Speaker 1: Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: He there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio
Speaker 1: and I love all things tech. And 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, we ran it again last week.
Speaker 1: And uh, that might have even been the very first
Speaker 1: episode that published after our office closed, because it published
Speaker 1: on March six, and from a desk calendar that refuses
Speaker 1: to change, I know the last day that most people
Speaker 1: were in the office was March. Anyway. In that episode,
Speaker 1: in case you didn't listen to the rerun from last week,
Speaker 1: I described the goals and the purpose of NASA's Artemus program,
Speaker 1: which includes a return to the Moon. And I'm sure
Speaker 1: that I mentioned probably multiple times that it was an
Speaker 1: incredibly aggressive goal, one that I was kind of having
Speaker 1: trouble seeing NASA actually achieve. It just seemed like it
Speaker 1: was too tough of a thing to do to have
Speaker 1: it be done by well NASA's Office of the Inspector
Speaker 1: General has outright said that the goal is unachievable because
Speaker 1: one of the necessary components, that being a new space
Speaker 1: suit design, will not be ready until the spring of
Speaker 1: at the earliest. Um. That's not the only thing that's
Speaker 1: going to push that program back, but it's one of
Speaker 1: the big ones. So I thought today we would talk
Speaker 1: a bit about space suits and their history, and then
Speaker 1: in our next episode we'll continue that and talk about
Speaker 1: the current project to update space suits and why has
Speaker 1: it taken so long? Why are we behind schedule? But
Speaker 1: to start off with, let's talk about why you need
Speaker 1: a space suit out there in the first place. Now,
Speaker 1: those of you have been listening to tech stuff for
Speaker 1: a while know that I have a saying. Actually I've
Speaker 1: got a few of them, but one of them is
Speaker 1: space is trying to kill you all the time. It
Speaker 1: never rests, and it's always trying to do it. And
Speaker 1: there are a lot of ways that space is doing this.
Speaker 1: One is that space, like one of those terrible restaurants,
Speaker 1: has a complete lack of atmosphere. I mean, like there's
Speaker 1: no oxygen out there, so you'd have nothing to breathe.
Speaker 1: You could pass out within fifteen seconds. Just from that alone.
Speaker 1: Beyond that, your blood could boil in space, And that
Speaker 1: might seem a bit counterintuitive after all, Like, if you're
Speaker 1: talking about deep space, that's cold, right, I mean, like,
Speaker 1: if you're talking about deep deep space you're outside of
Speaker 1: the Solar system. That would just be a couple of
Speaker 1: degrees off from absolute zero, which is the coldest temperature possible.
Speaker 1: Because an absolute zero there's no molecular movement at all.
Speaker 1: Atoms are just kind of perfectly still. Normally they're vibrating
Speaker 1: all around the place. So with the temperature of that cold,
Speaker 1: you would probably expect to freeze rather than to boil.
Speaker 1: I'll come back to the temperature thing in just a second.
Speaker 1: But here's the tricky bit. See, for heat to dissipate,
Speaker 1: you need to have a way to transfer it away
Speaker 1: from one body to another, and without convection, the heat
Speaker 1: would tend to stay with you for a bit. Though
Speaker 1: you wouldn't stay warm for long. It's just you wouldn't
Speaker 1: immediately turn into an ice lolly. Now that means you'd
Speaker 1: have enough body heat to boil off your body fluids
Speaker 1: and blood. See, the vacuum of space means there's very
Speaker 1: very low pressure. Right, there's no air pressure in space,
Speaker 1: and that would reduce the boiling point of the various
Speaker 1: liquids in your body. And if they're reduced down low enough,
Speaker 1: it means that your body heat alone would be enough
Speaker 1: to boil off those liquids. Now, we can totally simulate
Speaker 1: this on Earth, though preferably not with a living creature,
Speaker 1: by putting you know, a jar of room temperature water
Speaker 1: in a vacuum chamber and then sucking the air out
Speaker 1: of the chamber, and you can make water boil at
Speaker 1: room temperature. This way, the water does not get hotter
Speaker 1: or anything like that, it just has a lower boiling point. Actually,
Speaker 1: the temperature of your blood and body fluids would probably
Speaker 1: go down as it was boiling, because boiling is an
Speaker 1: endothermic process and the liquid loses energy in that process.
Speaker 1: But we'll move on because we've got a lot of
Speaker 1: other stuff to cover in this episode. So those boiling
Speaker 1: body fluids and the low pressure environment of space means
Speaker 1: that all your soft tissues would also start to swell
Speaker 1: and expand that would be uncomfortable if it were just
Speaker 1: you know, like your skin and maybe your fat tissue.
Speaker 1: But it also includes your internal organ So that's you know,
Speaker 1: inconvenient at best. Now I also mean in that, as
Speaker 1: Cohn said in Star Trek two, it's very cold in space,
Speaker 1: but that's only partly true. See, if you're exposed to
Speaker 1: sunlight out in outer space, you could experience temperatures of
Speaker 1: around a hundred twenty degrees celsius or two degrees fahrenheit.
Speaker 1: Now if you're out of the sun, if you are
Speaker 1: in you know, the shade in space, that temperature would plunge, uh,
Speaker 1: though not necessarily all the way down to have absolute zero, uh,
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 on d 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 class sick equation of momentum
Speaker 1: is mass times velocity. So the mass of a some
Speaker 1: some matter traveling at a specific velocity, which is you know,
Speaker 1: speed plus direction so a tiny particle could have very
Speaker 1: little mass, but if it's traveling fast enough, it carries
Speaker 1: a heck of a lot of momentum. I mean, that's
Speaker 1: the principle behind things like projectile weapons, right. They projectiles
Speaker 1: don't have a lot of mass, but they move super fast,
Speaker 1: so they have a lot of momentum, and thus they
Speaker 1: can have a big impact. So you would want to
Speaker 1: wear something that could offer at least some protection against
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff. Uh, then you've got the various
Speaker 1: forms of radiation that you would encounter in space. Here
Speaker 1: on Earth we have an atmosphere and a magnetosphere, and
Speaker 1: together those provide us with some protection against some of
Speaker 1: the worst radiation out there, like gamma radiation and that
Speaker 1: kind of thing. But if you're outside of that layer
Speaker 1: of protection, you need something to keep you safe from
Speaker 1: deadly radiation or else you could suffer some serious consequences
Speaker 1: from acute burns too long term health complications like cancer.
Speaker 1: So obviously, if you want to visit someplace like the Moon,
Speaker 1: you're going to need a special suit to provide protection
Speaker 1: against the multitude of ways space is trying to kill you.
Speaker 1: The suit needs to be pressurized and allow you to
Speaker 1: have a breathable atmosphere inside. The suit needs to be
Speaker 1: able to remove carbon dioxide, which you know we exhale,
Speaker 1: so that we can continue to breathe oxygen and function.
Speaker 1: It needs to protect against micro meteoroids at least a
Speaker 1: little bit. Needs to keep you at a temperature that's
Speaker 1: not too hot or too cold, even as you exert
Speaker 1: energy to move around and encounter areas of fluctuating temperatures. Ideally,
Speaker 1: it also will include systems that let you communicate with
Speaker 1: other people. After all, because space has a shortage of
Speaker 1: molecules out there, Sound does not travel in space. For
Speaker 1: sound to travel, molecules need to vibrate against other molecules.
Speaker 1: Sound travels through the air through air pressure fluctuations, and
Speaker 1: that really, when you zoom in on the whole thing,
Speaker 1: would just be air molecules moving and causing neighboring air
Speaker 1: molecules to move back and forth at certain frequencies. And
Speaker 1: some of those frequencies we can observe as sound, We
Speaker 1: can perceive them. Space does not have that excess of molecules,
Speaker 1: so there's nothing to carry sound out there, So we've
Speaker 1: gotta have tech systems built into our suits. If we
Speaker 1: want to be able to talk to each other or
Speaker 1: two people back on Earth. So those are some of
Speaker 1: the bare minimum requirements that you would want from your
Speaker 1: space suit, you know, assuming you were gonna go out
Speaker 1: into space itself. The earliest space suits were a bit
Speaker 1: simpler than that because they weren't intended to be worn
Speaker 1: outside of a spacecraft. You know, there was no extra
Speaker 1: vehicular activity or e v A in the earliest missions.
Speaker 1: The space suits needed to protect the people in the
Speaker 1: spacecraft from other potential threats like maybe a fire aboard
Speaker 1: the spacecraft. Uh, they actually evolved from flight suits. So
Speaker 1: let's start with flight suits and work our way up. Alright,
Speaker 1: So the earliest aviation outfits were for low altitude flying
Speaker 1: because that's what the aircraft of the day were capable of.
Speaker 1: So early pilots all the way up into the World
Speaker 1: War One era would wear some pretty simple gear. There
Speaker 1: were a few attempts at creating official pilot uniforms and
Speaker 1: suits in the early days of World War One, but
Speaker 1: many pilots chose to go up with their own gear instead,
Speaker 1: as the suits weren't necessarily a good fit I mean,
Speaker 1: so to speak, not like literally fit, but like they
Speaker 1: didn't provide the level of protection against the cold, for example,
Speaker 1: that a lot of pilots wanted. Uh So this was
Speaker 1: actually approved by the military. I mean air air combat
Speaker 1: was so new anyway that it was kind of the
Speaker 1: military catching up to technology. Most of the gear, whether
Speaker 1: 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: and 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 idol. Then there was this feller named Sydney
Speaker 1: Cotton from Australia who helped develop a flight suit that
Speaker 1: had a fur and airproof silk lining in it to
Speaker 1: protect against the cold. His design was so well received
Speaker 1: and it became known as the sid Caught flight suit
Speaker 1: for Sydney Cotton. Uh. It became the standard for the
Speaker 1: second half of World War One for especially the Royal
Speaker 1: Air Force, so the sid cut suits became pretty pretty
Speaker 1: much universal there. The first actual flight suit that was
Speaker 1: made specifically to handle the challenges of flying in a
Speaker 1: plane at higher altitudes was the product of a pilot
Speaker 1: named Wiley Post who, along with the company B F. Goodrich,
Speaker 1: created this flight suit and the suit was pressurized. It
Speaker 1: had special arm and leg joints to help the pilot
Speaker 1: with mobility, because when you pressurize a suit, I mean
Speaker 1: you're you're kind of you're inflating essentially, is what you're doing.
Speaker 1: So you have to have some way of dealing with
Speaker 1: mobility issues because the suit gets stiff as it's like
Speaker 1: you're inside a giant balloon. Uh. And also they connected
Speaker 1: the suit to a source of liquid oxygen to U
Speaker 1: to end up supplying air for the higher altitudes. By
Speaker 1: World War Two, the nature of air combat had changed
Speaker 1: and you had bombers that could fly at very high altitudes.
Speaker 1: But in the days before pressurized cabins, it meant that
Speaker 1: the people inside the planes need to wear special flight
Speaker 1: suits with electric heating elements in them to fight off
Speaker 1: the cold at those higher altitudes. And just as a reminder,
Speaker 1: electric heaters are really simple electronics. Basically, you have a
Speaker 1: conductor that has a pretty good resistance to electrical flow,
Speaker 1: and then you try to feed a current through that conductor.
Speaker 1: So as electricity tries to flow through this conductor that
Speaker 1: has high resistance, a lot of the electrical energy converts
Speaker 1: into heat. And this is the principle behind stuff like
Speaker 1: electric stovetops and electric toasters. I mean, it's similar to
Speaker 1: how incandescent lightbulbs work in a way as well. And
Speaker 1: I should add that there was some experimentation with electric
Speaker 1: heated components even back as far as World War One,
Speaker 1: but they were pretty primitive. In addition, they were typically
Speaker 1: powered by a small windmill generator that could be mounted
Speaker 1: onto the wing of a plane, and a normal operation
Speaker 1: that was fine. But if the pilot ever had to
Speaker 1: engage in say like a dive, where the velocity of
Speaker 1: the air going past the plane increased dramatically, well that
Speaker 1: would coincide with an increased output from the windmill generator,
Speaker 1: and then you could have way too much voltage being
Speaker 1: supplied to the heating elements and the pilot could actually
Speaker 1: get burned by these components that were meant to keep
Speaker 1: the pilot warm as they flew, which is kind of
Speaker 1: a big yike's But over time the flight suit evolved. Pressurization,
Speaker 1: heating elements, oxygen supply, protective elements like helmets, and the
Speaker 1: development of flame retardant materials all became part of the
Speaker 1: design of flight suits, and post World War Two we
Speaker 1: entered into an era of new experimentation with regard to
Speaker 1: high altitude flying and really pushing the limits of both
Speaker 1: aircraft and human endurance. Part of that was how humans
Speaker 1: can handle acceleration or G forces, So like G force
Speaker 1: being in relation to the strength of gravity right uh
Speaker 1: at C level essentially, but one one G is one
Speaker 1: one to one of Earth's gravity. Well, that last bit
Speaker 1: about you know, withstanding acceleration was super important because during
Speaker 1: intense acceleration, 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 graves oh so much. And this can lead
Speaker 1: to a gray out, which is where your vision starts
Speaker 1: to diminish, or a full on blackout where you lose
Speaker 1: your vision and even a loss of consciousness. Now, the
Speaker 1: suits developed in the nineteen forties and nineteen fifties used
Speaker 1: various means, such as inflatable bladders that could fill with
Speaker 1: either air or with water in some cases, to provide
Speaker 1: pressure on the lower parts of the body and help
Speaker 1: push back against that tendency for blood to pool in
Speaker 1: the lower half of the body. Even so, this typically
Speaker 1: only allows a pilot to endure a little more acceleration
Speaker 1: than whatever their natural tolerances, so it's somewhere in between
Speaker 1: three 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 are building the planes, the
Speaker 1: engineers building planes, were kind of worried that if pilots
Speaker 1: knew that they could push them elves harder because their
Speaker 1: suits would allow them to withstand greater acceleration, that they
Speaker 1: would bloody well go and do that, even if it
Speaker 1: meant that they were pushing the aircraft beyond its own
Speaker 1: stress capabilities. And so some air forces, some you know,
Speaker 1: some some flight schools and stuff, chose to hold back
Speaker 1: on incorporating what would become known as G suits for
Speaker 1: a while, in an effort to avoid encouraging pilots to
Speaker 1: you know, go fast. Oh. Also, interestingly, one person to
Speaker 1: experiment with G suit development in the early forties was
Speaker 1: a guy named Frank Cotton from Australia. I say interestingly
Speaker 1: because if you were listening earlier, you heard me talk
Speaker 1: about Sydney Cotton, also from Australia, who is the feller
Speaker 1: who came up with that Sidcot suit so your question is,
Speaker 1: were Frank and Sydney cotton related? I have no cotton
Speaker 1: picking idea. That was a long way to go for
Speaker 1: something that wasn't even quite a joke. In fact, I
Speaker 1: think it was long enough where we all need to
Speaker 1: take a quick break, but we'll be right back. So
Speaker 1: by the nineteen fifties, the flight suit had evolved into
Speaker 1: gear that was meant to provide various types of protection
Speaker 1: to pilots. With the creation of pressurized cabins with climate control,
Speaker 1: some of the stuff was less important, right, Some of
Speaker 1: the pressurization things and the heat elements weren't as important
Speaker 1: and didn't need to be incorporated into some flight suits.
Speaker 1: But flight suits still need to be flame resistant, they
Speaker 1: need to allow for mobility, and they needed to provide
Speaker 1: protection in the event that 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 reigning destruction down on the
Speaker 1: other country should at all come to that. So in
Speaker 1: some ways this was a struggle to claim technological superiority
Speaker 1: over a rival. UH. The Soviets really got the jump
Speaker 1: on the Americans with the launch of Spotnik in nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty seven, marking the first time a human made satellite
Speaker 1: entered Earth orbit, and they would also be the first
Speaker 1: to put a person into space. The first space suit
Speaker 1: emerged from the then Soviet Union as part of its
Speaker 1: cosmonaut program. It had the designation of s K one UH.
Speaker 1: The s K stood for some Russian words that translate
Speaker 1: roughly into space diving suit because the suit had some
Speaker 1: feature is similar to like a deep sea diving suit
Speaker 1: think of like the Big Daddies and BioShock. And even
Speaker 1: this was an evolution of earlier flight suits worn by
Speaker 1: Soviet jet pilot fighter pilots. The first human to go
Speaker 1: into space was Uri Gagarin in nineteen sixty one, and
Speaker 1: Gagarin's trip was aboard a space capsule and he wasn't
Speaker 1: going to exit the capsule while in space, so he
Speaker 1: didn't need to have the full like extra vehicular activity
Speaker 1: style space suit. However, because the Soviets had not yet
Speaker 1: developed a spacecraft that could land safely, he would have
Speaker 1: to eject during descent and then parachute down from an
Speaker 1: altitude of around twenty thousand feet. So these are the
Speaker 1: sort 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, had a pressure sensor that
Speaker 1: the pressure sensor detected a crease and pressure a rapid decompression,
Speaker 1: then the visor could slam down and seal it. The
Speaker 1: helmet was permanently attached to the suit. You could only
Speaker 1: take 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 Gagaron 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 a water landing, but
Speaker 1: an inflated collar could keep his head above the level
Speaker 1: of water. The fabric of the suit was nylon, which
Speaker 1: is a synthetic polymer, and it was bright orange and
Speaker 1: color to make it easier to spot Gagaron upon his return.
Speaker 1: The suit also had gloves with leather palms and heavy
Speaker 1: leather boots, and the suit did the job. Gagaran returned
Speaker 1: safely to Earth after spending more than an hour and
Speaker 1: a half orbiting the planet. One time, he reportedly startled
Speaker 1: a farmer and his daughter as he returned. When he landed,
Speaker 1: uh is walking through the countryside, dragging a parachute behind him,
Speaker 1: dressed in a big orange suit and having a big
Speaker 1: helmet on, and he tried his best to assure them
Speaker 1: that he was a Soviet just like they were, and
Speaker 1: all he needed was a telephone in order to call Moscow,
Speaker 1: which I just think is a great story. Meanwhile, over
Speaker 1: the United States there was the same rush to get
Speaker 1: to space, and at that point it was a rush
Speaker 1: to catch up to the Soviets because they had beaten
Speaker 1: America to the punch. Engineers were already working on suit
Speaker 1: designs that would be suitable to allow astronauts to go
Speaker 1: outside of a spacecraft, perhaps even walking on the Moon.
Speaker 1: But these were in the earliest stages of development. They
Speaker 1: were in the prototype stage. And uh I saw pictures
Speaker 1: of one of the early pressurized suits and it literally
Speaker 1: looked like it came out of Edwood science fiction film
Speaker 1: if you don't know who that is, Plan nine from
Speaker 1: Matter Space Director, just the cheesiest of of nineteen style
Speaker 1: sci fi B movies. And the engineer inside the suit
Speaker 1: was wearing it looked like kind of a metal barrel
Speaker 1: for the torso like think of like like one of
Speaker 1: those ten wind up robot toys. It kind of look
Speaker 1: like that had segmented sleeves that covered the arms, had
Speaker 1: a helmet with a glass visor that looked kind of
Speaker 1: like the head of a Lego figurine, kind of had
Speaker 1: that cylindrical look to it. They were a long way
Speaker 1: away from the modern space suit, is what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: The Mercury seven, the pilots who trained to be part
Speaker 1: of Project Mercury, which was our first attempt to send
Speaker 1: people to space, reliant upon a flight suit called the
Speaker 1: Navy Mark four, which was designed by the BF good
Speaker 1: Rich Company. The heritage for the Mark four trace its
Speaker 1: history all the way back to Wiley Post, whom I
Speaker 1: mentioned before the break, and in fact they even had
Speaker 1: the same designer. A guy named Russell Collie worked on
Speaker 1: both of those. The suit had a zipper that extended
Speaker 1: from the left shoulder and moved diagonally down across the
Speaker 1: torso and ended at the waist. There are also a
Speaker 1: couple of other zippers. There were two at the neck
Speaker 1: and one around the waist, which made it quote unquote
Speaker 1: easier to get in and out of the suit. But
Speaker 1: when I say easier, just know that I don't mean easy,
Speaker 1: just easier than some other one piece suits. The suit
Speaker 1: covered the entire body except for the head and hands,
Speaker 1: which were covered by a detachable helmet and gloves, respectively.
Speaker 1: So the boots were built into it, but the gloves
Speaker 1: were not. The helmet containing the microphones and speakers were
Speaker 1: there to serve, as you know, a communication system for
Speaker 1: the astronauts. The visor was made out of plexiglass. The
Speaker 1: visor could also be raised out of the way or
Speaker 1: lowered into place, and then sealed with a pneumatic seal,
Speaker 1: so again it could provide a pressurized environment for the
Speaker 1: astronauts if necessary. The gloves attached to the suit through
Speaker 1: a detent ball bearing lock. I I do not know
Speaker 1: what that means. I mean, I know it's a lock,
Speaker 1: but I haven't looked into how it actually worked. But anyway,
Speaker 1: the purpose for it was to give the astronauts a
Speaker 1: little bit more risk mobility when come without you know,
Speaker 1: compromising the fact that you need to have a seal
Speaker 1: there with the rest of the suit, otherwise you would
Speaker 1: have a leak. Right, The index and middle fingers on
Speaker 1: both gloves had little red lights incorporated into them. These
Speaker 1: were fed by batteries that were located in a battery
Speaker 1: pack on the back side of the gloves. The torso
Speaker 1: section had two major layers. The inner layer was made
Speaker 1: of neoprene and nylon, and the outer layer had an
Speaker 1: illuminized nylon fabric designed to reflect heat away from the astronaut.
Speaker 1: You know. Inside the suit, a neck ring secured the
Speaker 1: helmet in place, with an additional tied down strap to
Speaker 1: keep the helmet in place so that should the suit
Speaker 1: be pressurized, the helmet wouldn't rise up and block the
Speaker 1: astronauts vision. Um. Yeah, that's gonna become important because I'm
Speaker 1: going to talk about a case where something like that
Speaker 1: happened to a Russian cosmonaut and how it could have
Speaker 1: been disastrous. So this suit used a pressurization system to
Speaker 1: keep pressure inside the suit close to Earth levels. Uh.
Speaker 1: It also used chords on the suit to restrict the
Speaker 1: suits tendency to expand like a balloon, which would you know,
Speaker 1: severely limit maneuverability. The Mercury spacecraft itself was pressurized, so
Speaker 1: 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 are piloting the spacecraft because they didn't they
Speaker 1: had a little more mobility, although not they couldn't do
Speaker 1: much with that mobility because they were in a tiny,
Speaker 1: tiny spacecraft. It was only you know, large enough for
Speaker 1: one person, and even then it was cramped. The suits
Speaker 1: also incorporated aluminum in the materials, like I mentioned, that
Speaker 1: provided extra strength compared to earlier flight suits. But again,
Speaker 1: these suits were meant to be worn inside the capsule only.
Speaker 1: These were not suits that could be worn out in
Speaker 1: space on their own. They also didn't have good temperature control.
Speaker 1: Basically the oxygen system they had served as the cooling system.
Speaker 1: So basically the way the oxygen system worked was that
Speaker 1: it had a tube would attach to the suit at
Speaker 1: the waist and oxygen would come in through that tube
Speaker 1: at the waist. Oxygen would then circulate a bit through
Speaker 1: tubes running inside the suit to help cool down the astronaut,
Speaker 1: and then it would eventually make its way up to
Speaker 1: the helmet and then UH excess would exit out the
Speaker 1: right side of the helmet into a different tube including
Speaker 1: carbon dioxide. There was also some bio sensors and a
Speaker 1: connector in the suit to allow the suit to connect
Speaker 1: to the spacecraft's instruments that would allow you know, NASA
Speaker 1: to monitor astronaut vital signs and stuff. On the left
Speaker 1: arm of the suit was a pressure in caters, so
Speaker 1: that should the suit be pressurized, the astronaut would be
Speaker 1: able to see what the pressure level was in the
Speaker 1: suit pretty easily. UH 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 Shepherd 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 space suit. But let's hop back
Speaker 1: over to the Soviet Union to talk about suits designed
Speaker 1: to keep humans safe out in space itself without the
Speaker 1: benefits of, you know, having a spacecraft around you. So
Speaker 1: the Soviets were the first to have a person take
Speaker 1: a trip outside of spacecraft on a spacewalk, which happened
Speaker 1: in March of nineteen sixty five. That person was Alexei Leonov.
Speaker 1: He would have to enter an airlock, an inflatable airlock. Uh.
Speaker 1: He would then have that and he would be in
Speaker 1: the airlock while his his co cosmonaut would release pressure
Speaker 1: so that there could be an equalization of the lack
Speaker 1: of pressure out in space and the air pressure that's
Speaker 1: inside the capsule, and then he could transfer outside of
Speaker 1: the vok shot to spacecraft and then spend a few
Speaker 1: minutes outside doing a spacewalk. And he remained connected to
Speaker 1: the capsule by a tether, so it's he wouldn't float
Speaker 1: off aimlessly into space, and the Soviets would learn some
Speaker 1: pretty valuable lessons nearly at the expense of Leonov's life.
Speaker 1: His space suit had been called the burk Hutt space suit.
Speaker 1: Burn Hutt was actually the name that the spacecraft was
Speaker 1: a vok shot too, but it had the name of
Speaker 1: burn Hutt, which means golden eagle. And his suit had
Speaker 1: a hermetic casing layer on top of the pressure ized
Speaker 1: space suit and came complete with a shoulder pack in
Speaker 1: which the suits to oxygen cylinders were mounted, so he
Speaker 1: was carrying his oxygen that supply on his suit. This
Speaker 1: would be different from the way the Americans would do
Speaker 1: it with Project Gemini or Jiminy, if you prefer. It
Speaker 1: was really hard to find like any solid details about
Speaker 1: this suit, but there are a few things I can
Speaker 1: say for sure. One is that the space suit was
Speaker 1: really bulky even before going into space, but once in space,
Speaker 1: the suit became even bulkier. So again, imagine being inside
Speaker 1: an inflated balloon, and he started to get the picture.
Speaker 1: There was a lack of pressure outside the suit, so
Speaker 1: the suit expanded in every direction. That meant that Leonof
Speaker 1: found that his hands were no longer securely in his gloves,
Speaker 1: like his fingers were no longer in the fingertips of
Speaker 1: his gloves because the arms of the space suit expanded
Speaker 1: beyond the length of his arms. The same thing was
Speaker 1: happening with his feet, like his feet were no longer
Speaker 1: firmly in the boot section of his suit, and he
Speaker 1: was having issues seeing through the helmet as well. Uh.
Speaker 1: That also meant that he would no longer be able
Speaker 1: to go back into the spacecraft the way they had trained,
Speaker 1: which was to go in through the airlock feet first.
Speaker 1: So instead he had to figure out a way to
Speaker 1: pull himself inside head first, and he said took a
Speaker 1: really long time, and he had a limited amount of oxygen,
Speaker 1: about forty five minutes worth total. He also started overheating.
Speaker 1: He found that the strain of moving around inside the
Speaker 1: suit out in space was pretty intense and it was
Speaker 1: causing him to get really hot inside the suit. The
Speaker 1: material of the suit was pretty stiff, and due to
Speaker 1: the inflation issue, it meant that fighting against the suit,
Speaker 1: you know, 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 into the airlock, Leonov chose to
Speaker 1: vent some of his oxygen out into space because he
Speaker 1: needed to be able to regain some flexibility inside his suit,
Speaker 1: and it's just a fully inflated he just didn't have.
Speaker 1: It makes me think of that's been in a Christmas
Speaker 1: story where the kid can't put his arms down because
Speaker 1: he's wrapped up in too many coats. So this could
Speaker 1: have been disastrous as if he had vented too much
Speaker 1: oxygen out and he could have been starved of oxygen,
Speaker 1: or he could have had a full depressurization of a 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 pressure rise the airlock so that
Speaker 1: he could come back inside the capsule. So this was
Speaker 1: just one of several technical issues that plagued the mission.
Speaker 1: We'll talk about another one in a little bit, but
Speaker 1: overall the mission was a success and the cosmonauts returned
Speaker 1: to Earth safely. Both the Soviets and Americans included survival
Speaker 1: kits in their spacecraft for returning cosmonauts and returning astronauts
Speaker 1: to to use because in the early days, those space
Speaker 1: capsules were designed to either splash down in the ocean,
Speaker 1: which was the American style, or to have, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of a semi soft landing on land, which was
Speaker 1: the preferred method of the Soviets. But while both had
Speaker 1: some survival and first aid gear inside these kits, the
Speaker 1: Soviets approach was slightly more intense because the Soviet kit
Speaker 1: included a gun. Now the earlier kits included a nine
Speaker 1: millimeter pistol meant to serve as some protection should the
Speaker 1: cosmonauts land in a remote region in Russia and then
Speaker 1: need to fight off local wildlife, which was a very
Speaker 1: real possibility. On the very mission in which Leonov went
Speaker 1: on his spacewalk, the returning capsule malfunctioned on descent and
Speaker 1: the cosmonauts had to rest control from the landing process.
Speaker 1: They had to get manual control, which was in itself
Speaker 1: an ordeal, and it meant that ultimately they landed really
Speaker 1: far away from their target landing space, and actually a
Speaker 1: hundred miles away from the closest city, and they landed
Speaker 1: in a mountainous, snowy region, and Leonov realized that his
Speaker 1: little nine millimeter pistol, while some comfort, would be of
Speaker 1: little use of He and his fellow cosmonaut Belyayev encountered
Speaker 1: wolves or a bear out in the wilderness, which was
Speaker 1: a possibility, and so Leonov would later commission the creation
Speaker 1: of a new weapon called the t P a D
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 be low the shotgun barrels, and it was
Speaker 1: in a pistol form factor, but I mean that pistol
Speaker 1: would pack a heck of a kick, and it also
Speaker 1: had a detachable stock that could convert into a machete,
Speaker 1: so you know, typical space stuff. The so used capsules
Speaker 1: used by the Russian Space Agency carried a t P
Speaker 1: eighty two aboard as recently as two thousand seven, before
Speaker 1: the Russians discontinued that practice, although they did use a
Speaker 1: different weapon in its place. Some Russian crews choose not
Speaker 1: to have a gun aboard at all, fearing that the
Speaker 1: presence of a firearm can kind of make things tense
Speaker 1: out in space. Um. 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 spacewalk in nine and in
Speaker 1: the process the Russians learned a lot about the limited
Speaker 1: sas of their space suits. In general, the American approach
Speaker 1: put more emphasis on comfort and usability than the Russians did,
Speaker 1: but at the same time, the Russians managed to get
Speaker 1: to those things first and the Americans didn't. So back
Speaker 1: to America starting in nineteen sixty two, so before we
Speaker 1: had Leonov's spacewalk, there was the launch of Project Gemini
Speaker 1: or Giminy, depending upon your preferred pronunciation. I prefer Gemini,
Speaker 1: but yeah, Jiminy is pretty common when you listen to
Speaker 1: interviews of the time. This was the first two astronaut
Speaker 1: capsule that the Americans used, and there were a couple
Speaker 1: of different space suits that were used in this project,
Speaker 1: one of which was designed for extra vehicular activities or spacewalks.
Speaker 1: That one was called the G four C. But first
Speaker 1: let's start with the G one C. So NASA had
Speaker 1: to choose which space suit designed to go with for
Speaker 1: their Gemini project, and since one of the goals for
Speaker 1: that project was to have an astronaut performance space walk,
Speaker 1: this was a complex issue. You astronaut Gus Grissom tested
Speaker 1: out a suit designed by the David Clark Company, later
Speaker 1: designated as the G one C suit, and it had
Speaker 1: two layers. Had an internal layer made out of rubber
Speaker 1: and neoprene, and it had a pressure bladder inside it
Speaker 1: for the G suit protection, and then the outer layer
Speaker 1: was illuminized UH similar to the kind of material that
Speaker 1: the Project Mercury space suits used. The outer layer was
Speaker 1: meant to resist the ballooning effect as well. There was
Speaker 1: the suit, by the way, I actually went to auction.
Speaker 1: Sothabes 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: space suit designs. None of them were flown. These were
Speaker 1: not space suits that actually went to space, so they
Speaker 1: were more like a proof of concept, and the company
Speaker 1: had to make additional changes to address some issues and
Speaker 1: concerns with the suit um like, for example, there was
Speaker 1: a visor guard on the helmet that made the helmet
Speaker 1: a bit bulkier, and that in turn would make it
Speaker 1: harder for astronauts to move through a spacecraft hatch, so
Speaker 1: that was one of the things they had to address.
Speaker 1: The first suit to actually see use in Project Gemini
Speaker 1: was the G three C, and the G three C
Speaker 1: had six layers. The innermost layer was the rubberized nylon
Speaker 1: bladder to help provide pressure on extremities and prevent blackouts. Uh.
Speaker 1: All the other layers were of materials called nylon and nomex,
Speaker 1: and the suits boots could actually be removed. These were
Speaker 1: not part of the suit themselves, they could lock into place.
Speaker 1: The helmet contained communications equipment, so it really was an
Speaker 1: evolution 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 who found on the G three C, and these
Speaker 1: layers were milar installation meant to help deal with those
Speaker 1: extreme temperatures that you could encounter when you're out in Spain.
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 attach 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 they're not there's
Speaker 1: no atmosphere, so there's nothing there to diffuse that light.
Speaker 1: To supply oxygen to the astronaut inside the suit, the
Speaker 1: suit actually had a hose that connected back to the spacecraft,
Speaker 1: so it didn't have its own onboard oxygen. It had
Speaker 1: to connect to the spacecraft when you were out doing
Speaker 1: an e v A. The suit also relied upon air
Speaker 1: conditioning to help manage temperatures, but the astronauts soon found
Speaker 1: that this just wasn't cutting it. The air conditioning wasn't
Speaker 1: good enough to help keep their body temperature low, as
Speaker 1: extra vehicular activities often caused a sharp increase in body temperature,
Speaker 1: and not only would it was it uncomfortable, but then
Speaker 1: you know, the astronaut would start sweating pretty badly and
Speaker 1: soon the inside their helmet would fog up so it
Speaker 1: could become a real risk. There were a couple of
Speaker 1: other space suits in the Gemini line, with the G
Speaker 1: four C a m U that stands for Astronaut Maneuvering unit.
Speaker 1: There was also the G five C, which was designed
Speaker 1: to be more easily removed. So NASA and the astronauts
Speaker 1: on the Gemini flights experimented with the astronauts removing their
Speaker 1: space suits in the middle of the mission to see
Speaker 1: if they could operate better within the the confines of
Speaker 1: the capsule without those giant suits on, and surprise, surprise,
Speaker 1: they found out that there was a lot easier to
Speaker 1: do that. Uh, And so they kind of made this
Speaker 1: this determination that when you're not in part of a
Speaker 1: critical phase of a mission, like if you're not in
Speaker 1: the launch or return or you know, things like that
Speaker 1: or docking, if it's just the normal operations, then they
Speaker 1: could operate outside of these suits, which you know, it was.
Speaker 1: It was a nice, nice decision, I guess. The Russians
Speaker 1: similarly flew several missions without having their cosmonauts wearing space
Speaker 1: suits inside their spacecraft, but in nineteen seventy one, an
Speaker 1: accident happened and a returning Soya's capsule decompressed, and all
Speaker 1: three cosmonauts aboard the Soya's capsule died because none of
Speaker 1: them were wearing space suits. The Soya's capsule itself wasn't
Speaker 1: even really accommodating space suits. It wasn't designed to accommodate people,
Speaker 1: because obviously, when you're wearing a space suit, you're taking
Speaker 1: up a lot more well space. But this prompted the
Speaker 1: Soviet Union to develop a new emergency recovery space suit
Speaker 1: called the so Cole s O K O L and
Speaker 1: that has been in use since nineteen seventy three on
Speaker 1: Russian space flights. The Gemini space suit was meant to
Speaker 1: serve as a transition to Apollo missions as well as
Speaker 1: the A one C, a space suit based off the
Speaker 1: G four C Gemini suit was intended for the first
Speaker 1: block of Apollo missions, but tragically, what would later be
Speaker 1: designated 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 Block one, was canceled, so the A one C
Speaker 1: never saw any use out in space. The second block
Speaker 1: of 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 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 growny, y'all. It's gonna be
Speaker 1: gross to on Max, so I hope you join me
Speaker 1: for that one. But we'll also talk about how the
Speaker 1: space suit evolved further, what it was like during the
Speaker 1: Space Shuttle era, and why NASA was looking to update
Speaker 1: it because really spacesuits had not received a massive updates
Speaker 1: since the Space Shuttle era. But that'll all come in
Speaker 1: our next episode. If you have suggestions for topics I
Speaker 1: should cover in future episodes of Tech Stuff, please reach
Speaker 1: 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 Text Stuff hs W
Speaker 1: and I'll talk to you again really soon. Text Stuff
Speaker 1: is an I heart Radio production. For more podcasts from
Speaker 1: my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.