Why SpaceX suits are GENIUS…
The futuristic flight suits worn by Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken during Saturday’s successful training launch ahead of the company’s in-flight Abort test looks a world away from the bulky orange shuttle flight suits worn when astronauts last launched from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center.
The SpaceX suit is sleek white with gray accents and a white helmet complete with a large, tinted face-shield; kind of like something you might see Daft Punk rocking. “This SpaceX suit is significantly different from the suit we wore on the shuttle,” Hurley, a veteran of space shuttle flights STS-129 and STS-135, said during a preflight press conference May 1, without going into much detail. He alluded to some differences to the Sokol suit the Russians use for spaceflight but added he “never actually went through the entire suit-up process” since the Sokol was used as a backup if something went wrong during his brief mission to the International Space Station (ISS).
Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken are training for their first flight on a new astronaut-transportation system built by SpaceX, and as early as this summer could launch into the sky in a capsule named Dragon. The interior of the capsule is black and white, with clean lines and cushy seats. A triptych of touch screens, compatible with space-suit gloves, displays important information. The cabin is spacious enough to seat seven. Decades after the first people reached Earth’s orbit, the physics of getting to space hasn’t changed. Neither have the dangers. But the aesthetics have. On the training side, Behnken said in a separate preflight video interview on May 2, the SpaceX space suit has one big advantage: “a high enough fidelity, from a training perspective, that we can — both Doug and I — can sit in a capsule, we can put on suits and we can go through a situation or a scenario where the suits are going to inflate.”
NASA astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken don SpaceX spacesuits in the Astronaut Crew Quarters at Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Jan. 17, 2020, during a dress rehearsal ahead of the company’s uncrewed In-Flight Abort Test. Behnken said it is important for astronauts to witness that kind of experience in training, to prepare for the rigors of spaceflight. “Getting that level of fidelity of training hardware, versus PowerPoints and virtual presentations of it [the suit], is really important from an operator’s perspective. So that’s a huge win. The SpaceX team stepped up to that, and we really appreciate it.” “Was incredibly hard to balance aesthetics and function,” he said on his Instagram post of the design, “easy to do either separately.” And as he also stated in the image he posted to Instagram: this isn’t a mock-up. It’s the fully double-vacuum pressure tested real deal. Subsequently, two of these SpaceX spacesuits proved their worth in space, before being used by humans. One flew with the Tesla-driving dummy that launched on a Falcon Heavy rocket in 2018, and another was used on the dummy Ripley that flew aboard the uncrewed SpaceX Crew Dragon Demo-1 test flight to the ISS in 2019. The suit is intended to be used for those who will be boarding the SpaceX crewed version of the Dragon Capsule.
What makes the SpaceX suit even more noteworthy is that it was designed by founder and lead designer of Ironhead Studios, Jose Fernandez who has worked on Captain America: Civil War and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. But they are just designed for use inside the SpaceX capsule, known as the Crew Dragon, and are not suitable for use on spacewalks. While the suits aren’t designed for an extravehicular activity like floating through space or leaving the spaceship while in space, the suits are much slimmer as there is no need to carry oxygen or needed protection against the threats of environmental terrain.
Aerospace giant Boeing also has a contract with Nasa to carry astronauts to the space station in its CST-100 Starliner spacecraft. The Boeing Blue suits are about 40% lighter than earlier generations of spacesuits worn by American astronauts and are more flexible. They contain different internal layers to keep astronauts cool. The suit also has touchscreen-sensitive gloves so astronauts can work with tablets in the spacecraft. The soft, hood-like helmet features a wide polycarbonate visor to give Starliner passengers better peripheral vision throughout their ride to and from space.
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