What Astronauts Revealed About SpaceX's New Space Suit Totally Shocked NASA...

Have you smelled something burning nearby? Wow, it's not because of Starship's testing, but the heat of the new EVA suit that SpaceX has already released instead. This shocked the astronauts and created a big bang in the spaceflight where safety tends to be disproportional to comfort and aesthetics. So, what astronauts revealed about SpaceX EVA suit shocked whole industry? Find out everything in today's episode of TechMap. May 4, 2024 is a so special date for space lovers and even SpaceX's CEO. Could you guess why? First of all, as usual, it's Star Wars Day. For Elon Musk, it's the day when his child, Lil X, turns 4. SpaceX and Elon Musk celebrated this day in their own way, publishing the very first intro video about their most-weighted spacesuit, the SpaceX Extravehicular Activity, EVA suit. The suit is based on the current pressure suits worn by astronauts on Crew Dragon flights but, unlike those suits, is intended for use on spacewalks. The suit upgrades include new joint designs that remain soft until pressurized while maintaining mobility, improved thermal management, and an upgraded helmet with an exterior coating that acts like a sun visor along with a camera and heads-up display that provides information on the status of the suit during the spacewalk. Umbilicals provide life support for the suits. The suits will first be worn on the Polaris Dawn mission, a Crew Dragon private spaceflight that is part of the Polaris program of missions backed by billionaire Jared Isaacman. He will fly on that mission with Kid Petit, Sarah Gillis, and Anna Mennon. All four will wear the suits because Crew Dragon, lacking an airlock, will have to be depressurized for the spacewalk. Jared Isaacman could not hide his strong emotions. He reposted the video and said, After over two years, the SpaceX EVA suit has been unveiled. We are thrilled to have contributed to the development and testing and excited to wear them on Polaris Dawn for the first commercial EVA. A huge shout out to the team working tirelessly on this. As we aim for the Moon, Mars, and beyond, we'll need plenty of suits. A big step in that direction. May the fourth be with you. Elon Musk also emphasized the continuous development of SpaceX's design. Our next-gen spacesuit will be even better. The video immediately went viral on X. SpaceX has built the most practical as well as functional and stunningly beautiful spacesuit I've ever seen. Wow! One user showed his excited feeling. I'm amazed they were able to keep it so slim. I'd love to see how the internals look. Well done and Godspeed Polaris Dawn. Very interesting how SpaceX designed an incredible EVA suit while Boeing wasted $200 million trying to redesign theirs. We see who the true leader is. Those are just some of the thousands of comments that I collected on the media. I and all of you find it difficult to deny the fact that the suit resembles the Stormtrooper suit, which is so powerful and fashionable. Of course, the above is just the feeling of the outsider. So to become more objective, why don't we listen to the comments of the experts, especially astronauts who are familiar the most with the spacesuit. Scott Kidd-Poteet, mission pilot for the Polaris Dawn SpaceX mission, shared that the suit fits like a glove. So comfortable it's hard not to take micro naps between sim session. I think visor one of my favorite aspects. Only EVA suit ever built with single layer visor. Even Poteet also agrees that the suit still looks as thin and lightweight as IVA. Impressive compared to the other bulky ones. The EVA suit has capabilities over the standard IVA suit. Unlike things that are used only inside the spacecraft, the EVA suit is designed for astronauts to let them step outside. So this explains why it needs various specialized equipment making the suit more bulky. You can see this clearly through your grandpa's spacesuit, each of which had more than two dozen layers of protective material, and along with the life support system weighed 81 pounds on Earth. Though in the 1969 lunar surface mission, due to the moon's weaker gravity, commander Neil Armstrong and lunar module pilot Buzz Aldrin only carried about 30 pounds when they stepped out of the lunar lander. So how crazy did SpaceX get it so thin? They revealed partly secret that the new thermal management textiles are applied and materials are borrowed from Falcon's interstage and Dragon's trunk for their spacesuit. One space lover supposed that, honestly it's not that different thickness-wise compared to a Gemini suit, it's just a lot less loose fabric. SpaceX's suit is definitely more advanced than Gemini's. It's been like 70 years. That being said, having your life support not built into the suit and being built, for now at least, for shorter duration flights has serious advantages if your goal is slim. The most notable setback of the traditional spacesuit is the hard movement of the arms. Thus, SpaceX added rotating bearings at the shoulder allowing them to move the arm up and down. There's also a joint in the upper forearm just below the elbow. You might not see it when we rotated his forearm because it's under a layer of fabric or whatever that's made from. In addition to the comfortable design, Kid Petit added a visor to his favorite list. The new EVA suit stands apart from the others with its single layer visor. Typically, the EVA suits have multiple layers in their visors for various reasons, including protection from micrometeoroids, thermal insulation and UV radiation shielding. The exact number of layers can vary depending on the design and purpose of the suit, but they commonly have at least two or three layers. Some advanced suits may have even more layers for added protection and functionality. These layers are carefully designed to ensure the safety and comfort of astronauts during their activities in the vacuum of space. The closest thing to SpaceX's EVA suit in this aspect is the Sokol spacesuit, primarily used by Russian cosmonauts. The Sokol suit has a single layer visor made of polycarbonate material. While it lacks the additional protective layers found in some other EVA suits, the Sokol suit is still capable of providing sufficient protection for short-duration spacewalks and launch landing procedures aboard spacecraft like the Soyuz. While the comfort and flexibility are Petit's biggest impression, Polaris' mission specialist Anna Manon highly estimated the safety. Thrilled to get to share SpaceX's new EVA space suit, this is the suit that will keep us safe on the first ever commercial spacewalk and a big stepping stone towards a future where thousands of people are walking on the surface of Mars. Huge shout out to the incredible SpaceX team for this feat. Ditching the life support system on the suit, even though can reduce weight, is pretty risky. You know, this system serves several crucial roles to ensure the safety and well-being of the astronaut during extravehicular activities. It includes supplying oxygen, removing carbon dioxide, maintaining pressure, thermal control, etc. SpaceX suits are tailor-made. Someone said, you don't really need much insulation in space, you just need to paint them the right color to insulate them. The main issue is mobility and higher safety margin. Instead of a life support system, SpaceX can equip the airpipes to feed astronauts or give some micrometeorite protection. Another retired astronaut who does not join the Polaris mission, namely Chris Hadfield, praised the sleek new commercial space suit. Anyway, he also asked some questions about the structure and specifications of the suit. Jared Isaacman quickly answered each question one by one. This fired Chris up and he then responded, thanks Jared. If I can be of any help, please just ask. I'm excited for you and your crew and a useful new EVA suit. You'll learn so many unanticipated things. Have margin, keep everyone safe and purposefully take time to notice just what a cool new human experience spacewalking is. It is gratifying to see humanity gradually getting closer to the dream of becoming a multi-planetary species. Building a base on the moon and a city on Mars will require millions of spacesuits. The development of this suit and the execution of the spacewalk will be important steps toward a scalable design for spacesuits on future long-duration missions as life becomes multi-planetary. Form follows function, an adage of design that has become more popular than ever in today's spacesuit sector. And the leaders of this new wave are exactly private companies like SpaceX, Axiom and Boeing with simple and smart designs. However, unlike the fashion runway, spaceflight is a very harsh environment where safety rather than aesthetics always comes first. So how to harmonize the comfort, modern and basic protective function of the spacesuit? While competitors like Boeing and Axiom are on their way to finding answers, SpaceX with its new EVA suit has almost solved it all. What makes SpaceX suits stay apart from the other modern ones? Before answering this question, we should dive into what the NASA and Boeing spacesuits look like. As a part of the attempts to win the space race, NASA has spent huge money, up to $3.5 billion through 2034, to manufacture the spacewalk suit for both Artemis missions and ISS spacewalk. Two commercial firms currently hired by this tycoon to build the suit are Axiom Space and Collins Aerospace. While the news regarding Collins's $97.2 million space suit is pretty quiet, the community has focused its attention on the $228.5 million value Axiom suit. One interesting tidbit, the Houston-based company has collaborated with an Italian luxury fashion house, Prada, to develop a suit called the Axiom EMU suit. On April 8 on X, there was a new image showing Axiom Space's moon spacesuit, which has a white outer layer to reflect sunlight. The suit is a pretty similar but lighter version of the Apollo 11 spacesuit. I mean, it is equipped with a portable life support system, but promised to allow Artemis astronauts greater flexibility than the bunny-hopping Apollo crews of the 60s and 70s, who worked in stiff fabric. The suit includes a rear entry design, meaning a hatch in the back of the suit opens up and the astronaut slides into the suit. It's possible for an astronaut to get into the suit on their own, closing the hatch behind them. The suit features a large, clear helmet bubble for enhanced fields of view, with lights and a camera integrated into it. Additionally, it can accommodate a wide range of crew members and even offer other benefits as well, including the ability to work with specialized Axiom space tools on the lunar surface and the ability to stand in permanently shadowed regions of the moon for two hours or more. It's safe to say that the spacesuit is the brightest aspect amid Boeing's series of scandals in recent years. Ahead of Starliner's crew flight test, the astronauts took a chance to experience the suit. The Boeing suit is an ascent entry suit dedicated to the operation inside the spacecraft. Boeing first unveiled its spacesuits in 2017, and in 2018, a YouTuber in the space field, Everyday Astronauts, made a video recording his first try in Boeing's IVA suit. Yeah, this is what I think of when I think of a 21st century suit, like something actually lightweight and small, he said. The suit was built by the David Clark Company, which has several years of designing spacesuits, starting from Apollo and even the space shuttle. They provide YKK's ProXyl watertight and airtight zipper for the suit's main entry and for its hood-like soft helmet. The zipper is an integral part of the survival function of the suit and is capable of holding pressure in excess of 4 psi, which is the same amount of air. The zipper is described to be used in strategic locations, along with movable materials in the elbows and knees. This helps wearing the suit like a hoodie. Additionally, it features wraparound glass in the helmet and touchscreen-sensitive gloves. The touchscreen-sensitive gloves enable you to maintain dexterity even when fully inflated. We found out that it is approximately 40 percent lighter than previous spacesuits, running about 13.7 kilograms, while Boeing's version is only 9 kilograms. Nevertheless, the most notable disadvantage of the Starliner suit is that it has not flown yet. The continuous delay of the CST-100 spacecraft prevents NASA and the space community from having a more fair review of it. Meanwhile, SpaceX started to test its IVA suit in the actual flight during the NASA SpaceX Demo-2 in May 2020. So far, the suit has been utilized up to 12 times under Dragon's crewed flights to space, seven for NASA and four for commercial customers. Its high reliability motivates SpaceX to be out of its comfort zone with the first version of the IVA suit, which will be tested in Polaris Dawn. Despite being just a beginner in the market, its technologies are highly estimated. By contrast, after seven years, the Starliner team has made almost no significant improvements on their suit Under the amazing hands of a Hollywood costume designer, Jose Fernandez, SpaceX garments look much more special than the ones of Axiom and Boeing. Both companies follow the old design, which looks extremely dull. SpaceX's suit stands out for its sleeker, more flexible design, offering greater ease of movement within the spacecraft. Although Starliner's suit is just an ascent and entry suit, it tends to be bulkier and less mobile in comparison. In the picture, we can see two big zippers across that big belly. It contrasts poorly with the SpaceX suit, so what's with them? Actually, it's to deal with an unavoidable problem. All soft suits need to handle the bulge that occurs when an astronaut is seated and pressurized air tries to straighten them up. SpaceX somehow can eliminate this part due to material enhancements and joint improvements aimed at increasing astronauts' mobility. What's more, the Starman suit boasts better integration of systems, with fewer valves and a more streamlined design. Like the SpaceX suit, the Axiom EMU spacesuit also removes the complicated rope system, but the addition of a heavy backpack and helmet contributes to its weight gain. At this point, some doubted that, without that life support system in the back, how long the SpaceX suit can stay on an EVA activity. These really don't seem suited for ISS-type working spacewalks with heavy tasking. Current suits on ISS are good for almost eight hours and are massively insulated. In the answer section, some suppose that these are the first steps. SpaceX relies on an umbilical attached to the spacecraft's environmental control and life support system. The umbilical gets rid of a lot of stuff spacesuits would otherwise need. Similarities also occur on early Gemini suits. Take a look at how thin it is, but they are also recognized to have less insulation ability. To handle this issue, the Polaris Dawn team has additional active thermal management. Given that, a whole new layer is added for thermal management as well as looking at the thermal condition for the crew members themselves, and making sure that they were at a comfortable temperature inside the suit. The suits also incorporate technology used in other parts of SpaceX's manufacturing gamut. The team has come up with great innovations such as borrowing thermal material developed for Falcon and Dragon to use on the boot. The integration of advanced technology is also used to the max in designing the helmet, with a new heads-up display allowing astronauts to view data about their suit's internal temperature, humidity, and pressure. The display also exhibits a mission clock to monitor the durations of particular EVA tasks. The application of the Starlink laser connection further highlights SpaceX suit's advantage, with the satellite connection providing high-speed, low-latency communication, a feature not extensively mentioned in discussions of the Starliner suit. In conclusion, SpaceX has many dominances compared to its rivals, because they have a wide range of business items including rockets, spacecraft, and satellites. By utilizing well-proven advanced technologies in those areas, they can freely innovate and create other improvements. And I'm sure that in the future, SpaceX will have larger steps with its spacesuit toward the goal of multi-planetary life. So how about you? Do you think SpaceX surpasses Boeing and NASA in designing spacesuits? Say yes if you agree. And that just about wraps it up for today's episode. Thank you, and we look forward to seeing you next time.