Originally published at: Starliner spacesuits not compatible with SpaceX Dragon - Boing Boing
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11 Likes
WTF… this is such bullshit. Make spacesuits that work with every single type of ship. There should not be some fucking “exclusive” type of suit for private corporations. This is why we should not let private corporations RUN OUR FUCKING SPACE PROGRAMS… 
This is really some stupid shit.
Via Gail Sherman…
60 Likes
“The nice thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from.”
– Andrew S. Tanenbaum
34 Likes
<alert-ding>Message from your Space-Survival-Suit vendor</alert-ding>
Title: RE:Value-Add Survival Licence Update Notice
Message: Hello #{expired-license-holder-name}, we’re happy alert you to a special opportunity to continue receiving the Great!Value! you know and love from your favourite Space Survival provider!
Your current subscription to Space-Survival-Suit-V3 is changing. Your current V3 Suit is no longer supported (as per previous notifications sent to your insurance provider) and thus will cease operations effective immediately to ensure only supported suits are communicating with our licensing servers.
Your agreement to the updated license is required before we can ship you a Space-Survival-Suit-V6 (our latest and best suit thus far.)
As our telemetry has indicated you are currently located at #{in-orbit-location-non-licensed}, we are unable to ship a replacement suit, or process any support related queries. Please relocate to a supported location. Your nearest supported location is the orbital MUSK-BAR-03 (blue check-mark status may be required for docking permission)
Thank you for your business,
Modifying or using any non-authorized accessories with your Space-Survival-Suit is not permitted under any license, now or ever and may result in a time-delayed spontaneous self-disassembly for your protection.
28 Likes
Have spacesuit, won’t travel.
23 Likes
Back to the classics, I say!
9 Likes
Obligatory:
Just about every vehicle from 1996 onward regardless of manufacturer has a standardized diagnostic bus. Manufacturers can add their own special sauce on top of it, but the basics are all the same. There’s no reason space suits should be any different especially since they are critical to life safety. Yeah, you may may lose certain functionality (some telemetry might not work or something), but the core things should all work the same.
It just seems like something so goddamn obvious to me that I can’t imagine how someone decided these things should be proprietary. Space travel is all about redundancies and “what ifs”. When Apollo 1 caught fire, astronaut Frank Borman when questioned by Congress famously blamed the tragedy on “a failure of imagination”. Surely someone should have imagined that the ingress and egress vehicle might not be the same.
ETA: Hell, this kind of problem was obvious in the 1970s when engineers had to figure out how to get US and USSR spacecraft to dock with one another.
31 Likes
It’s crazy that they didn’t mandate a single suit design when one of the reasons for having two different designs of manned capsule was there was always a backup if one of the capsules was not able to fly.
Soyuz can be given a break for needing its own suits because the ship is an antique, but neither Dragon nor Starliner have such an excuse.
17 Likes
It’s too early in space exploration to standardize a space suit. Not an ideal situation, but so far seems manageable.
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It does seem silly when during the Shuttle era they had already been flying people up on the Shuttle and back on Soyuz (I wonder what they did for suits then?) so they were aware of the need for people to have to fly in different vehicles.
On the flip side, since Boeing was the one that was widely expected to be the first to achieve Commercial Crew status and SpaceX was a wild outsider, if they had standardised the design, we would probably still be in suits that look mostly like Boeing/Apollo.
7 Likes
Is it, though? It’s not like there are hundreds of different spacefaring interests going to a wide array of places with different mission parameters. The ISS is currently the one and only destination for crewed spaceflights. Even if the suit designs aren’t identical there’s no reason the different kinds of spaceships couldn’t have a single connection standard.
16 Likes
a three hour tour… a three hour tour…
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This was my first thought. One of the many hidden costs of privatization. Up next: subscription based spacesuits - spacesuits as a service (license not transferable).
13 Likes
Can’t they just make it work using duct tape like they did on Apollo 13?
10 Likes
Electric cars use different charging standards and are only now changing to a single standard. Why would SpaceX behave any differently than Tesla given the primary ownership? Now think about neurolink patients….
8 Likes
If NASA determines that Starliner is not safe, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams must have spacesuits delivered to them on the International Space Station. Alternatively, they could return without suits.
Hmmm…
The historic all-civilian SpaceX mission, which launched Sept. 15 [2021] and successfully splashed down on Saturday (Sept. 18), went off without a hitch, except for a minor issue with the Dragon’s onboard toilet.
Me, I’m mostly the kind who says: “when the toilet breaks in zero-g, it’s nice to have a space suit”.
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This is pretty much the plot of a Doctor Who episode.
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If you would like to renew your spacesuit subscription and waive all rights to a jury trial in the event you are a guest at a Disney theme park, press 1.
15 Likes
This is SPACE Travel Sir, and we take things very seriously.
Only Kapton tape will do.
12 Likes
