When is the last time you were connected to your mother via a life-supporting cord, floated in lieu of walking, and thought it normal to urinate and defecate on yourself? If your answer is, “When I was living in embryonic fluid, in my mother’s belly” you’ve clearly never gone on a space walk (the connection to a mother is the “mother ship,” by the way). Despite the numerous aforementioned similarities between our behavior at birth and the required activities of astronauts, space walks require space suits– which are a lot more complicated than birthday suits. Over the past few decades, though, astronauts and space suit designers have come a long way, baby.

One of the many challenges of traveling in space comes from the lack of atmospheric pressure and oxygen. Luckily, in 1935 the first pressure suit was made…but not for an astronaut, of course. It was made for balloonist Mark Ridge, who tried it out inside a high altitude chamber and inside a giant ice box in order to test the suit’s capability to sustain low temperatures.

Later, this design was honed for use by Navy jet pilots. The B F Goodrich Company of Akron, Ohio made a full pressure suit that allowed aviator Wiley Post to make stratospheric flights without losing consciousness. It was a small suit for that man but suitable for giant leaps by mankind. Almost a quarter of a century later, on January 29, 1959, the first spacesuit conference was held. Bidders had approximately six months to come up with a feasible spacesuit design, and on July 22 B F Goodrich was awarded the NASA contract to design the Mercury space suit. The company modeled the space suit after their famous Navy Mark IV pressure suit.

The Mercury suits were not exactly fitted for fashion. Miles Alex, a self proclaimed “flaming fashion designer” in Chelsea, took a look at photos of those first space suits and nearly squealed. “Ohhhhh! Bravo for new fabrics and high tech design, but what a waste. Those boys are in the best physical condition of their lives. What a shame to hide their beautiful, steel abs behind puffy fat suits.” (I didn’t have the heart to show him photos of the tire-like Apollo suits, which were even more bloated). Fashion aside, those suits were successful in keeping the astronauts with perfect bodies alive and healthy. Not zipping up the puffy “fat suit” would have been a fatal fashion faux pas. Without a space suit, astronauts risk being knocked unconscious from a lack of oxygen. If they would be lucky enough to ever wake up, (which is virtually impossible) they would probably suffer some significant discomfort as their bodily fluids would boil, and then freeze due to the lack of air pressure. Their organs would expand and their faces would morph into a different shape due to the extreme temperature changes. To be more precise, Pablo de Leon, head of the University of North Dakota space suit workshop and Argentinian Ansari X-PRIZE contender, points out: “Well, actually, their faces will not morph Total Recall style due to the changes of temperature, for sure they would look pretty ugly just from the pain.” Also, regardless of the sun-block they might be wearing, they would be also exposed to all sorts of scary radiation. De Leone tries to offer comfort by emphasizing that “…just a few seconds of being exposed to the vacuum might be survivable with minor injuries, just like astronaut David Bowman in 2001 Space Odyssey.” The minute-man would never make it though. Space Mathematician & Artist Ed Belbruno, notes, “Whatever little time they are exposed to space, it wouldn’t be a pretty sight.”

The suit design for the Mercury may have been high tech for its time—and it certainly did serve its purpose—but the outfits were no walk in the park to wear. For those of us who hate wearing itchy, wool suits to the office in the winter, or think that striding in stilettos is perilous and nightmarish, imagine suiting up with neoprene-coated material, a layer of aluminized nylon, and a layer of rubber garments pressurized at five pounds per square inch. Granted, weight is of no real consequence in a weightless vacuum, but even so… Ultimately, the gear was uncomfortable and made the astronauts look a bit like aliens (if only they were green).

The Mercury spacesuits were meant for orbital flight; they were not designed for space walking. In 1965 Ed White flew with the crew of Gemini IV and became the first American to perform a space walk. He wore a swanky-looking David Clark G4C suit, which allowed for more mobility than the Mercury suit. The DC G4C suit consisted of two layers: a gas-tight bladder fitted to the body, covered by a layer of netting woven with Teflon and Dacron. These suits were made in white–not as an aesthetic choice for contrasting with the black atmosphere; nor for the color’s symbolic significances, such as dovish peace, the power of the white house, or associations with purity. The suit was manufactured in white solely for its function; it absorbs less heat than, say, a plush pastel pink or a manly navy blue.

As with the Mercury suit, which had to be improved upon for space walking, the David Clark G4C wasn’t quite the right fit for a stroll on the moon either. Like Michael Jackson’s high-maintenance suit that was custom designed for the music video where he “moonwalked” on tables, an entire wardrobe of event-appropriate suits had to be designed for astronauts doing a “real” moon walk (one certainly cannot go on a moon walk in the same gear in which one lounges around the cabin eating freeze-dried space ice cream). On July 21, 1969, Neil Armstrong’s “small step” on the moon was made possible, in part, by ILC Dover, a small company in Delaware that won the NASA contract to engineer his moon suit.
The moon suit weighed about 180 pounds (on Earth) and could be worn fairly comfortably for up to approximately 115 hours. It is comprised of many layers (a total of 11 in the cross-section, to be exact). Within the layers is a cooling and ventilation system, pressure garments, material to protect the wearer from micrometeoroids, headphones and earphones for communication. The outermost layer is made from Nomex material, and underneath are two layers of a Teflon-coated Beta cloth, a few layers of neoprene-coated nylon, and a couple final layers of Beta/ Kapton spacer laminate. For Neil, there were no shortages of impressive gadgets, of course: a liquid cooling underwear system, hoses attached to the back of the suit providing life support, gloves made of Chromel-R fabric on the outside with thermal insulation inside and blue silicone rubber fingertips to provide more sensitivity, and an in-suit drinking bag filled with water. With all this baggage, it’s no surprise that approximately 70 percent of the Apollo astronauts’ energy was spent simply in wearing the suits, which also looked strikingly similar to the Michelin Man at your local garage. The reason for their tire-like design is due to a need for extra fabric to maintain a constant pressure, particularly around the joints (volume is lost when joints are bent because the suit folds, thereby reducing the internal volume and increasing the pressure). As one can imagine, this “tire factor” made moving around and actually getting things done extremely difficult. Looks aside, the suit was an impressive engineering feat, to say the least. And if ILC Dover could do it, why couldn’t others?

The space race, which lasted from around 1957–1975, fueled entrepreneurial dreamers with a talent for engineering while capitalism, national pride, and free markets inspired the emergence of a number of innovative companies. All these creative forces were striving to create an out-of-this world design that would win a contract from NASA. A flurry of the space suit prototypes and related accessories were pitched during the third quarter of the twentieth century. Perhaps the most recognized design was the Life Magazine favorite, the 1960s Grumman Moon Suit. This get-up was made to accommodate lunar surface operations and allowed the astronaut to take his arms out of the flexible manipulators and into the pressurized “can” that enclosed his upper torso and head. The Republic Moon Suit was another Life Magazine favorite: this one was a hard suit made for extended lunar activities and is said to resemble a suit from Republic Pictures serials of the 1940s. De Leone explains that the The Republic Moon suit prototype actually got its name because it was built by Republic Aviation (a now defunct company). “It’s unrelated to the Republic Commando Cody and Captain Marvel serials,” he says.

Other prototypes featured a closed-cell foam suit (initially proposed by Macuh Laboratories), then the S-939, a full pressure suit that made for the x-20A Dyna-Soar program, followed by the S901/970, another full pressure suit, this time complete with a parachute harness, an automatic flotation system, a urine collection gadget, thermal protective fabrics, and integrated subsystems that came in 12 different sizes. Hamilton Standard, now the main NASA contractor for the Shuttle space suit, developed the Integrated Maneuvering Life Support System (IMLSS) for the USAF Manned Orbiting Laboratory (MOL) program. IMLSS allowed astronauts to use an umbilical connecting to the MOL, and even gave them the option of disconnecting to float independently from the station.
Unfortunately, MOL never went to space, so the IMLSS never made it past the lab. Even so, these prototypes were an important steps forward in space suit design, and they were used as a blueprints for later designs for the Shuttle EMU. Around 1969, the AX-1 (Ames Experimental) and AX-2 were developed by NASA-ARC. These were hard suits that featured avant-garde multiple bearing technology and resulted in the development of the AX-3, a 0.5 bar suit weighing only 23 kg. Naturally, the AX-3 eventually led to the AX-5, which was relatively easy to put on, offered more mobility, and could be tweaked to fit different body shapes without being entirely custom designed.

After the Soyuz 11 incident in which three unsuited cosmonauts died in a decompression accident, safety precautions became an even higher priority. In 1971, NASA began investigating a prototype for a Mechanical Counter Pressure suit (MCP), comprised of six layers of elastic material and a helmet that resembled a giant bubble. This prototype was not a conventional gas filled pressure suit, so it was easier and less taxing for astronauts to move around. It was also lighter (24 kg) and would not result in a horrifying-but-fast death if punctured. The theory behind this design is that human skin is almost a perfect pressure suit on its own because it has good water retention, virtually no gas permeability, and high tensile strength. Additional applied pressure is necessary in a vacuum, though, to equal the pressure of the breathing gas. Thus, an enhanced “second skin” was created with the use of Mechanical Counter Pressure (MCP) to mock a pressurized environment. Unlike the fully pressurized suits of the 60s, a tear in an MCP would not mean a loss of life supporting gas pressure–it would simply expose an area of the skin to reduced pressure and cause some bruising. The life support system was also much simpler and more effective: body cooling was accomplished normally, through sweat, which would evaporate through the porous second skin. For life support, astronauts simply carried a tank of oxygen with pressure regulators and a carbon dioxide scrubber.

Nothing is perfect, and there were a few pitfalls to the MCP design. In a vacuum, the body swells and blood pools—the pressure of the suit is what keeps the body in its normal shape. Nevertheless, it is difficult to maintain a constant pressure in concave crevices of the body, like armpits and genital areas. Luckily, little sacs of fluid could be inserted into concave areas in order to prevent arm pits from becoming arm bulges. Another, more minor issue, is that each suit had to be custom tailored for the astronaut that was to wear it, and although it wasn’t as complicated as putting on the suits that resembled the Michelin Man, it wasn’t quite like slipping into your old 80s spandex leotard either. There were eight different garments that had to be fitted absolutely perfectly: the slip layer, a helmet bladder to keep the helmet from rising, a second helmet bladder to help the first one, an arm balancing layer to even out the pressurization of the arms and legs, full body bobbinbet layers, girdles to increase pressure on the torso and thighs, gloves, and one pair of very cute booties for the astronaut’s feet. Various forms MCP designs have been studied over the years, most recently in 2005 by MIT developers of the sleek, skin-tight bio-suit. None of these concepts were never tested in space yet, though.

There are about as many space suit design studies as stars in the skies. During the 90s, NASA refined designs and evaluated the use of a series of new suits, like the Mark III, that were heavier yet offered more mobility (astronauts could even do handstands and somersaults in these suits). Unfortunately, the Mark III was too heavy and the design was vetoed in favor of lighter-weight materials. Now, what it all boils down to is that modern Advanced Crew Escape Suits (ACES) are modeled after the suits of the 1970s, for the most part (retro never seems to go out of fashion). Of course, kinks have been worked out and there are some new perks, like detachable gloves and anti-g systems.

There is quite a lot of buzz about the next prototype: NASA recently awarded a $180+ million contract to Oceaneering International Inc. to design a new line of suits, called Constellation Space Suit Systems (CSS), which will allow an astronaut to roam the moon, climb ladders, and generally get around relatively unencumbered by the typical stiff, bulky old-school design. The new contract with Oceaneering doesn’t mean that NASA is breaking up with it’s retro-designers though; among others, the David Clark company the Harris Corporation will be collaborating with Oceaneering International on the design. Oceaneering, as the name suggests, has a long history invested in deep sea applications (mostly withregards to the oil and gas industry) and it is believed that they have a lot to bring to the table since deep water work involves the use of pressurized suits as well. We’ll find out in six years, when, n 2011, the first suit is slated to be used by the crew of the new Orion spacecraft . And if all goes as planned there will be yet another line to take astronauts back to the moon in 2020. This time, NASA will leave the old fat suits at home with the Michelin Man, on Earth. “Finally, fashion starts to meet function,” says Miles Alex, with an approving look in his eye as he takes a look at the new design by Oceaneering International. “Cat walks are going to be so passé…the future is sexy space walks. How long until you can trade space suits for birthday suits? I’m thinking Calvin Klein models for a better line of space underwear by 2025…”