: these four private astronauts are planning on going up into
Speaker 1: this very high orbit, as I mentioned before. But the
Speaker 1: thing I think is really audacious and ambitious is that
Speaker 1: the plan is for this to become the first private
Speaker 1: space expedition that will include EVAs extra vehicular activities or
Speaker 1: space walks in the common parlance. And obviously that's a
Speaker 1: huge deal. Like to go out into space with nothing
Speaker 1: but a spacesuit to protect you from the fact that,
Speaker 1: as I have mentioned many times before in this and
Speaker 1: other podcasts, the fact that space is always trying to
Speaker 1: kill you. So I think that's a really exciting goal.
Speaker 1: And it made me think of an episode that we
Speaker 1: published back in twenty twenty one. And because I'm working
Speaker 1: on a few other episodes right now that are taking
Speaker 1: up a lot of time because there's just a lot
Speaker 1: of research to read through, I thought we could revisit
Speaker 1: that episode from twenty twenty one. It published August sixteenth,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty one, so almost exactly three years ago, just
Speaker 1: a little more than that now, and it is titled
Speaker 1: Space Suit Evolution I hope you enjoy. Back in March
Speaker 1: of twenty twenty, just as we were starting to go
Speaker 1: into a work from home phase, I published the episode
Speaker 1: about the Artemis program, you know, the one that I
Speaker 1: actually ran last week, So if you if you did
Speaker 1: miss it back in March twenty twenty, we ran it
Speaker 1: again last week. And that might have even been the
Speaker 1: very first episode that published after our office closed, because
Speaker 1: it published on March sixteenth, twenty twenty, and from a
Speaker 1: desk calendar that refuses to change, I know the last
Speaker 1: day that most people were in the office was March thirteenth,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty. Anyway, in that episode, in case you didn't
Speaker 1: listen to the rerun from last week, I described the
Speaker 1: goals in the purpose of NASA's Artemis program, which includes
Speaker 1: a return to the Moon, and I'm sure that I
Speaker 1: mentioned probably moreultiple times that it was an incredibly aggressive goal,
Speaker 1: one that I was kind of having trouble seeing NASA
Speaker 1: actually achieve. It just seemed like it was too tough
Speaker 1: of a thing to do to have it be done
Speaker 1: by twenty twenty four. Well, NASA's Office of the Inspector
Speaker 1: General has outright said that the twenty twenty four goal
Speaker 1: is unachievable because one of the necessary components, that being
Speaker 1: a new space suit design, will not be ready until
Speaker 1: the spring of twenty twenty five at the earliest. That's
Speaker 1: not the only thing that's going to push that program back,
Speaker 1: but it's one of the big ones. So I thought
Speaker 1: today we would talk a bit about space suits and
Speaker 1: their history, and then in our next episode we'll continue
Speaker 1: that and talk about the current project to update space
Speaker 1: suits and why has it taken so long? Why are
Speaker 1: we behind schedule? But to start off with, let's talk
Speaker 1: about why you need a space suit out there in
Speaker 1: the first place. Now, those of you have been listening
Speaker 1: to tech stuff for a while know that I have
Speaker 1: a saying, Actually I've got a few of them, but
Speaker 1: one of them is space is trying to kill you
Speaker 1: all the time. It never rests, and it's always trying
Speaker 1: to do it. And there are a lot of ways
Speaker 1: that space is doing this. One is that space, like
Speaker 1: one of those terrible restaurants, has a complete lack of atmosphere.
Speaker 1: I mean, like there's no oxygen out there, so you'd
Speaker 1: have nothing to breathe. You could pass out within fifteen
Speaker 1: seconds just from that alone. Beyond that, your blood could
Speaker 1: boil in space. And that might seem a bit counterintuitive
Speaker 1: after all, Like if you're talking about deep space, that's cold, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, like if you're talking about deep deep space
Speaker 1: you're outside of the Solar System, that would just be
Speaker 1: a couple of degrees off from absolute zero, which is
Speaker 1: the coldest temperature possible because at absolute zero, there's no
Speaker 1: molecular movement at all. Atoms are just kind of perfectly still.
Speaker 1: Normally they're vibrating all around the place. So with the
Speaker 1: temper sure that cold, you would probably expect to freeze
Speaker 1: rather than to boil. I'll come back to the temperature
Speaker 1: thing in just a second, but here's the tricky bit. See,
Speaker 1: for heat to dissipate, you need to have a way
Speaker 1: to transfer it away from one body to another, and
Speaker 1: without convection, the heat would tend to stay with you
Speaker 1: for a bit. Though you wouldn't stay warm for long.
Speaker 1: It's just you wouldn't immediately turn into an ice lolly.
Speaker 1: Now that means you'd have enough body heat to boil
Speaker 1: off your body fluids and blood. See, the vacuum of
Speaker 1: space means there's very very low pressure. Right, there's no
Speaker 1: air pressure in space, and that would reduce the boiling
Speaker 1: point of the various liquids in your body. And if
Speaker 1: they're reduced down low enough, it means that your body
Speaker 1: heat alone would be enough to boil off those liquids. Now,
Speaker 1: we can totally simulate this on Earth, though preferably not
Speaker 1: with a living creature, by putting you a jar of
Speaker 1: room temperature water in a vacuum chamber and then sucking
Speaker 1: the air out of the chamber, and you can make
Speaker 1: water boil at room temperature. This way, the water does
Speaker 1: not get hotter or anything like that, it just has
Speaker 1: a lower boiling point. Actually, the temperature of your blood
Speaker 1: and body fluids would probably go down as it was boiling,
Speaker 1: because boiling is an endothermic process and the liquid loses
Speaker 1: energy in that process. But we'll move on because we
Speaker 1: got a lot of other stuff to cover in this episode.
Speaker 1: So those boiling body fluids and the low pressure environment
Speaker 1: of space means that all your soft tissues would also
Speaker 1: start to swell and expand that would be uncomfortable if
Speaker 1: it were just you know, like your skin and maybe
Speaker 1: your fat tissue, but it also includes your internal organ
Speaker 1: so that's you know, inconvenient at best. Now. I also
Speaker 1: mentioned that, as con said in Star Trek two, it's
Speaker 1: very cold in space, but that's only part partly true. See,
Speaker 1: if you're exposed to sunlight out in outer space, you
Speaker 1: could experience temperatures of around one hundred and twenty degrees
Speaker 1: celsius or two hundred and forty eight degrees fahrenheit. Now,
Speaker 1: if you're out of the sun, if you are in
Speaker 1: you know, the shade in space, that temperature would plunge,
Speaker 1: though not necessarily all the way down to absolute zero,
Speaker 1: you know, because we reserve the super cold stuff or
Speaker 1: deep space, but it would go really low, like more
Speaker 1: than negative one hundred degrees fahrenheit and that means that
Speaker 1: you're going to encounter vastly different temperatures and changes in temperature.
Speaker 1: Then you've got tiny particles in space that can be
Speaker 1: moving at incredible speeds. These are micro meteoroids, and they
Speaker 1: are tiny, but because of momentum, they can pack a
Speaker 1: huge punch. See that's that classic equation of momentum is
Speaker 1: mass times velocity, So the mass of a some matter
Speaker 1: traveling at a specific velocity, which is you know, speed
Speaker 1: plus direction. So a tiny particle could have very little mass,
Speaker 1: but if it's traveling fast enough, it carries a heck
Speaker 1: of a lot of momentum. I mean, that's the principle
Speaker 1: behind things like projectile weapons, right. They projectiles don't have
Speaker 1: a lot of mass, but they move super fast, so
Speaker 1: they have a lot of momentum and thus they can
Speaker 1: have a big impact. So you would want to wear
Speaker 1: something that could offer at least some protection against that
Speaker 1: kind of stuff. Then you've got the various forms of
Speaker 1: radiation that you would encounter in space. Here on Earth
Speaker 1: we have an atmosphere and a magnetosphere, and together those
Speaker 1: provide us with some protection against some of the worst
Speaker 1: radiation out there, like gamma radiation and that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: But if you're outside of that layer of protection, you
Speaker 1: need something to keep you safe from deadly radiation or
Speaker 1: else you could suffer some serious consequences from acute burns
Speaker 1: to long term health complications like cancer. So obviously, if
Speaker 1: you want to visit someplace like the moon, going to
Speaker 1: need a special suit to provide protection against the multitude
Speaker 1: of ways space is trying to kill you. The suit
Speaker 1: needs to be pressurized and allow you to have a
Speaker 1: breathable atmosphere inside. The suit needs to be able to
Speaker 1: remove carbon dioxide which we exhale so that we can
Speaker 1: continue to breathe oxygen and function. It needs to protect
Speaker 1: against micro meteoroids at least a little bit. Needs to
Speaker 1: keep you at a temperature that's not too hot or
Speaker 1: too cold, even as you exert energy to move around
Speaker 1: and encounter areas of fluctuating temperatures. Ideally, it also will
Speaker 1: include systems that let you communicate with other people. After all,
Speaker 1: because space has a shortage of molecules out there, sound
Speaker 1: does not travel in space. For sound to travel, molecules
Speaker 1: need to vibrate against other molecules. Sound travels through the
Speaker 1: air through air pressure, fluctuations and that really, when you
Speaker 1: zoom in on, the whole thing would just be air
Speaker 1: molecules moving and causing neighboring air molecules to move back
Speaker 1: and forth at certain frequencies. And some of those frequencies
Speaker 1: we can observe as sound, We can perceive them. Space
Speaker 1: does not have that excess of molecules, so there's nothing
Speaker 1: to carry sound out there. So we got to have
Speaker 1: tech systems built into our suits if we want to
Speaker 1: be able to talk to each other or to people
Speaker 1: back on Earth. So those are some of the bare
Speaker 1: minimum requirements that you would want from your spacesuit, you know,
Speaker 1: assuming you were going to go out into space itself.
Speaker 1: The earliest spacesuits were a bit simpler than that because
Speaker 1: they weren't intended to be worn outside of a spacecraft.
Speaker 1: You know, there was no extra vehicular activity or EVA
Speaker 1: in the earliest missions. The spacesuits needed to protect the
Speaker 1: people in the spacecraft from other potential threats like maybe
Speaker 1: a fire aboard the spacecraft. They actually evolved from flight suits.
Speaker 1: So let's start with flight suits and work our way up,
Speaker 1: all right, So the earliest aviation outfits were for low
Speaker 1: altitude flying, because that's what the aircraft of the day
Speaker 1: were capable of so early pilots all the way up
Speaker 1: into the World War One era would wear some pretty
Speaker 1: simple gear. There were a few attempts at creating official
Speaker 1: pilot uniforms and suits in the early days of World
Speaker 1: War One, but many pilots chose to go up with
Speaker 1: their own gear instead, as the suits weren't necessarily a
Speaker 1: good fit I mean, so to speak, not like literally fit,
Speaker 1: but like they didn't provide the level of protection against
Speaker 1: the cold, for example, that a lot of pilots wanted.
Speaker 1: So this was actually approved by the military. I mean,
Speaker 1: air combat was so new anyway that it was kind
Speaker 1: of the military catching up to technology. Most of the gear,
Speaker 1: whether it was provided by the military or the pilots themselves,
Speaker 1: was either repurposed or modified motoring gear, so the kind
Speaker 1: of stuff that people who were driving automobiles were wearing.
Speaker 1: So this is where we would get that image of
Speaker 1: pilots wearing bomber jackets and baggy trousers. They were practical
Speaker 1: in that they helped the pilot to stay warm and
Speaker 1: offered a bit of protection against stuff like you know,
Speaker 1: debris that you might encounter or oil that was given
Speaker 1: off by the engine, and for that same reason, pilots
Speaker 1: typically wore goggles to protect their eyes, and gloves to
Speaker 1: protect their hands, and helmets to you know, protect their noggins.
Speaker 1: This was in the open cockpit days when airplanes did
Speaker 1: not travel to super high altitudes, so there wasn't really
Speaker 1: a need for pressurization yet. Also, the temperatures in winter
Speaker 1: could dip as low as negative thirty five celsius when
Speaker 1: flying at altitudes of ten to fifteen thousand feet, which
Speaker 1: was kind of, you know, not uncommon in some parts
Speaker 1: of the world during World War One, so staying warm
Speaker 1: was absolutely vital. Then there was this fella named Sidney
Speaker 1: Cotton from Australia who helped develop a flight suit that
Speaker 1: had a fur and air proof silk lining in it
Speaker 1: to protect against the cold. His design was so well
Speaker 1: received and it became known as the Sidcot flight suit
Speaker 1: for Sydney Cotton. It became the standard for the second
Speaker 1: half of World War One for especially the Royal Air Force,
Speaker 1: so the sid Cut suits became pretty much universal there.
Speaker 1: The first actual flight suit that was made specifically to
Speaker 1: handle the challenges of flying in a plane at higher
Speaker 1: altitudes was the product of a pilot named Wiley Post
Speaker 1: who along with the company BF Goodrich, created this flight
Speaker 1: suit and the suit was pressurized. It had special arm
Speaker 1: and leg joints to help the pilot with mobility because
Speaker 1: when you pressurize a suit, I mean you're kind you're
Speaker 1: inflating essentially, is what you're doing. So you have to
Speaker 1: have some way of dealing with mobility issues because the
Speaker 1: suit gets stiff because it's like you're inside a giant balloon.
Speaker 1: And also they connected the suit to a source of
Speaker 1: liquid oxygen to end up supplying air for the higher altitudes.
Speaker 1: By World War Two, the nature of air combat had
Speaker 1: changed and you had bombers that could fly at very
Speaker 1: high altitudes. But in the days before pressurized cabins, it
Speaker 1: meant that the people inside the planes needed to wear
Speaker 1: special flight suits with electric heating elements in them to
Speaker 1: fight off the cold at those higher altitudes. And just
Speaker 1: as a reminder, electric heaters are really simple electronics. Basically,
Speaker 1: you have a conductor that has a pretty good resistance
Speaker 1: to electrical flow, and then you try to feed a
Speaker 1: current through that conductor. So as electricity tries to flow
Speaker 1: through this conductor that has high resistance, a lot of
Speaker 1: that electrical energy converts into heat, and this is the
Speaker 1: principle behind stuff like electric stovetops and electric toasters. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's similar to how incandescent light bulbs work in a
Speaker 1: way as well. And I should add that there was
Speaker 1: some experimentation with electric heated components even back as far
Speaker 1: as World War One, but they were pretty primitive. In addition,
Speaker 1: they were typically powered by a small windmill generator that
Speaker 1: could be mounted onto the wing of a plane, and
Speaker 1: a normal operation that was fine. But if the pilot
Speaker 1: ever had to engage in say like a dive, where
Speaker 1: the velocity of the air going past the plane increased dramatically,
Speaker 1: well that would coincide with an increased output from the
Speaker 1: windmill generator, and then you could have way too much
Speaker 1: voltage being supplied to the heating elements, and the pilot
Speaker 1: could actually get burned by these components that were meant
Speaker 1: to keep the pilot warm as they flew, which is
Speaker 1: kind of a big yikes. But over time the flight
Speaker 1: suit evolved, pressurization, heating elements, oxygen supply, protective elements like helmets,
Speaker 1: and the development of flame retardet materials all became part
Speaker 1: of the design of flight suits, and post World War
Speaker 1: Two we entered into an era of new experimentation with
Speaker 1: regard to high altitude flying and really pushing the limits
Speaker 1: of both aircraft and human endurance. Part of that was
Speaker 1: how human can handle acceleration or G forces, so like
Speaker 1: G force being in relation to the strength of gravity
Speaker 1: right at sea level essentially, but one G is one
Speaker 1: one to one of Earth's gravity. Well, that last bit about,
Speaker 1: you know, withstanding acceleration was super important because during intense acceleration,
Speaker 1: humans have a tendency to black out. I mean, obviously,
Speaker 1: when you're piloting a craft through the air or in space,
Speaker 1: that's a bad thing. I mean, it's not really a
Speaker 1: good thing in any context, I suppose. But what is
Speaker 1: going on here? Why do we black out at higher accelerations. Well,
Speaker 1: during those intense accelerations, our blood tends to pool in
Speaker 1: the lower part of our body, and that means the
Speaker 1: old brain ain't getting enough of that sweet, sweet oxygen
Speaker 1: that it craves oh so much. And this can lead
Speaker 1: to a grayout, which is where your vision starts to diminish,
Speaker 1: or a full on blackout where you lose your vision
Speaker 1: and even a loss of consciousness. Now, the suits developed
Speaker 1: in the nineteen forties and nineteen fifties used various means,
Speaker 1: such as inflatable bladders that could fill with either air
Speaker 1: or with water in some cases, to provide pressure on
Speaker 1: the lower parts of the body and help push back
Speaker 1: against that tendency for blood to pool in the lower
Speaker 1: half of the body. Even so, this typically only allows
Speaker 1: a pilot to endure a little more acceleration than whatever
Speaker 1: their natural tolerance is, so that's somewhere in between three
Speaker 1: to five times the force of gravity for most people. Interestingly,
Speaker 1: the development of these components was something of a controversy
Speaker 1: in that the people who were building the planes, the
Speaker 1: engineers building planes, were kind of worried that if pilots
Speaker 1: knew that they could push themselves harder because their suits
Speaker 1: would allow them to withstand greater acceleration, that they would
Speaker 1: bloody well go and do that, even if it meant
Speaker 1: that they were pushing the aircraft beyond its own stress capabilities.
Speaker 1: And so some air forces, some you know, some some
Speaker 1: flight schools and stuff, chose to hold back on incorporating
Speaker 1: what would become known as G suits for a while
Speaker 1: in an effort to avoid encouraging pilots to you know,
Speaker 1: go fast. Oh. Also, interestingly, one person to experiment with
Speaker 1: g suit development in the early forties was a guy
Speaker 1: named Frank Cotton from Australia. I say interestingly because if
Speaker 1: you were listening earlier, you heard me talk about Sydney Cotton,
Speaker 1: also from Australia. Who is the fella who came up
Speaker 1: with that Sidcot suit? So your question is, were Frank
Speaker 1: and Sydney Cotton related? I have no cotton pick an idea.
Speaker 1: That was a long way to go for something that
Speaker 1: wasn't even quite a joke. In fact, I think it
Speaker 1: was long enough where we all need to take a
Speaker 1: quick break, but we'll be right back. So by the
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties, the flight suit had evolved into gear that
Speaker 1: was meant to provide various types of protection to pilots.
Speaker 1: With the creation of pressurized cabins with climate control, some
Speaker 1: of the stuff was less important, right, Some of the
Speaker 1: pressurization things and the heat elements weren't as important and
Speaker 1: didn't need to be incorporated into some flight suits. But
Speaker 1: flight suits still needed to be flame resistant, they needed
Speaker 1: to allow for mobility, and they needed to provide protection
Speaker 1: in the event that a pilot needed to eject from
Speaker 1: their aircraft, and also for anything that was involving a
Speaker 1: lot of like intense acceleration, you needed to have that
Speaker 1: G suit protection. But now let's move on to space suits, because,
Speaker 1: as I said earlier, they evolved from flight suits. The
Speaker 1: space race that got started in the nineteen fifties was
Speaker 1: really an extension of the Cold War and a race
Speaker 1: between the United States and the then Soviet Union to
Speaker 1: reach certain milestones before the other could, all while also
Speaker 1: demonstrating a technological capability of raining destruction down on the
Speaker 1: other country should it all come to that. So in
Speaker 1: some ways this was a struggle to clean technological superiority
Speaker 1: over a rival. The Soviets really got the jump on
Speaker 1: the Americans with the launch of Sputnik in nineteen fifty seven,
Speaker 1: marking the first time a human made satellite entered Earth orbit,
Speaker 1: and they would also be the first to put a
Speaker 1: person into space. The first spacesuit emerged from the then
Speaker 1: Soviet Union as part of its cosmonaut program. It had
Speaker 1: the designation of SK one. The SK stood for some
Speaker 1: Russian words that translate roughly into space diving suit because
Speaker 1: the suit had some features similar to like a deep
Speaker 1: sea diving suit, think of like the big daddies in BioShock,
Speaker 1: and even this was an evolution of earlier flight suits
Speaker 1: worn by Soviet jet fighter pilots. The first human to
Speaker 1: go into space was Yuri Gagarin in nineteen sixty one,
Speaker 1: and Gageron's trip was aboard a space capsule and he
Speaker 1: wasn't going to exit the capsule while in space, so
Speaker 1: he didn't need to have the full extra vehicular activity
Speaker 1: style spacesuit. However, because the Soviets had not yet developed
Speaker 1: a spacecraft that could land safely, he would have to
Speaker 1: eject during descent and then parachute down from an altitude
Speaker 1: of around twenty thousand feet. So these are the sort
Speaker 1: of factors that went into the design of the suit.
Speaker 1: They had to make a suit that would be able
Speaker 1: to do these kind of things. The suit had a
Speaker 1: helmet that had a visor that could be lowered down
Speaker 1: over the face. In fact, it had a pressure sensor.
Speaker 1: If the pressure sensor detected a decrease in pressure a
Speaker 1: rapid decompression, then the visor could slam down and seal it.
Speaker 1: The helmet was permanently attached to the suit. You could
Speaker 1: only the helmet off by taking off the whole darn suit.
Speaker 1: Worn Under the helmet was a leather covered radio headset
Speaker 1: below the helmet on the suit was a collar that
Speaker 1: could inflate in the event that Gageron landed in the water.
Speaker 1: That would allow him to keep his head above water
Speaker 1: if that were the case, because again, since the helmet
Speaker 1: couldn't be removed, there was no getting out of that
Speaker 1: suit quickly in the case of water landing, but an
Speaker 1: inflated collar could keep his head above the level of water.
Speaker 1: The fabric of the suit was nylon, which is a
Speaker 1: synthetic polymer, and it was bright orange in color to
Speaker 1: make it easier to spot Gagern upon his return. The
Speaker 1: suit also had gloves with leather palms and heavy leather boots,
Speaker 1: and the suit did the job. Gageran returned safely to
Speaker 1: Earth after spending more than an hour and a half
Speaker 1: orbiting the planet. One time, he reportedly startled a farmer
Speaker 1: and his daughter as he returned. When he landed, his
Speaker 1: walking through the countryside, dragging a parachute behind him, dressed
Speaker 1: in a big orange suit and having a big helmet on,
Speaker 1: and he tried his best to assure them that he
Speaker 1: was a Soviet just like they were, and all he
Speaker 1: needed was a telephone in order to call Moscow, which
Speaker 1: I just think is a great story. Meanwhile, over the
Speaker 1: United States, there was the same rush to get to space,
Speaker 1: and at that point it was a rush to catch
Speaker 1: up to the Soviets because they had beaten America to
Speaker 1: the punch. Engineers were already working on suit designs that
Speaker 1: would be suitable to allow astronauts to go outside of
Speaker 1: a spacecraft, perhaps even walking on the Moon. But these
Speaker 1: were in the earliest stages of development. They were in
Speaker 1: the prototype stage. And I saw pictures of one of
Speaker 1: the early pressurized suits and it literally looked like it
Speaker 1: came out of a Ed Wood science fiction film. If
Speaker 1: you don't know who that is, Plan nine from Outer
Speaker 1: Space director, just the cheesiest of nineteen fifty style sci
Speaker 1: fi B movies. And the engineer inside the suit was
Speaker 1: wearing it looked like kind of a metal barrel for
Speaker 1: the torso, like think of like one of those ten
Speaker 1: wind up robot toys. It kind of looked like that
Speaker 1: had segmented sleeves that covered the arms, had a helmet
Speaker 1: with a glass visor that looked kind of like the
Speaker 1: head of a Lego figurine kind of had that cylindrical
Speaker 1: look to it. They were a long way away from
Speaker 1: the modern space suit, is what I'm saying. The Mercury seven,
Speaker 1: the pilots suit trained to be part of Project Mercury,
Speaker 1: which was our first attempt to send people to space,
Speaker 1: relied upon a flight suit called the Navy Mark four,
Speaker 1: which was designed by the BF good Rich Company. The
Speaker 1: heritage for the Mark four had traced its history all
Speaker 1: the way back to Wiley Post, whom I mentioned before
Speaker 1: the break, and in fact they even had the same designer,
Speaker 1: a guy named Russell Colly worked on both of those.
Speaker 1: The suit had a zipper that extended from the left
Speaker 1: shoulder and moved diagonally down across the torso and ended
Speaker 1: at the waist. There are also a couple of other zippers.
Speaker 1: There were two at the neck and one around the waist,
Speaker 1: which made it quote unquote easier to get in and
Speaker 1: out of the suit. But when I say easier, just
Speaker 1: know that I don't mean easy, just easier than some
Speaker 1: other one piece suits. The suit covered the entire body
Speaker 1: except for the head and hands, which were covered by
Speaker 1: a detachable helmet and gloves, respectively. So the boots were
Speaker 1: built into it, but the gloves were not. The helmet
Speaker 1: containing the microphones and speakers were there to serve as
Speaker 1: a communication system for the astronauts. The visor was made
Speaker 1: out of plexiglass. The visor could also be raised out
Speaker 1: of the way or lowered into place and then sealed
Speaker 1: with the pneumatic seal, so again it could provide a
Speaker 1: pressurized environment for the astronauts if necessary. The gloves attached
Speaker 1: to the suit through a tent ball bearing lock. I
Speaker 1: do not know what that means. I mean, I know
Speaker 1: it's a lock, but I haven't looked into how it
Speaker 1: actually worked. But anyway, the purpose for it was to
Speaker 1: give the astronauts a little bit more wrisk mobility when
Speaker 1: come without you know, compromising the fact that you need
Speaker 1: to have a seal there with the rest of the suit,
Speaker 1: otherwise you would have a leak. Right. The index and
Speaker 1: middle fingers on both gloves had little red lights incorporated
Speaker 1: into them, and these were fed by batteries that were
Speaker 1: located in a battery pack on the back side of
Speaker 1: the gloves. The torso section had two major layers. The
Speaker 1: inner layer was made of neoprene and nylon, and the
Speaker 1: outer layer had an illuminized nylon fabric designed to reflect
Speaker 1: heat away from the astronaut. You know, inside the suit,
Speaker 1: a neck ring secured the helmet in place, with an
Speaker 1: additional tied down strap to keep the helmet in place
Speaker 1: so that should the suit be pressurized, the helmet wouldn't
Speaker 1: rise up and block the astronaut's vision. Yeah, that's going
Speaker 1: to become important because I'm going to talk about a
Speaker 1: case where something like that happened to a Russian cosmonaut
Speaker 1: and how it could have been disastrous. So this suit
Speaker 1: used a pressurization system to keep pressure inside the suit
Speaker 1: close to Earth levels. It also used cords on the
Speaker 1: suit to restrict the suit's tendency to expand like a balloon,
Speaker 1: which would severely limit maneuverability. The Mercury spacecraft itself was pressurized,
Speaker 1: so the suits didn't have to be pressurized for normal operation,
Speaker 1: and that made things a little bit easier for the
Speaker 1: astronauts who were piloting the spacecraft because they didn't They
Speaker 1: had a little more mobility, although they couldn't do much
Speaker 1: with that mobility because they were in a tiny, tiny spacecraft.
Speaker 1: It was only large enough for one person, and even
Speaker 1: then it was cramped The suits also incorporated aluminium in
Speaker 1: the materials. Like I mentioned, that provided extra strength compared
Speaker 1: to earlier flight suits. But again, these suits were meant
Speaker 1: to be worn inside the capsule only these were not
Speaker 1: suits that could be worn out in space on their own.
Speaker 1: They also didn't have good temperature control. Basically, the oxygen
Speaker 1: system they had served as the cooling system. So basically
Speaker 1: the way the oxygen system worked was that it had
Speaker 1: a tube would attach to the suit at the waist
Speaker 1: and oxygen would come in through that tube at the
Speaker 1: wasst Oxygen would then circulate a bit through tubes running
Speaker 1: inside the suit to help cool down the astronaut, and
Speaker 1: then it would eventually make its way up to the helmet,
Speaker 1: and then excess would exit out the right side of
Speaker 1: the helmet into a different tube including carbon dioxide. There
Speaker 1: was also some biosensors and a connector in the suit
Speaker 1: to allow the suit to connect to the spacecraft's instruments
Speaker 1: that would allow NASA to monitor astronaut vital signs and stuff.
Speaker 1: On the left arm of the suit was a pressure indicator,
Speaker 1: so that should the suit be pressurized, the astronaut would
Speaker 1: be able to see what the pressure level was in
Speaker 1: the suit pretty easily. And underneath all of this, the
Speaker 1: astronauts wore a one piece lightweight cotton body suit, so
Speaker 1: lots of layers here. Alan Shepard became the first American
Speaker 1: to go to space one month after Gagarin's achievement. Shepherd's
Speaker 1: flight was sub orbital, however, he did not go into orbit.
Speaker 1: John Glenn would be the first American to orbit the
Speaker 1: Earth in nineteen sixty two, and he completed three orbits
Speaker 1: before returning back to Earth. Both Shepherd and Glenn wore
Speaker 1: versions of the Mercury spacesuit. But let's hop back over
Speaker 1: to the Soviet Union to talk about suits designed to
Speaker 1: keep humans safe out in space itself without the benefits
Speaker 1: of a having a spacecraft around you. So the Soviets
Speaker 1: were the first to have a person take a trip
Speaker 1: outside a spacecraft on a spacewalk, which happened in March
Speaker 1: of nineteen sixty five. That person was Alexei Leonov. He
Speaker 1: would have to enter an airlock and inflatable airlock. He
Speaker 1: would then have that and he'd be in the airlock
Speaker 1: while his co cosmonaut would release pressure so that there
Speaker 1: could be an equalization of the lack of pressure out
Speaker 1: in space and the air pressure that's inside the capsule,
Speaker 1: and they could transfer outside of the Vokschad to spacecraft
Speaker 1: and then spend a few minutes outside doing a spacewalk,
Speaker 1: and he remained connected to the capsule by a tether,
Speaker 1: so he wouldn't float off aimlessly into space, and the
Speaker 1: Soviets would learn some pretty valuable lessons. Nearly at the
Speaker 1: expense of Leonov's life. His spacesuit had been called the
Speaker 1: Burcut spacesuit. Burcut was actually the name the spacecraft was
Speaker 1: a Vakshod two, but it had the name of Burcut,
Speaker 1: which means golden eagle, and his suit had a hermetic
Speaker 1: casing layer on top of the pressurized space suit and
Speaker 1: came complete with a shoulder pack in which the suits
Speaker 1: two oxygen cylinders were mounted, so he was carrying his
Speaker 1: oxygen to supply on his suit. This would be different
Speaker 1: from the way the Americans would do it with Project
Speaker 1: Gemini or Jiminy, if you prefer. It was really hard
Speaker 1: to find any solid details about this suit, but there
Speaker 1: are a few things I can say for sure. One
Speaker 1: is that the spacesuit was really bulky even before going
Speaker 1: into space, but once in space the suit became even bulkier,
Speaker 1: so again, imagine being inside an inflated balloon, and he
Speaker 1: started to get the picture. There was a lack of
Speaker 1: pressure outside the suit, so the suit expanded in every direction.
Speaker 1: That meant that Leonov found that his hands were no
Speaker 1: longer securely in his gloves, like his fingers were no
Speaker 1: longer in the fingertips of his gloves because the arms
Speaker 1: of the spacesuit expanded beyond the length of his arms.
Speaker 1: The same thing was happening with his feet, like his
Speaker 1: feet were no longer firmly in the boot section of
Speaker 1: his suit, and he was having issues seeing through the
Speaker 1: helmet as well. That also meant that he would no
Speaker 1: longer be able to go back into the spacecraft the
Speaker 1: way they had trained, which was to go in through
Speaker 1: the airlock feet first, So instead he had to figure
Speaker 1: out a way to pull himself inside headfirst, and he
Speaker 1: said it took a really long time, and he had
Speaker 1: a limited amount of oxygen, about forty five minutes worth total.
Speaker 1: He also started overheating. He found that the strain of
Speaker 1: moving around inside the suit out in space was pretty intense,
Speaker 1: and it was causing him to get really hot inside
Speaker 1: the suit. The material of the suit was pretty stiff,
Speaker 1: and due to the inflation issue, it meant that fighting
Speaker 1: against the suit was necessary in order to get anything done.
Speaker 1: He had to not just put forth effort to do
Speaker 1: the thing, but to do the thing against the suit.
Speaker 1: Even though he was only outside for a little bit,
Speaker 1: he was still getting pretty exhausted. So in order to
Speaker 1: make his way back back into the airlock, Leonov chose
Speaker 1: to vent some of his oxygen out into space because
Speaker 1: he needed to be able to regain some flexibility inside
Speaker 1: a suit, and it's just fully inflated. He just didn't
Speaker 1: have it. It makes me think of that bit in
Speaker 1: a Christmas story where the kid can't put his arms
Speaker 1: down because he's wrapped up in too many coats. So
Speaker 1: this could have been disastrous, as if he had vented
Speaker 1: too much oxygen out, he could have been starved of oxygen,
Speaker 1: or he could have had a full depressurization of his suit,
Speaker 1: or he could have just suffered the effects of depressurization,
Speaker 1: kind of like the bends if you come up from
Speaker 1: a deep sea dive too quickly. But he was able
Speaker 1: to make it inside the airlock, then he had to
Speaker 1: crunch up into essentially a fetal position so that he
Speaker 1: could turn around, close the airlock and give the signal
Speaker 1: to his commander to pressurize the airlock so that he
Speaker 1: could come back inside the capsule. So this was just
Speaker 1: one of several technical issues that plagued the mission. We'll
Speaker 1: talk about another one in a little bit, but overall
Speaker 1: the was a success and the cosmonauts returned to Earth safely.
Speaker 1: Both the Soviets and Americans included survival kits in their
Speaker 1: spacecraft for returning cosmonauts and returning astronauts to use because
Speaker 1: in the early days, those space capsules were designed to
Speaker 1: either splash down in the ocean, which was the American style,
Speaker 1: or to have, you know, kind of a semi soft
Speaker 1: landing on land, which was the preferred method of the Soviets.
Speaker 1: But while both had some survival and first aid gear
Speaker 1: inside these kits, the Soviets approach was slightly more intense
Speaker 1: because the Soviet kit included a gun. Now the earlier
Speaker 1: kits included a nine millimeters pistol, meant to serve as
Speaker 1: some protection should the cosmonauts land in a remote region
Speaker 1: in Russia and then need to fight off local wildlife,
Speaker 1: which was a very real possibility. On the very mission
Speaker 1: in which Leonov went on his spacewalk, the returning capsule
Speaker 1: malfunctioned on descent and the cosmonauts had to rest control
Speaker 1: from the landing process. They had to get manual control,
Speaker 1: which was in itself an ordeal, and it meant that
Speaker 1: ultimately they landed really far away from their target landing space,
Speaker 1: and actually one hundred miles away from the closest city,
Speaker 1: and they landed in a mountainous, snowy region, and Leonov
Speaker 1: realized that his little nine millimeter pistol, while some comfort,
Speaker 1: would be of little use of He and his fellow
Speaker 1: cosmonaut Belyayev encountered wolves or a bear out in the wilderness,
Speaker 1: which was a possibility, and so Leonov would later commission
Speaker 1: the creation of a new weapon called the TP eighty
Speaker 1: two pistol, which was part sawed off shotgun, part rifle.
Speaker 1: So it it literally had three barrels, It had two
Speaker 1: side by side shotgun barrels, and it had a rifle
Speaker 1: barrel mounted below the shotgun barrels, and it was in
Speaker 1: a pistol form factor, but I mean that pistol would
Speaker 1: pack a heck of a kick, and it also had
Speaker 1: a detachable stock that could convert into a machete, so,
Speaker 1: you know, typical space stuff. The so used capsules used
Speaker 1: by the Russian Space Agency carried a TP eighty two
Speaker 1: aboard as recently as two thousand and seven, before the
Speaker 1: Russians discontinued that practice, although they did use a different
Speaker 1: weapon in its place. Some Russian crews choose not to
Speaker 1: have a gun aboard at all, fearing that the presence
Speaker 1: of a firearm can kind of make things tense out
Speaker 1: in space. But yeah, interesting little side note there. Now,
Speaker 1: when we come back, we'll continue down the path of
Speaker 1: space suit evolution, but first let's take another quick break.
Speaker 1: So Leonov took the first space walk in nineteen sixty five,
Speaker 1: and in the process the Russians learned a lot about
Speaker 1: the limitations of their spacesuits. In general, the American approach
Speaker 1: put more emphasis on comfort and usability than the Russians did.
Speaker 1: But the same time, the Russians managed to get to
Speaker 1: those things first and the Americans didn't. So back to America.
Speaker 1: Starting in nineteen sixty two, so before we had Leonov's spacewalk,
Speaker 1: there was the launch of Project Gemini or Jeminy, depending
Speaker 1: upon your preferred pronunciation. I preferred Gemini, but yeah, Jiminy
Speaker 1: is pretty common when you listen to interviews of the time.
Speaker 1: This was the first two astronaut capsule that the Americans used,
Speaker 1: and there were a couple of different space suits that
Speaker 1: were used in this project, one of which was designed
Speaker 1: for extra vehicular activities or spacewalks. That one was called
Speaker 1: the G four C. But first let's start with the
Speaker 1: G one C. So NASA had to choose which spacesuit
Speaker 1: designed to go with for their Gemini project, and since
Speaker 1: one of the goals for that project was to have
Speaker 1: and astronaut perform a spacewalk, this was a complex issue.
Speaker 1: Astronaut Gus Grissom tested out a suit designed by the
Speaker 1: David Clark Company, later designated as the G one SEA,
Speaker 1: and it had two layers. It had an internal layer
Speaker 1: made out of rubber and neoprene, and it had a
Speaker 1: pressure bladder inside it for the G suit protection, and
Speaker 1: then the outer layer was illuminized, similar to the kind
Speaker 1: of material that the Project Mercury spacesuits used. The outer
Speaker 1: layer was meant to resist the ballooning effect as well.
Speaker 1: There was this suit, by the way, actually went to auction.
Speaker 1: Sothabe's had an auction on it and it went for
Speaker 1: nearly forty four thousand dollars. The Dave Clark Company then
Speaker 1: made a follow up suit called the G two C.
Speaker 1: This would actually serve as the prototype for the Gemini
Speaker 1: spacesuit designs. None of them were flown. These were not
Speaker 1: spacesuits that actually went to space, so they were more
Speaker 1: like a proof of concept, and the company had to
Speaker 1: make additional changes to address some issues and concerns with
Speaker 1: a suit, like for example, there was a visor guard
Speaker 1: on the helmet that made the helmet a bit bulkier,
Speaker 1: and that in turn would make it harder for astronauts
Speaker 1: to move through a spacecraft hatch, so that was one
Speaker 1: of the things they had to address. The first suit
Speaker 1: to actually see use in Project Gemini was the G
Speaker 1: three C, and the G three C had six layers.
Speaker 1: The innermost layer was the rubberized nylon bladder to help
Speaker 1: provide pressure on extremities and prevent blackouts. All the other
Speaker 1: layers were of materials called nylon and nomes, and the
Speaker 1: suit's boots could actually be removed. These were not part
Speaker 1: of the suit themselves. They could lock into place. The
Speaker 1: helmet contained communications equipment, so it really was an evolution
Speaker 1: of earlier suits. The G four C, the next one,
Speaker 1: added a couple of extra layers on top of the
Speaker 1: ones you found on the G three C, and these
Speaker 1: layers were milar insulation, meant to help deal with those
Speaker 1: extreme temperatures that you could encounter when you're out in space.
Speaker 1: The pilot's version of the suit, because the pilot was
Speaker 1: the person who would do the spacewalks, had a sun
Speaker 1: visor as well. You could attached the sun visor to
Speaker 1: the helmet. This would help protect the astronaut from the
Speaker 1: bright rays of the sun because obviously there's no atmosphere,
Speaker 1: so there's nothing there to diffuse that light. To supply
Speaker 1: oxygen to the astronaut inside the suit, the suit actually
Speaker 1: had a hose that connected back to the spacecraft, so
Speaker 1: it didn't have its own on board oxygen. It had
Speaker 1: to connect to the spacecraft when you were out doing
Speaker 1: an EVA. The suit also relied upon air conditioning to
Speaker 1: help manage temperatures, but the astronauts soon found that this
Speaker 1: just wasn't cutting it. The air conditioning wasn't good enough
Speaker 1: to help keep their body temperature low as extra vehicular
Speaker 1: activities often caused a sharp increase in body temperature, and
Speaker 1: not only would it was it uncomfortable, but then you know,
Speaker 1: the astronaut would start sweating pretty badly and soon the
Speaker 1: inside of their helmet would fog up, so it could
Speaker 1: become a real risk. There were a couple of other
Speaker 1: space suits in the Gemini line, with the G four
Speaker 1: c AMU that stands for Astronaut Maneuvering Unit. There was
Speaker 1: also the G five C which was designed to be
Speaker 1: more easily removed. So NASA and the astronauts on the
Speaker 1: Gemini flights experimented with the astronauts removing their spacesuits in
Speaker 1: middle of a mission to see if they could operate
Speaker 1: better within the confines of the capsule without those giant
Speaker 1: suits on, and surprise, surprise, they found out that there
Speaker 1: was a lot easier to do that, and so they
Speaker 1: kind of made this determination that when you're not in
Speaker 1: part of a critical phase of a mission, like if
Speaker 1: you're not in the launch or return or you know,
Speaker 1: things like that or docking, if it's just the normal operations,
Speaker 1: then they could operate outside of these suits, which you know,
Speaker 1: was a nice, nice decision. I guess the Russians similarly
Speaker 1: flew several missions without having their cosmonauts wearing spacesuits inside
Speaker 1: their spacecraft, but in nineteen seventy one, an accident happened
Speaker 1: and a returning Soya's capsule d compressed, and all three
Speaker 1: cosmonauts aboard the Soyu's capsule died because none of them
Speaker 1: were wearing spacesuits. The Soya's capsule itself wasn't even really
Speaker 1: accommodating spacesuits. It wasn't designed to accommodate people, because obviously
Speaker 1: when you're wearing a space suit, you're taking up a
Speaker 1: lot more well space. But this prompted the Soviet Union
Speaker 1: to develop a new emergency recovery spacesuit called the Sokol
Speaker 1: Sokol and that has been in use since nineteen seventy
Speaker 1: three on Russian space flights. The Gemini spacesuit was meant
Speaker 1: to serve as a transition to Apollo missions, as well
Speaker 1: as the A one CA spacesuit based off the G
Speaker 1: four C. Gemini suit was intended for the first block
Speaker 1: of Apollo missions, but tragically, what would later be designated
Speaker 1: Apollo one ended in catastrophe when during a launch test,
Speaker 1: a fire broke out in the crew cabin and killed
Speaker 1: all three members of that mission. The rest of that
Speaker 1: phase of the Apollo mission, which was collectively referred to
Speaker 1: as Black, was canceled, so the A one C never
Speaker 1: saw any use out in space. The second block of
Speaker 1: Apollo missions would need suits designed for extra vehicular activity,
Speaker 1: and this would end up being a really big move
Speaker 1: in NASA's history and a really big move in the
Speaker 1: history of space suits. That is where we're going to
Speaker 1: pick up with the next episode in this series. We'll
Speaker 1: pick up with the creation of the Apollo space suits.
Speaker 1: We'll talk about the issues of what happens when you
Speaker 1: go from flying very short space missions to very long
Speaker 1: space missions aboard spacecraft that do not yet have a toilet,
Speaker 1: because that was a thing. In other words, the next
Speaker 1: episode is going to be growedy, y'all. It's going to
Speaker 1: be gross to the max, so I hope you join
Speaker 1: me for that one. But we'll also talk about how
Speaker 1: the space suit evolved further, what it was like during
Speaker 1: these Space Shuttle era and why NASA was looking to
Speaker 1: update it because really spacesuits had not received a massive
Speaker 1: update since the Space Shuttle era. But that'll all come
Speaker 1: in our next episode. If you have suggestions for topics
Speaker 1: I should cover in future episodes of tech Stuff, please
Speaker 1: reach out to me and let me know what those are.
Speaker 1: The best way to do that is over on Twitter.
Speaker 1: The handle for the show is tech Stuffs HSW and
Speaker 1: I'll talk to you again really soon. Tech Stuff is
Speaker 1: an iHeartRadio production. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
Speaker 1: favorite shows.