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NASA Moon

Prada To Design NASA's New Moon Suit (bbc.com) 84

Posted by BeauHD from the exploring-the-cosmos-in-style dept.
Jonathan Josephs & Antoinette Radford reporting via the BBC: Nasa astronauts will be flying in style, with luxury fashion designer Prada helping design space suits for the 2025 moon mission. The Italian fashion house will work to design the suits alongside another private company, Axiom Space. In a press release, Axiom said Prada would bring expertise with materials and manufacturing to the project. One astronaut told the BBC he thought Prada was up to the challenge due to their design experience. That experience has been built not only on the catwalks of Milan but also through Prada's involvement in the America's Cup sailing competition.

"Prada has considerable experience with various types of composite fabrics and may actually be able to make some real technical contributions to the outer layers of the new space suit," according to Professor Jeffrey Hoffman, who flew five Nasa missions and has carried out four spacewalks. But, he said people should not expect to see astronauts in "paisley spacesuits or any fancy patterns like that. Maintaining a good thermal environment is really the critical thing". "A spacesuit is really like a miniature spacecraft. It has to provide pressure, oxygen, keep you at a reasonable temperature," he added.
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Prada To Design NASA's New Moon Suit More

Prada To Design NASA's New Moon Suit

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  • The devil wears Prada (Score:4, Funny)

    by thesjaakspoiler ( 4782965 ) on Friday October 06, 2023 @03:04AM (#63904977)

    What does that make astronauts then?

    • Re:The devil wears Prada (Score:5, Funny)

      by Ferocitus ( 4353621 ) on Friday October 06, 2023 @03:08AM (#63904983)

      What does that make astronauts then?

      Frilly red shirts in high heels?

    • The way things are going I'm truly surprised it's not Hugo Boss.

      • Only if the Reps win the next election.

      • Don't give the folks you're talking about the pleasure of defining how "things are going". That's not in their purview unless you give it to them.

        Entropy and evil are always there, but so is light, and a single spark defeats otherwise infinite darkness.

      • The way things are going I'm truly surprised it's not Hugo Boss.

        Supposedly Hugo Boss designed uniforms for the Nazi Party in Nazi Germany.

    • Well, FABULOUS, of course!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by thomst ( 1640045 )

      Demonically fashionable ... ?

    • What does that make astronauts then?

      it makes them FABULOUS!

    • What does that make astronauts then?

      Space devils! Very fabulous space devils!

    • The devil wearing Prada does not imply everyone who wears Prada is the devil. That would be a limited market indeed.

  • Astronauts will die in style.
    Cool.

    • Not one has ever died because of a spacesuit, and in fact three died because they weren't wearing any (Soyuz 11).

      • Though (at least) one has come very close. The first EVA went pretty badly wrong because the Russians didnâ(TM)t anticipate the problem of the suit becoming rigid when it ballooned out. The cosmonaut very nearly couldnâ(TM)t get back into his spacecraft as a result.

        • True. Although that definitely wasn't a result of aesthetics in the suit design. I would admit there's even another example, when an ISS astronaut's helmet started filling up with water during an EVA. That too wasn't about aesthetics, but about relying on thirty-year-old suits that had otherwise served honorably.
        • The Russian designers should have paid more attention to Capitalist Science Fiction. Back in the '40s and '50s, illustrators were drawing space suits that had a constant volume as the wearer moved to avoid exactly that. That's why the arms and legs looked like a string of spheres. If you take off today's suit's oversuit, you'll see that underneath they look roughly the same.

      • Not one has ever died because of a spacesuit

        And now this may change

        • The better and more useful the suits, rockets, and spacecraft, the more people will be in space, and the more likely that any given accident will befall someone. But that's a good problem to have.

  • made in the usa?

    • made in the usa?

      Prada is Italian, based in Milan.

      • made in the usa?

        Prada is Italian, based in Milan.

        It can still be made in the USA and at least the NASA guys ar going to look GOOOOOOOD. Pity Elon Musk's the Marsonauts, if his Teslas are being assembled in parking lots the Mars colonist's space suits will probably be assembled in bathrooms and broom closets at the SpaceX facility.

  • By the year 2040 (Score:5, Funny)

    by locater16 ( 2326718 ) on Friday October 06, 2023 @04:06AM (#63905067)
    "The CocaCola Lander is now on Mars, the first man to set foot on another planet is stepping down in his Gucci spacesuit. His first words are 'This is almost as refreshing as a Pepsi' OMG WHAT A SCOOP!!!"

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Viol8 ( 599362 )

      HIs second words are "Arrrghhh! Air leaking out... can't breath, who TF designed this suuiiiittt....."

    • Re: By the year 2040 (Score:5, Informative)

      by beelsebob ( 529313 ) on Friday October 06, 2023 @05:32AM (#63905165)

      This isnâ(TM)t really any different to Apollo - the suits then were in large part made by Playtex. Turns out that if you want really well made bespoke garments, you canâ(TM)t do much better than hiring companies whose entire business is making bespoke garments for the rich and famous.

      • Re: By the year 2040 (Score:4, Insightful)

        by chas.williams ( 6256556 ) on Friday October 06, 2023 @07:25AM (#63905325)
        This made more sense when highly skilled company employees did the manufacturing in-house. Playtex had extensive experience with manufacturing latex garments at the time. Prada is known for their leatherwork. I hope we aren't sending up the astronauts in steampunk spacesuits.

        • Actually, I hope we are sending them up in steampunk suits. That would be cool af.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by taustin ( 171655 )

          This isn't about manufacturing skills, it's about design skills.

        • I suspect the skill of accurately stitching through multiple layers of very tough material is likely to come in very handy too. While yeh, latex was used in the 60s, materials have moved a long way, and thereâ(TM)s both synthetic materials, and composite materials that can improve on simple latex. There were also significant problems with the original moon suit material. For example, we discovered that lunar regolith really likes to cling to everything. The new suit outer layer needs to integrate c

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by q_e_t ( 5104099 )
        Lifting and separating are also important for rockets and their stages
  • Instead of spending Money on repetitive cat-walk fashion shows, it is good to see that kind of money as sponsorship to scientific missions.

  • I couldn't find out if Prada really has a division making advanced engineered fabrics or not, but if they do I'd like to see them create something we can use on Earth. For example I lately see quite a number of everyday construction workers this summer wearing those puffy cooled jackets, which look ugly and nerdy but I expect are critical with the heat waves we are getting. And skiing always has used advanced materials. It would be neat if they could create items for protection from abrasion, temperature an

    • If you want durable cloths that look good and are designed for hot humid summers, you could do far worse than going back to seersucker [wikipedia.org]. Back in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, it was used by soldiers for summer uniforms in places like India and the Philippines, and railroad engineers even wore it in hot, humid parts of the US like the old south.

  • What next, Mattel design the lander?

    I'm sure Prada do fine clothes, but what the hell do they know about designing a life support system that doubles as a type of clothing to keep astronauts alive in the most inhospitable enviroment man can currently reach?

    The glory years of Nasa really are well behind them, how sad.

    • but what the hell do they know about designing a life support system that doubles as a type of clothing to keep astronauts alive in the most inhospitable enviroment man can currently reach?

      Yes indeed. What could a company whose main purpose is to deal in a multitude of materials to make clothing know about designing a type of clothing to be worn in a challenging environment. It's not as if expertise in one area could be used in another similar area.

      • And people at Prada definitely won't be able to talk to anyone at NASA or any other scientists or engineers if they have any scientific or engineering questions.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Viol8 ( 599362 )

          LOL! :)

          Yeah, questions like "how do we do this?". Because obviously the mincers at prada have a ton of experience with making materials that can survive an enviroment like the moon.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Falos ( 2905315 )

          Yeah, I'm not sure why several posts are screeching, says helping right there in the first sentence. Prada won't be the final sign off on a damn thing, and for all I know the collaboration ends at color choice.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Viol8 ( 599362 )

        "deal in a multitude of materials to make clothing know about designing a type of clothing to be worn in a challenging environment"

        Right, because the catwalk and St Tropez have so much in common with the surface of the moon.

        Fucking idiot.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by znrt ( 2424692 )

      well, you could read 2 paragraphs of abstract and find out.

      or you could also just join the trolling choir. i know, fat chance, the headline is anything but innocent.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Strider- ( 39683 )

      Yeah, why would one ever contract with a company that makes bras and girdles to make a space suit? what do they know about aerospace?

      Oh... Wait...

      I guess ILC Dover doesn't exist.

      I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt; knowing how to integrate multiple different fabrics and textures is a very valuable skill.

  • "Axiom said Prada would bring expertise with materials and manufacturing to the project. "

    Yes, Prada has decades of experience dealing with vacuum, in the heads of their clientele.

  • ... an effing break, will ya?!?

    WTF is effing Prada (??!?) going to add of value to an effing Space Suit??!?

    NASA gear is so iconic it's a absolute, total and compete fashion statement all of it's own.

    As somebody who is into fashion (nearly went into fashion design as a profession) and into all things NASA and Space this has to be the stupidest thing I've heard in a long time. A very very dumb idea and the exact opposite of anything Avantgarde or interesting fashion statement.

    • Re:Oh, please, give us ... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Eunomion ( 8640039 ) on Friday October 06, 2023 @05:53AM (#63905183)
      The traditional NASA process for development is broken. They tried it, and the costs ballooned out of control because the legacy contractors spent all their time looking for ways to squeeze the taxpayer instead of working on the goddamn suit. NASA ended up looking at a quote for billions of dollars and a timeline of practically never just to make an up-to-date replacement for what they already had. So they picked a better way, affording a commercial contract to a company (Axiom) that already hosts private spaceflights via SpaceX and will be supporting suit development internally as an investment in their business plans. Like SpaceX, they want their suits to look great; and like SpaceX, they have every conceivable incentive to make them work 100% of the time.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Strider- ( 39683 )

      During the Apollo program, they wound up awarding the space suit program to a company that primarily made Bras and Girdles. ILC, aka the company that makes "Playtex" won the contract, and produced very high quality suits. Why would a bra maker ever be the right company? Well, as it turns out, building form fitting clothes that are equivolume, close fitting, out of many different materials, is a skill, whether it's to keep a woman's bust under control or keep a pressurized atmosphere in against the harsh vac

  • Whatever (Score:3)

    by a5y ( 938871 ) on Friday October 06, 2023 @05:30AM (#63905161)

    What matters is whoever sews the thing has a veto on the design so any idiots with "designer" in the job description will get vanity elements shitcanned before they kill anyone. Akin's Laws of Space Craft Design are never obsolete. A bunch apply, but always the last:

    "Space is a completely unforgiving environment. If you screw up the engineering, somebody dies (and there's no partial credit because most of the analysis was right)"

    IIRC early space suits demanded such precise stitching they went with seamstresses for women's underwear. The decades of offshoring and outsourcing ended that as a solution, Nothing like an economics theorist to destroy a time tested process relied on in matters of life and death.

  • "types of composite fabrics and may actually be able to make some real technical contributions"

    • It's been a joke for a while.

      About 10 years ago they were seriously pushing this "asteroid capture" thing to the point of cading up a spacecraft with a big deployable butterfly net to catch a 10m-class asteroid.

      Apparently no one on the program study ever passed high school physics. Because then they would have learned about this thing called "angular momentum" and would have realized that that butterfly net would have snapped into a million little pieces if it grabbed on to a spinning asteroid at least 100

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Osgeld ( 1900440 )

      oh its been a joke for quite a while now, at this point in time its mostly an over glorified makerspace

  • How about sponsorship patches on the spacesuits? The fees NASA could charge or get for sponsorship would help fund the space missions.
    The astronauts spacesuits could full of patches like NASCAR drivers.
    A spacesuit designed by prada and full of patches like NASCAR. That would be funny!
  • "Congratulations, Neil! How does it feel to be the first man on Mars?" "Fabulous, darling."
  • Let's not forget that Playtex - yes, the bra manufacturer - was largely responsible for making the Apollo lunar EVA suits. [ref 1 [smithsonianmag.com]] [ref 2 [cbsnews.com]]

  • Playtex (Score:3)

    by Hoi Polloi ( 522990 ) on Friday October 06, 2023 @09:59AM (#63905697) Journal

    Well a bra company, playtex, won the right to make the apollo spacesuits. They had lots of experience working with rubberized materials.

  • ... Hugo Boss. I like some of their earlier designs.

  • When deep space exploration ramps up, it'll be the corporations that name everything, the IBM Stellar Sphere, the Microsoft Galaxy, Planet Starbucks.

  • We in 1999 on the runaway moon protest. We were there first, and you couldn't really see the strings much.

  • No (Score:2)

    by Bahbus ( 1180627 )

    Prada's expertise is not in materials or fashion. They're materials suck and their products are ugly as fuck. Prada has never pushed fashion, or materials in fashion, forward. They can contribute absolutely nothing.

  • Playtex won the contract for the Apollo suits so it’s fashionable to do things like this. It was spun off as ILC Dover and still makes NASA’s suits.

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