Originally published at: In 1949, the British Interplanetary Society designed a far-out spacesuit. Recently, a museum had it made for real. | Boing Boing
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Some of the prototype suits that NASA has had made over the years look pretty wild as well, but I love the sandwich airlock feature.
The display of prototype suits for the Apollo missions that I saw at the Kennedy Space Center included a couple neat ones.
Of course, in the end they brought in some experts in advanced textiles to get the job done:
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Steampunk stormtrooper?
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SPACE KNIGHT!
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Nobody really believes that’s why they added a cape, but we can give them a pass.
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NASA early efforts in suit design included a study of medieval armor joints (for articulation).
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I don’t think that those little windows for the volute joints would work. Keep in mind that the non “tomato-worm” fabric would be nearly rigid from internal pressure. The little “reinforcing bars” that keep the joints from simply expanding outward need to be ~180° apart on the joint to allow it to move with minimal force. And that is something that the original drawings seem to have gotten right and this reconstruction got wrong. And to be useful, you’d need some sort of rotational joint just above the elbow and at the wrist.
As for the cape…I wonder whether it might be useful to have it reversable, with one side black and the other silvered, with which side faces inward depending on whether you were in the sun or the shade.
The link below contains some photos of early state of the art pressure suits for high altitude use
Does it have bluetooth?
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I’m getting a sort of Cylon/Bioshock Minerva’s Den vibe here. Noice!
Back in the early 80s I had a chance to attend a talk in NYC on space suit design and manufacturing (I think it was related to some fashion industry thing?) Really interesting! The Russian Orlan suit designs have kind of become the norm. Basically a hard shell torso that you enter from the back and then they clamp the LSU on and seal you in. Legs and arms are all custom sizes/lengths but they clamp into a standard ring connector.
And then SpaceX made their pressure suit/tuxedo. I wonder if SpaceX will have their own Mars surface working suit designs? Or go w NASA’s new suit designs? Be interesting to see how they deal with dust on the moon and Mars… electrostatic vacuum chamber?
Best part of the 80s talk was sticking my hand into a spacesuit glove: the fingertips are soooo thin! with capillaries for heating/cooling. Thin so that spacewalkers can touch and feel small items and controls. We’re pretty dang clever for apes with explosives!
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But did it have on-board tea making facilities?
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Plus they lift and separate.
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hhhhmmmm they have brownian motion generators in them?
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How to work the joints and how to accommodate the hands were a big concern in really early spacesuit designs. Many looked even more like armor than these do. Oberth’s space suit from the 1920s didn’t even allow for elbow and knee bending; the limbs rotated only at the shoulder and hip. He also suggested an umbrella-like heat shield might be necessary to keep the suit’s temperature down. The “hands” were claws worked from inside the arms. A lot of people must have thought spacesuit gloves were impractical. I’ve seen clawed suits as late as the mid-1950s. Then there was von Braun’s “bottle” suit designed for the Disney documentaries. These weren’t really suits, but one-man mini-spacecraft with several remote-control arms ending in various claws and tools. There were no legs…astronauts moved around using small rockets, one located at each end of the pod (how they moved sideways is unclear).
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No, it had a reel to reel tape player. Brand new in 1949.
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That is a rad design. The bulbous chest and inner arm maneuvering space is reminiscent a bit of Maschinen Krieger S.A.F.S. vibe.
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There was some initial confusion with the plans.
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The mockup of the '49 design looked like it had room for bust and ass, but there’s airlock bellows up in there and it’s plain hard armor in back, which lol.
Luden’s cough drops, or the band with the ‘Bring Me The Horizon’ breakout hit? And maybe a particular album?
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