AirandSpaceExperts

Lewis: First of all, there has never been a loss of an astronaut or cosmonaut due to a spacesuit failure. Second, please forget everything that you have seen in science fiction movies about spacesuit failures. They are usually overly dramatized and frequently wrong. There have been four documented cases of spacesuit failures in history. None resulted in deaths. Without a spacesuit and the oxygen necessary to breathe, an astronaut would immediately feel the nitrogen coming out of his fluids, almost like the tears and saliva were carbonated. After about 15 seconds, he would pass out and, without an emergency rescue, he would die within two minutes. The body would float in space and only very slowly lose body heat because there is no efficient way to radiate heat away from the body. In the case of a small puncture, usually the flesh would swell in the immediate area and stopper the hole. This can be extremely painful, but the victim would recover.

Lewis: Probably the neatest features of the suits are hidden among its more than 20 layers. There are multiple layers of lightweight fabric that form the protection for the astronauts from solar radiation and fast traveling particles. Also inside the suit are corrugated pieces of rubber that allow the astronauts to bend their hips, arms and waist. These are ingenuous designs that localize air displacement at the joints. In addition, there are intricate systems that prevent the suit from ballooning up with it is inflated in the vacuum of space. Stay tuned, during the course of our work for the next three years, we will publish images from CT scans of the suit. And yes, spacesuit engineers have learned a lot from and since Apollo. Spacesuits no longer have sealing zippers. They are no longer custom made for each astronaut, but are now modular and can fit almost anyone. The materials have changed too. Although many of the construction principles are the same, the materials last longer and are lighter weight. There are many, many other changes. In the near future, the Museum will be able to compare in more detail the similarities and differences between Apollo and current suits.

Lewis: Spacesuits are notoriously difficult to put on. An astronaut wears an entire, close-fitting spacecraft when s/he is wearing a spacesuit. They are heavy and remain extremely bulky, even in the microgravity of space. But as much difficulty as the astronauts might have putting them on, they practice, practice and practice before flight. And although it takes several people to help them into a suit here on Earth, the astronauts are well-rehearsed enough that they can put on a spacesuit in a matter of minutes in case of an emergency. The current suits that astronauts use on the ISS are more complicated than the Apollo suits; they have far more components and part of the astronaut’s training is to learn to tailor each suit to individual needs. As space missions expand, the astronauts will have to play an increasingly larger role in the maintenance and sizing of spacesuits. I don’t see things getting easier, but much more difficult for them.

Lewis: Remarkably, even though all spacesuits perform similar functions, they do not look alike. When the Soviet Union designed a suit to carry men to the Moon, they opted for a single piece suit that the cosmonaut would climb in through a hinged backpack. The Russians maintain a similar design in the EVA suits that cosmonauts wear when they do spacewalks from the Russian node of the International Space Station. These dissimilarities result from differences in available materials, different senses of aesthetics, and differing attitudes about innovation and refinement of design. The Russians remain very conservative and have retained many of the features that they designed for their first suits over 50 years ago. On the U.S. side, there is a greater effort at matching the spacesuit to the spacecraft and the mission. There is also the contracting and bidding issue that complicates the American side, but I won’t go into that here. You should also look at the Chinese spacesuits. They are remarkably similar to the Russian launch and entry suits. One assumes that they learned this design from the years that they worked with the Soviets and Russians in preparation for their own human spaceflight program.

Lewis: It hasn’t opened yet, but I am anxiously awaiting Ridley Scott’s The Martian. I loved the book and from the promotions, he seems to have gotten the spacesuit right. Usually in movies the helmets are too big. I understand that this is for filming and showing the actors’s faces, but it is a distracting feature for a spacesuit curator.