And in the end, it turned out that resistance to crossbow bolts and broadswords wasn’t all that relevant to the mission, and the medieval-style suits were abandoned in favour of soft suits using brassiere technology.
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Ah, I saw your suit example, the last one, being called a mark 3. Man if i could flip through your book, maybe I could find the example. This was 25+ years ago, and like I said, I don’t think it is currently on display - so I couldn’t look at their current Hall of Space website to look for it.
If you ever do make it anywhere near Hutchinson, KS and you like space stuff, it is absolutely worth the out of the way trip!
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Just a few lines down there’s “Armor for Prince of Wales,
“gilt and graven” £340 1614” which I think works out to 400,000 pounds…
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Kozlowski’s book (the bible of US spacesuits and early pressure suits) goes way into that also. 
International Latex Corporation had not only submitted a suit proposal, but also one for the suit’s Portable Life Support System (sounds weird but I’ll get to that), only to ostensibly lose to Hamilton Standard who ended up designing the PLSS but under NASA management at Houston’s Manned Space Center. As to a bra-maker wanting to design/build a PLSS… the story is not that simple. ILC had supported the military in WWII with all sorts of latex products, and thereby had a leg-up on creating specialty products beyond bras. ILC later designed pressure suits (including helmets) for US military aviation in the early 50’s. All of that explains how ILC’s expert seamstresses got involved.
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I did some more googling, and looked at the RX series and I think it was the RX-2A, but I can’t confirm it.
It is possible it was on loan from the Air and Space Museum, as several of our artifacts are/were.
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I like it, too. It looks as if it’s about to sprout an outrageously large communications dish and several antennas!
Looks very close to the penultimate RX-4. I’m sure you’ll find this part very interesting, as it has to do with the shoes which look a bit odd in profile, as I’m sure you’ve noticed on the link you sent out. (Again, from the bible) A unique characteristic of the RX series is the shoe, which was patterned after the Dutch sabot. Litton engineers purchased a pair for $4.90 and concluded that the sabot had a proper sole and heel structure for walking on the lunar surface. They used the Dutch shoe, with the toe shaved off, for a mold and added polyurethane insulation in the sole to form the hard boot.
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Klompen (pl) in Dutch.
TIL:
“The traditional all-wooden Dutch clogs have been officially accredited as safety shoes with the CE mark and can withstand almost any penetration including sharp objects and concentrated acids. They are actually safer than steel-capped protective shoes in some circumstances, as the wood cracks rather than dents in extreme accidents, allowing easy removal of the clog and not continued pressure on the toes by the (edge of the) steel nose.”
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Perfect for Hannie when she’s puttering around in the garden and Brecht accidently drives his tractor-mower over her feet.
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Original silent film from 1924. It’s about 30 minutes long
(bonus, it’s not reformatted to fit on a cell phone)
If you ask me the real question is whether to include the cape or not.
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re: the skirts, i wonder how they would ride a horse in those. i can’t tell if the one on the left can slide upward, the one on the right looks pretty static. maybe they’re only for specific situations?
According to the 2nd link I posted in reply to @Otherbrother
The skirt type armour was used in foot combat (jousting) fighting with long swords over a barrier, presumably any downstroke would skid off the skirt. Whether it was used in more general combat or not I do not know. But I cannot see any benefit in it condensing on horseback.
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Heh, now you’ve got me thinking of those collapsing metal cups:
It would be pretty cool if some knights had special telescoping armor that was designed to pack up into a small portable package like the “suitcase suit” from Iron Man 2.
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It’s discussed here
made for tournaments, made as an expression of wealth and power
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Truly an extravagance
The answer is that the French king, Francis I, changed the rules. It had been agreed that the foot combats would be fought within the enclosure and Henry had his wonderful articulating armour made. Only three months before the tournament the French king changed the rules. The foot combats were now to be fought over the barrier wearing armour and weapons that kept the combatants further apart, which required a new style of armour.
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