Transcripts For CSPAN3 Apollo Spacesuits 20240714

A maker ofessor, and spacesuit replicas. The Smithsonian National air and space museum in washington, d. C. , hosted this event. We have assembled a panel of speakers. Some of my favorite people i like to talk to when talking about spacesuits, to recount the making of the apollo spacesuits and inform us on the lessons we have learned in going back to the next thing in Spacesuit Development be it going to the moon, an asteroid, or mars. In order to save time, i will introduce all four speakers and they will come up sequentially and tell their stories. Then we will have time for discussion and questions from the audience at the end. Our speakers in order of appearance are a recently retired test engineer at ilc dover, the company that made the apollo spacesuits and makes the current spacesuits our astronauts used to spacewalk from the iss when they leave via the american port on the International Space station. The next speaker will be ryan nagata, an artist and maker from Southern California who did a unique approach to becoming a model maker. He started out as a film director, and discovered his real passion was making models, props, and costumes for hire. They are featured in many movies. Ryan will talk about his experience recreating some vintage suits used in the biopic. A russian lead spacesuit designer at a company in the ussr in russia. He has come to this country and participated in spacesuit glove designs and won a competition he now has a company of his own based in brooklyn, and he is going to talk about his perspective on spacesuits in light of his career as a russian spacesuit designer and engineer, and an american spacesuit entrepreneur. Our last speaker will be dr. Dava newman, the apollo professor of astronautics and engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of technology. She is one of the few people i can say has a better job title than i do. Really amazing. Dr. Newman will talk about the next generation of responsive materials for spacesuits to make these formfitting spacecraft truly a perfect fit for exploration. I will call on our first speaker to talk about the apollo legacy and spacesuits. [applause] bill thank you for that wonderful introduction. It is quite an honor to be invited to join this panel. I thank you for coming tonight. Lets start with the slide presentation. I have five minutes to cover 40 to 50 years of history of apollo, so i will make this pretty fast. I start with the humble beginnings. This is a very early spacesuit developed by our engineer developing suits at the time. He saw the need to support the vision of future humans working in space. Glenn sheppard was an engineer working on the helmets. You can see one in the photo. They were used by the air force in High Altitude suits. He realized that the future of humans in space was not far off. There is no true spacesuits out there. This is early, the 1950s, but we knew eventually humans would fly into space. They propose to the company they provide funding to suits, ultimately split 5050 through the 1950s and 1960s. By 1956 george and a few others were hired to take the torch to the next level. He was quite an inventor that carried the suit to the next level and brought it to the apollo suit that it ended up being. This is our first entry into the apollo contract. Through the 50s and early 60s we developed this suit. It won the first spacesuit contest. There were several companies. We were one of the few that had a true suit. As fate would have it, we were a subcontractor to hamilton standard. Len and the others at ilc had to be thrilled. They felt they had the solution. Unfortunately for them nasa correctly recognize the Small Division had little in the way of Systems Engineering management and quality liability. They teamed up with an aerospace company. It was probably the right decision, because we did not have the rigor. We had very good engineers that could build a oneoff suit, but to have the rigor that nasa is looking for, it wasnt going to happen the way we were set up at the time. The early ilc suit appeared in 1962 as we are working as a subcontractor between 1962 in 1965. The basic design had taken shape. If you can imagine how comfortable it might have been working in that suit not very. If you look at it, you will see the rubber convolutes. The knees, shoulders, and elbows had good mobility. When you tried to put the helmet on it increased the size of the torso, it made for a bulky suit. This was the early stages. It wasnt going to happen overnight. That is the way anything happens. You have some failures and you have to explore along the way. The second contract bid, here we have the second round. What happened was the basic concept was decent for the time as early suits, but due to conflicts between ilc and hamilton management, ilcs perspective was that hamilton followed a story the other day about the fact they would design something and hamilton would want to test it and test it and test it. You have to test, i am the guy that tests things, but there is a time to call it quits and hamilton did not know when to call it quits. That was part of the problem. There was part of the move of hamilton to take the helmet business away from ilc. They were not something to wear for a longduration mission. Hamilton pursued that. They thought the helmet idea was okayed. They took that away to free up our engineers. We didnt see it that way because we were making money off it. It didnt sit well. In february 1965 hamilton announced an asset they would be dropping ilc from the team and working with goodrich on future suit designs. They had already started helping them design different joints. Nasa decided to open the contract back up. They were nervous. They would have a contest to decide who the winner would be. Gemini suits by david clark were having some success. They had some problems, Serious Problems with overheating and mobility, but they had groundwork. In nasas mind they thought maybe david clark and be the suit to go to. Hamilton came with goodrich. They thought hamilton, goodrich, and david clark will have a contest. Ilc went to nasa in protest saying, we got the short end of the deal when you forced us to team with hamilton. We want a second shot. Nasa agreed. They learned their lesson and said you have six weeks. For six weeks aroundtheclock, we had a few engineers and seamstresses to put the suits together. They busted their neck to put the suit together that you see. It turned out to be the winning suit. The other two did not have good mobility. There were a lot of issues. Even our suit had issues, but issues that we knew could be fixed. When you design something new you start with something and then you develop it. You could see that the suit was more formfitting, tailored, the suit that we wanted from the beginning without the hamilton engineers telling us how to build it. In ended up being the lunar suit used for apollo seven through apollo 14 missions. It started out with what you saw previously. It did an outstanding job given the stateoftheart technology at the time. It had four waist mobility. They had to strap into pull the waist together. The arms were not very good, there were a lot of problems with it. Then we get to the model in 1968 before we were flying in apollo 11 we had our engineers go to houston on september 20, 1968 and present the model suit, we called the omega suit. It provided increased mobility. On the side view you can see a zipper from the chest to the back. It was a zipper that was spiral wound that freed up the wasist section waist section that allow the astronauts to sit in the rovers and more mobility. Arm mobility. That did it justice. It was first presented in 1968, as i said. They were definitely looking for it. At the time they were looking for the hard suites that could be suits that could be used in later apollo missions. Maybe put money into the lenten suit. They liked this suit. They asked ilc to certify the arm designed so the first crew for apollo 11 could have the arms. They expedited the certification process. Late april, 1969 we began to remove the arms and replace them with new arms and configuration. This was accomplished by the first week of june, 1960 nine a few weeks prior to the apollo 11 mission. We would constantly get suits back after trainings and runs to put in new zippers. This was a turnaround to rip the arms off and put on new arms with a new design that was just certified weeks before. You see what our troops are going through at the time. Quite a bit. 1976, the company had downsized to 25 people because we put all of our eggs in one basket. We ran out of gas. There were no other contracts for apollo. We were down to 25 people. We knew if he held on we could win the shuttle contract. We did. We knew we did not have the resources to do this on our own. Hamilton came to us, or we came to them, and hamilton said youve established yourselves as the spacesuit providers for nasa. We think we should team up and we wont tell you how to build the spacesuit. We will provide the primary support system to do the management, configuration management, Systems Engineering, and support you. We figured at the time as 25 people that was the only choice. We teamed up and ended up winning the contract, which is the International Space station suit now. Our history, and it is constantly evolving we had 21 different suit designs. More than 280 different suits. We are probably a little over that, but it is hard to keep track of all of the suit designs, but that is a rough number. We built for nasa. We have the suit that alan eustis wore. The jump that he made from 25 miles up, we built that suit for alan eustis. No lossoflife or any mishaps due to any assembly. We have had minor things, but nothing that caused the mission any issues. On the moon, for sure. That provided 440 evas and more than 3100 total eva hours. Ilc, we have a Houston Office where we are developing the next generation suits, focusing on lightweight design, less hardware, reconfigurable to fit a Diverse Group of astronauts. So it can be reconfigured in size. Suits designed for zero g or planetary use so that we can have a lower torso that can be used for vehicular activity and zero g with a lower force on the soft upper torso that could have planetary more lower torso mobility with ankle flex and good fitting boots. They are scheduled to complete design testing by 2019. One of the engineers i talked to today i think said the iva suit completed testing this week. Thats it. Thank you. I will turn this over to my good friend, ryan nagata. [applause] ryan thank you. Do i click this . Sorry. Hi, i am ryan nagata, an artist and maker in los angeles. I am probably best known for making accurate replicas of spacesuits. The suits in this photo are not real, they are replicas that i made for a photo shoot. There are no photos of both astronauts on the moon, so this isnt real. To prove it, thats another one from the same photo shoot. That also never happened on the moon. I make all of these spacesuits in my studio in los angeles. This is an a7lb model suit. I fabricate everything from scratch. Silkscreen the patches and pattern the fabric pieces. I machine the metal fittings. I even cast replica neoprene convolutes for the suits, not to hold pressure, but to make sure the suits are the right shape. It has taken a tremendous amount of research to make these suits as accurate as possible. In the years i have been doing this, i have been fortunate enough to measure some real components of the a7lb cover layer that i got to measure. There is the familiar front face. I was doing research at ilc a few months ago, actually. The pieces i make are almost indistinguishable from the real thing. This is an apollo bubble helmet i made recently. It is blown poly carbonate, just like the real thing. It is almost a real helmet. I guess the real question is why do i do all this stuff . I used to work in hollywood as a director, but i would always make props and costumes for films and tv shows on the side. I have always been very interested in the space program, particularly spacesuits. About five years ago i decided i wanted to make a really accurate apollo suit. This gentleman happened to see it. This is adam savage from mythbusters. He has been a big champion of my work. He commissioned me to make him an apollo suit that he wore in an episode of the show. Ever since then, ive just had lots and lots of requests to make replica suits for private collectors, museums, and movies. This is an apollo 12 astronaut wearing a replica i made. He said it was the most accurate replica of an apollo suit he had ever seen, which was high praise from him, because he was also a great artist and looking at the forms and proportions of things. I thought that was very nice of him to say. That is a mini apollo suit that i made for my daughter a few years ago. I dont just make apollo suits. This is a pressure suit from 1934. This was the first pressure suit. I made this for the stafford air and space museum. That is also a photograph i staged. That is me in the suit. The real suit was on display here. Im told it will be on display again. This is a mercury suit that i did for a film. This is a gemini suit that i made. Sometimes i am asked to do stuff from science fiction. This was William Shatners spacesuit costume from an episode of star trek. The helmet was missing. They used the costume helmet on an episode of mork and mindy and they never sought again. This was the real suit missing the helmet, so i fabricated that by watching stills of the show and doing a lot of research. An interesting thing. That is alan eustis. He donated the pressure suit that he wore to this museum, but he wanted a replica of it. He asked me if i get do one, so i made this. It has a lot of the real components, so i cant take credit for the real thing. The reason i am probably here is probably because of this suit. This is a replica of the x15 pressure suit. The real one is on the left. I made this for the Neil Armstrong biopic first man last year. This is the costume ryan gosling wore recreating one of armstrongs flights. I was also i made a number of other things for that film, but i was also a suit consultant and helped with a lot of things because of all of the research ive done. I get called to advise on these sorts of things. I did a tremendous amount of research for that suit. This is the last living pilot of the x15 program, a technical consultant on the film. He absolutely loved the suit. He said i got it completely right. He also said this was his favorite suit that he ever wore. He trained for apollo, so he wore apollo suits. He flew on the shuttle. He has worn a lot of pressure suits. He had an emotional moment looking at the suit again. Those emotional moments have made the line of work i am in now very rewarding. That is it for my intro. I would like now to introduce nikolai. [applause] nikolai hello, thank you for coming. I am from russia. I have worked on final frontier events. I am a designer. I live in new york. We founded a company after getting first prize in a glove competition. Two people from final frontier design. My background, i am a spacesuit designer. I worked on spacesuit design all my life. I am one of the only men in the world that have fitted russian and american spacesuits. The pictures are colored pictures that i am on mars. [laughter] i made that suit in 2001. I have a background in spacesuit design and technology. I got a green card as a scientist in 2007. Last year i got american citizenship. [applause] so, my Business Partner has an outstanding performance and design. We opened it and we have new spacesuit designs. We have some of our work. We make real spacesuits. In 2019 we are wanted for moon spacesuit boot design. The elbow shoulder assembly in 2007. Our elbow joints outperform physical mobility more than two times. We build a spacesuit for mars in 2015. We have outstanding mobility for the glove. The metacarpal joint, some metacarpal joints with induction. Our micro material has advanced several iterations from the best thermal insulation in the world. Flexible and very effective. We have unique mechanical counter pressure design for glove assembly. Out of our studio in six hours. We have a team in brooklyn, new york city. We have unique service. We provide spacesuit experience. Since 2014, 250 people have tested our spacesuits and most people of them. Most people loved them. We have had people fitted for gliders and highaltitude aircraft. Our commercial into vehicular activity spacesuit has very low weight and high mobility. Our spacesuits the suit in the picture is in the adjustment range. In 2017 we have the opportunity suit retested it in zero gravity. Unique four days and zero gravity conditions. Unique four days and zero gravity conditions. Our spacesuit tested in a chamber and high fidelity flight simulators, and we passed oxygen testing and with the space act agreement for certification of our spacesuit for all orbital spaceflights. In 2018 five people and one woman wore them for skydiving. A very promising market for High Altitude jumps. In 2019, in connecticut, survival systems. We tested our spacesuit from the orion capsule into water. We are working on vehicle spacesuit prototypes. It will be in october. We are going to make a lot of testings with that suit. Not the real spacesuit, only a prototype. My spacesuit design on the International Space station, but commercial has a long way to do that. Thank you for your attention. I introduce dava newman, professor m. I. T. [applause] dava how is everyone doing . It is a great evening, i am thrilled to be here. This is a National Brain trust of spacesuit knowledge, design, and a History Lesson for all of us. It is my great pleasure to be here with all of you. I will dare to take us into the future a little bit. So, spacesuit is the worlds smallest spacecraft. The spacesuit equals spacecraft, alright. These are my apollo bloopers. The reason i like to show these is because we are going back to the moon. We have been there. We have this amazing suit. Can you imagine that 50 years ago . I had the honor to be the apollo professor at m. I. T. And i have been waiting 50 years. We have to get back there. We are going there to do a lot of science this time. The worlds smallest spacecraft shrunk around a person. It is heavy, not very mobile, hard to do your science. In the middle we talked about the mobility suit, the current one on the shuttle and flown for 19 years on the International Space station. We are doing a lot of experiments out there. You take all of the systems of a spacecraft, provide your pressure, oxygen to breathe, scrub your carbon dioxide, thermal temperature control, you shrink them around a person and you want the person to stay alive, be safe, and get their work done. On the right that is a look at future designs. These are gas pressurized suits. You are in a balloon. You are in a balloon, alive, applying pressure, but they are hard to move. I am a researcher. We like to look at the design paradigms. Rather than shrinking spacecraft around a person, what if i said this is a person and i study athletes what if i design, i am an aerospace designer, what if i design a suit from the skin out, literally a second skin suit. You shrink wrap someone. We still have to provide pressure. It is a pressure suit and we need one third of an atmosphere. It is about one third of an atmosphere is the design goal to reach. One third of an atmosphere. In our research we are going to the moon. I cant wait to get there. It has been 50 years. Lets get onto it. We will become interplanetary. We will have people on the earth and mars. Earth is my favorite planet, mars is second. It will be a roundtrip. Youll want to come home and see your family. I like thinking about the materials for the suit of the future. My students grow up and become astronauts. In the lab we look at full mobility. These are skin strained maps to the millimeter precision level. Everyone gets their own suits. You get your own suit, it has to be comfortably designed and built because we have the technology. Why wouldnt we do that . You look at a little bit of the mathematics for you, this is a circle pattern, infinitesimal circles all over your skin. You move freely. The circle would turn elliptical. My blue circle turning into a green ellipse. From my circle, as it moves to ellipse it pivots, but it does not extend. There is beautiful mathematics behind this. And we get a spidermanlooking suit. It is the math that drives that. It is this patterning, that is where you put your electronics and smart sensors. That is how i know how my astronauts are performing. The direction stretches a lot. You use polymers that stretch a lot. That is where you get your mobility from. In the middle, we use active materials, like zippers, if you will. We use shape memory alloys, a nickel titanium known as muscle wires to get the pressure production we need. Right now we are looking at energy polymers and as recently as the last couple of months we are looking at hydrogenated boron nanotubes. They look like that. Why is that so exciting . It could be a huge breakthrough thinking about the design. As a spacesuit designer ive always said we dont put the Radiation Protection in the suit because it makes it massive and bulky. You put it in the rover or under the ground, but i need the astronaut light and mobile. There are new materials on the drawing board putting them into threads. We are spinning them into threads. I can get back to making formal fitting suits. That is the future we see. Mobile, lightweight astronauts. People on mars, a lot of people on the moon, and a lot of people in low earth orbit. We will become interplanetary, inspired by this amazing museum. What an amazing job to get these suits for all of us to look at. I will keep it short and look at a wonderful q a with you all. Thank you for your attention. [applause] our final slides bring us back full circle to our ignite video. Not only our spacesuits becoming more diverse, but we as museum appealing to a more diverse audience and trying to introduce them not only to the new technology but that there are hidden stories throughout our museum that we are going to tell. Spacesuits are not just about astronauts. They are about engineers, technicians, material scientists. One question to start this off discussing spacesuits and our program is the role of testing. That is a role that comes up repeatedly. Perhaps, bill, you can started off as the senior test engineer from ilc dover. What is the role of testing and how important is it in the spacesuit process . Bill it is everything. You have design ideas, may be an engineer has an idea of how to make a leg or an arm work, but the apollo suits were 3. 75 pounds per square inch with a lot of pressure loads. You flex your elbow in the flex brakes, that would be fine. They would certify the suits by doing motions. Maybe halfway through a cable would break or the rubber would fail so they would have to start over. That is the way it goes. If you design a car it is the same way. Take it to a test track, find out what breaks and fix it. Down in houston when armstrong walked on the moon, he said we were scared because we knew that the suits were tested as much as they could be tested in the lab. They would break things, fix it, break things, and fix it. In the lab mechanically the suits worked fine. They put them in a vacuum chamber to make sure they would hold pressure. They do these things piecemeal. A test here and attest there. In houston when neil walked down the ladder that was the first test of the suit because you had the full environment that you could never duplicate on earth. The testing is everything. John young used to get into the suit, he loved to try to break the suit. His goal was to break the suit in the lab. He did not want it to be broken 250,000 miles from earth. He would get in the suit and terror nut. He had the idea of splaying his legs apart so he could reach that lock. They were stateoftheart, but he figured if he could do that, he might be able to break it. He sure did. He broke a couple of tables. He did redundant knee cables. Nasa was funding it, and it was getting a little crazy. Finally, everyone realized that you onlynar surface, have 1 6 weight, so his ability to jump and pull things was irrelevant. The System Engineer called down to houston and said, hey, jim, we just broke another cable in the suit, and they said stop testing right away. You are done. Stop. They realized we were over killing this thing, but i could go on all night, but i will stop there. Testing is everything. We still do it today. My lab my lap, i retired and turned it over to someone else, but in that lab, theres guys we suits when wehe put new materials in it. Nasa cannot fund new suit design right now, so were stuck with the suit we have. We have to certify all the material, so still to this day, we certify all materials in the suits, make sure it holds up. Thats my short long answer, my long short answer. Question andther then we will open it up to the audience. We were constantly at the Museum Talking about stent science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, but i would like to ask all my guest if they have an opinion, what is the role of design to spacesuits . Especially the prospect of for humanmans out spaceflight, longterm exploration that may take years or more. What do you think the role is of design and aesthetics . I will take that one first. I have spent my whole career on stem education, but i call it steam. Parts are in, you tell the story, take the pictures, i need the artists. D for design, that is vertically important. I have a generation of makers out there. If they dont want to be an era space engineer, breaks my heart, but i want to get to mars and back to the moon. To widen thent field. They say, stem education, that is not for me. Of course it is for you. They have to see themselves and really have a sense of belonging. It has to be diverse and inclusive, and we will raise up stem if we raise up everyone. And i have Katherine Johnson up there, my heroine at 100 years old, the mathematical genius in computer who helps calculate our numbers for the apollo orbit. She was hidden, but we are not hidden anymore. For all the parents who want to go back to school and the conduct their come you do not have to be the best at physics, math, and chemistry. How intimidating is that . That how i was taught in engineering. You weed people out. That is what i was taught. That is the long message. Those are tools that i use every day, but what is your passion, you know . Is it getting people to the moon, mars, helping with Climate Change . All of these things. As an educator, we will lift everyone up. We will try changing the message to steamd a little bit more, but thank you for the question. We just have a few minutes. Do we have questions from the audience . What was the biggest stumper . What stumped you in the initial designing of the city . For the audience, what was the biggest showstopper . What stopped you the most about making the suit . It was mobility. Mobility, fit, and comfort. You could put reliability in there, but mobility, because we won the contest, our suit was more mobile than the others. It was not a lot more mobile, but we did the evaluation process out of the earlier policies, and the feedback was it had more mobility. Absolutely. How much do the space suits cost . How much does a spacesuit cost . I would say 1 million. It is hard to say, because we do not build a suit anymore, we build parts of suits. So we might have a pair of arms go out the door or boots. I have heard 10 million . I would say about 10 million. How long does it take . Various times. A pair of gloves might take three months. The price for many of you would be 250 million. That includes all the designs. If you had to sell them. 200,000. Order of magnitude reduction. I want to get to the next point. I am really amazed by the actual fabric. How many layers are in there to keep the vacuum out and everything . The question was when you look at a spacesuit, it looks like cloth. The question is how many layers i want to put a plug in for everyone, come on july 16. You will see Neil Armstrongs suit that has been digitized, preserved, and we found a new hightech case. We will have available images of the xrays that we had done on the suit, and you will be able to see what a magnificent machine it is. That is my own personal plug. You can go on and talk about layers . 14. Depending on how you count. First, your astronaut long underwear, then tubing to keep you up or cool you down, heat you up, or cool you down, then you have the layer of the suit. The bladder layer, a second bladder layer, then you have a liner, you add those up and there is five layers of aluminized mylar. That is when you get into the thermal properties of the suit. They all look white because that is the outer layer. That is the garment, and it is mostly white for design reasons. This suit you are looking at, many, many multiple layers. Probably about 21 in the apollo suit. 14 to 21, but we will make them a lot less in the future. So you can be more mobile. Did you have a comment . No. The gentleman in the blue shirt . You mentioned there were zippers to get in and out of the apollo suits. Did you worry about dirt interfering with the seal . Yes. I do not know if you all heard that. There were zippers in the apollo suit. It was a double pressure zipper, and the question was, did we worry about dirt getting into the seal . There were a number of concerns with the zippers. After apollo was over, nasa and every buddy decided no more zippers on suits. The zippers worked, but in training suits they failed. We replaced i am writing a book called lunar outfitters, and it is not out yet in the book, i talk about his suit, and i think three times we replaced his zipper in the prime suit before it even flew. They worked fine on the mission, but to your point, there was always a concern about dirt logging up, and it did in the later missions, like on apollo 17 they were constantly opening and closing zippers. The lunar dust got to be a real issue. We are all familiar with that. If you go to the moon or go to mars, we have to engineer a suit betters and that not only the zippers, but the disconnect stay clean somehow. Young lady in the blue . About the spacesuits from ours, i was wondering what the time restraints would be and how long would they be used at a time . You talked about radiation. The question was about spacesuits for mars and what sort of time restraints with a have on them for would they have on them for eva use . So it takes about eight months to get there and half a year to get home, and hopefully we are going there to search for the evidence of past life, so we need to be on the surface for 500 or 600 days. Typically you think about eight hours. I like the notion of thinking about four hours in the morning, coming in and eating lunch, and it will be humans on our rovers and all of our equipment. Think about that. A long work day, they are going to have for many, many repetitions. The First Mars Mission with four people is going to be over 1000 eva hours. In all of the history of spacewalks, we have just done over 500 spacewalks to date. We will break that on the First Mars Mission. About martian spacesuit challengeis is a real for engineers and designers. The atmosphere, lowdensity, but somes atmosphere, and lifesupport system devices will not work in this. The more critical issue for this , the new spacesuits have 300 pounds weight. We have to consider much less weight. Weight always in spaces is the most critical issue. Wait always in spacesuits is the most critical issue. Yes, a young lady up top with long hair . Yes, you. So i was just wondering, when in modernday spacesuit design, when they are testing differences between male and female bodies, and if so, when did they start considering that . The question was, when did they start accounting for gender diversity in making spacesuits . Manufacturing spacesuits . I will just say in our current suit, we looked at the hard upper torso shell. That is a limiting factor, i think, in a lot of cases because it has the side bearing, the opening is up top, kind of can restrict your reach out front. So we have a medium, large, and extralarge size. We found the smaller female astronauts could not we could not size them properly in that suit. I think the next generation suit, we have to look at that. The way we are looking, i know these folks down here have some comments on that and what they are looking at in their design, but you have to accommodate for that. One of the tougher areas to design suits is the shoulders. That extension, abduction, rotation, all of that has to happen any upper torso takes a beating, so you have to design that so you have the mobility and siding across the shoulders. Everyone should get their own suit. We have the technology, everyone should get a custom suit. We have everybody gets a custom suit so it performs much better, so it can fit you. Yes . We talked about the research and development behind [inaudible] i was curious about what you feel still needs to be done on those types of suits, and when do you think those will be ready . The question was about the z series of suits they are working on down at nasa jrc. Butlost me with the trl, what needs to be done with that suit further for any terms of testing and refinement before it can be used . I will take that one. The question was about the suit. It is an interesting concept. Imagine if you got into your suit, but through a big back hatch imagine a big back hatch on your suit. You get in, it is easy to address, and you close it up. You can take those suits and hang them off the rover, so the suits go with the rover together. The disadvantage is it is very massive. Its very heavy. There are pros and cons to what is known as the suit court the suit foport. We have not talked too much. When you get into a spacesuit, there is lowpressure, the third of an atmosphere, and you have to make sure you do not decompress or get the bends. This goes into the pressurization of the suit and you jump in through a suit port that the gentleman mentioned something with the Technology Readiness level of seven, which means we have a lot of technology, we are kind of ready to go. It has been researched and developed, it is not really baseline in any missions i know of nowadays, probably because of that penalty. Interesting engineering solution. The gentleman all the way up in the next to last row. Yes. Scott kelly described one of his evas, he wore a helmet where his eyeglass lenses were ground into the surface of the helmet. Is that an unusual thing . He said it didnt work. Does it on a regular basis . The question was about scott kellys experience. He said his eyeglasses prescription were grounded into the helmet. Is that normal . Or was that a one time i am not familiar of that. I have not heard of that, and i did not know because obviously it would be a lot of work to try and get it customized for an astronaut. They do wear glasses and corrective lenses, but that is all i am aware of. You lost me on that one. Im not sure. It could be right, but i dont know. We have time for one or two more questions. The gentleman in the redshirt . Ryan, in all the research you have done to try and recreate the accuracy, what did you come across that you were surprised by, why did they do it this way . The question was about all the Research Done to recreate the suits. The come up to any point where he was puzzled by why the engineers made it this way, in one particular way . Usually it is the opposite. I would wonder why, looking at something, why it was done that way. In the process of recreating that, i would understand. It is kind of interesting, because you are retracing the steps of what the engineers did. I do not think there are a lot of records of these things. I know between the a7l and a7lb, there is a diverge or not that controls the amount of air they would pump into the helmets, and i noticed on the b suits, the cutout on the knob was much deeper. Something i noticed looking in museums, but then i realized oh, with gloved hands you could grab the knob better. At some point, an astronaut must have said, i cannot turn this knob. I see stuff like that all the time. And sometimes ryan will be working on a project and call me and say, this has this or that to it. I have to stop and look at the detail. I have to stop because it goes over my head, and it goes, my god, why are you looking at that detail. It begs the question again of why we did that. The design is interesting. One more question. I have to give it to a ringer. Valerie . So jonathan, he has the vision of what the next generation of suit he might be like . Another question for ryan. With all of his research, does he have his own vision of what the next suit should look like . When you were mentioning aesthetic, that is what i thought. I do not make real spaces, i make costumes, so that is all i deal with. I notice a funny thing with space design. The first suits are always designed kind of in the way that they think they should be, like with science fiction. The x 15 suit and the mercury suit were silver. They really did not have to be silver, but i think the legend, Scott Crossfield saw that silver fabric on a table at the david clark ebony and said oh, that looks really cool. For pr, that should be what a suit should look like. Over the course of gemini and apollo, they got rid of that. This is silly, we dont need that. I noticed with the martian, the suit looks a lot like david newmans suit. The first things are what they think they should be, but i know it will evolve into what functionally it needs to be. That is kind of the exciting thing, i think, seeing what naturally develops that i dont know. Thank you. I would just like to thank our panelists for an all too short program. People who know me, we could be here for hours. Unfortunately, the house says we cannot. Please join me in thanking our guests. [applause] announcer 1 American History tv is on social media. ,ext on lectures in history karen markoe teaches a class on the 1920s. She talks about politics, prohibition, and organized