NASA Has a New Challenge To Reaching the Moon by 2024: Its $1 Billion Spacesuit Program (washingtonpost.com) 105
Despite working on next-generation suits for years, they won't be ready until 2025 at the earliest, an inspector general determined. From a report: Ever since the White House directed NASA to return astronauts to the moon by 2024 as part of its Artemis program, there have been all sorts of daunting challenges: The rocket the space agency would use has suffered setbacks and delays; the spacecraft that would land astronauts on the surface is not yet completed and was held up by the losing bidders; and Congress hasn't come through with the funding NASA says is necessary. But another reason the 2024 goal may not be met is that the spacesuits needed by the astronauts to walk on the lunar surface won't be ready in time and the total development program, which ultimately will produce just two flight-ready suits, could cost more than $1 billion.
The NASA Inspector General said in a report Tuesday that the suits have been delayed by almost two years because of funding shortfalls, impacts from the coronavirus pandemic and technical challenges. As a result, the government watchdog concluded that the suits would not be ready until 2025 at the earliest and that "a lunar landing in late 2024 as NASA currently plans is not feasible." NASA has been working on next-generation spacesuits, which act as mini spaceships that protect the astronauts from the vacuum of space, for 14 years, the IG said. In 2016, NASA decided to consolidate two spacesuit designs into a single program that it would oversee. By 2017, the agency had spent $200 million and since then has spent an additional $220 million, the IG found. While it took the program in-house, parts for the suits are still supplied by 27 contractors.
The NASA Inspector General said in a report Tuesday that the suits have been delayed by almost two years because of funding shortfalls, impacts from the coronavirus pandemic and technical challenges. As a result, the government watchdog concluded that the suits would not be ready until 2025 at the earliest and that "a lunar landing in late 2024 as NASA currently plans is not feasible." NASA has been working on next-generation spacesuits, which act as mini spaceships that protect the astronauts from the vacuum of space, for 14 years, the IG said. In 2016, NASA decided to consolidate two spacesuit designs into a single program that it would oversee. By 2017, the agency had spent $200 million and since then has spent an additional $220 million, the IG found. While it took the program in-house, parts for the suits are still supplied by 27 contractors.
Jaw dropping (Score:5, Insightful)
$1 billion for two space suits? What the heck! Isn't this 1/20th of NASA budget? And they wonder why people think government is inefficient. How on earth, or space, could a space suit cost a billion? I wonder how much Elon's costs?
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Maybe it has a built-in toilet? And we all know how expensive those are.
Re:Jaw dropping (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, and you fucking retards modding on the premise that corporations are evil and government is the answer to everything, mod me down, and go fuck your ignorant selves.
Re:Jaw dropping (Score:5, Informative)
It's better than that - SpaceX spent less than a billion dollars developing both Falcon 9 and Cargo Dragon ;)
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Everything space ex built is poor copy of 60 year old technology where nasa already did all the development of. Still waiting for those ventilators conman.
It's a pity NASA can't figure out a way to use that old tech itself.
They're the only ones who've been to the moon before and they used to have suits. Where are they?
Re:Jaw dropping (Score:5, Informative)
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The Apollo EMU took significantly less time and money to develop (even adjusted for inflation), and the tools available for designing them were far more primitive back then. I realize that an IVA suit is not suitable for use outside the spacecraft, let alone on the moon, but I'm also certain that SpaceX could design and manufacture a suit capable of lunar EVAs in less than 14 years. Musk offered to do so a few days ago, and he might have to do so anyway due to SpaceX's ambitions.
They might even be able to u
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I remember reading that small women would be the most efficient team to send to Mars because of their resource consumption vs large guys in terms of air, water, and calorie consumption as well as CO2 and waste production.
Sure, but they might get their period. Then what?
Re: Jaw dropping (Score:2)
Free protein?
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The Apollo and Challenger spacesuits were one size fits all.
BTW, Apollo spacesuits were one-size-fits-one. They were custom-made for every single Apollo astronaut.
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As with many things done in the space program, they're doing thing nobody has done before, so estimating cost and sched
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But that's the point, they were built in the 1960s. Have the designs been lost? Has everyone forgotten how they were built?
Surely it can't be that expensive to just build several units of the 1960s designs?
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They were basically single-use or several-uses ("semidisposable") units and each specifically built for each astronaut's exact measurements. These parameters are not acceptable for a permanent, sustained base, where you want reusable and serviceable units shared by multiple people.
Sorry for poor editing. Hope that wasn't too confusing.
Fear of Failure (Score:2)
...because the government cant procure a fucking paper clip without contractors salivating, politicians getting kick-back donations, and purposeful waste everywhere to hide a bunch of write-offs and skid greasing.
While I agree with your howls of protest at the insane cost I think the reason is rather different. The expense is because of an absolute abject terror of failure because if anything ever fails politicians will be all over it pointing fingers at each other and the end result is that programs are shutdown or canceled because they suddenly have too much baggage attached to them.
Private companies handle this much better because they have no politicians trying to score points so they can just investigate,
Re: Jaw dropping (Score:2)
I have done a couple of goverent contracts. One on a navy base.
Normal sell price would be about $10,000 installed. We bid $33,000 as we didn't want the headache and got it. For a turnkey installed spray room. Basically bolt it together and hook up the electrical.
To file one invoice took one person 8 hours.
All in it cost us an extra $5000 in labor and fees and we made 60% profit.
Private charities do better for less (Score:2)
The prices are just mind boggling every time... Private enterprises will do better for less.
Similarly, every dollar given to a private charity does far more social good than a dollar allocated to a government social program.
Want to make the social safety net far more efficient, robust, and generous? Let private charities run it; keep government far away from it.
Re: Jaw dropping (Score:2)
Re: Jaw dropping (Score:4, Interesting)
It's two flight ready suits that can actually be used in space, and four demo / testing models. For a BILLION dollars.
For reference, the total development cost of the entire Falcon 1 was $90-100 million.
So these two flyable suits are planned to cost ten times as much as the Falcon program. Planned to. The cost keeps going up, so we can expect it'll likely go up some more.
NASA has been working on this since 2007. It'll take about TWENTY YEARS for them to complete building a suit and flying it. 20 years.
If you have some weird need to try to convince yourself that the federal government is efficient or effective, you might want to sit this one out. This one, and probably the next dozen articles about anything the federal government tries to do.
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A space suit for floating about in a depressurized capsule or even an EVA is a different beast than one designed to work in the lunar environment.
Lunar dust is highly abrasive and gets everywhere. I'd bet the spec has unreasonable requirements for dust exclusion and abrasion resistance for the seals, where the smart money is just make the seals easily replaceable and bring a bunch of spares.
Re: Jaw dropping (Score:5, Insightful)
1961 - first person in space
1962 - Kennedy proposes an effort to go to the moon
1969 - Neil Armstrong walks around on the moon, doing stuff - in a lunar spacesuit
1971 - DRIVING around on the moon
So eight years from the first rocket carrying a person to walking around on the moon, in a lunar spacesuit.
2007 - NASA starts trying to build a lunar spacesuit
2024 - they still won't have a suit
Seventeen years. More that twice as long as the Apollo program took to do the whole damn thing - rocket, crew module, hell building a space / launching facilities, spacesuits, communications, the whole nine yards. And they still won't have a damn suit.
Re: Jaw dropping (Score:5, Insightful)
Ps - the he seven years it took from Kennedy proposing it until Armstrong actually walked on the moon was starting from scratch. Nobody had been to the moon before, or outside a spacecraft. Now, NASA has proven designs to start from, decades of experience. Yet still in seventeen years of effort and a billion dollars they can't seem to update from the existing spacesuit version 5 to version 6.
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Either they are fully incompetent or I will start believe that they never actually went to the moon.
NASA astronauts went to the Moon in the '60s and early '70s. Today's NASA is not that NASA.
Today's NASA is not incompetent, either. Its purpose is to spread money around specific Congressional districts indefinitely. Actually accomplishing anything is not even remotely a priority. Quite the opposite. If they finished, the funding would stop. Can't have that.
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There's no doubt some serious inefficiency going on here. But, I dare say the reason they're not proposing to go back to the moon in the same suits they used last time is because they were terrible. I don't know the details, but they were essentially disposable - use it once for your wonder about on the moon and then give it to the techs to tear down to see what's happened to it. I would be very surprised if the guys wearing them came back saying "yeah, they were amazing - like a second skin!" to anyone exc
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I'll give NASA a tiny bit of slack here.
A space suit for floating about in a depressurized capsule or even an EVA is a different beast than one designed to work in the lunar environment.
The suits used on Apollo 11 cost $100k. Even accounting for inflation, we could buy a thousand of them for the cost of this boondoggle.
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Of COURSE at reduced internal pressure. I would expect the entire lunar mission system to be operating at reduced internal pressure.
But I'm not an engineer, so I think through common sense, and reduced pressure at least makes leaks slower. Less structural stress. Less actual gas volume?
Gonna have to go through recompression on the trip home, but deep sea divers do this, so NASA should be able to figure that out by 2030.
Elon will have that done next year.
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You're not totally wrong. Designing a new orbit-capable rocket can, of course, draw on previous designs. As you mentioned, somebody rode in a rocket 60 years ago.
On the other hand, we've only had lunar spacesuits for 52 years.
OF COURSE it takes 20 years and a billion dollars to build spacesuit 5.0 when you only have 1.0-4.0 to work from, only 52 years of proven designs.
I totally understand someone wanting to defend whatever thought or belief they first had, probably because that's the t thing somebody told
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The Apollo suits used for the Moon just had adult nappies (daipers I guess you call them in the US) which were discarded and left on the surface. Even today EVA suits work that way, there just isn't enough room in there for anything better and you can't hold it in for an 8 hour excursion.
I'm guessing not much will change for the new designs in that department. Lunar surface vehicles will probably not have toilet facilities to save on weight. Maybe the Earth-Moon transit vehicles will.
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In reference to "how much Elon's costs," there are two different conversations there.
One is the Dragon flight suits, which I believe act as space suits, but only briefly in emergency situations (honestly, I'm not really sure how effective they are for survival if the Dragon loses pressure). Those suits aren't really relevant here.
The other is Elon's comment that SpaceX could make spacesuits for the lunar program. This is rather interesting. SpaceX wants to go to Mars on their own, so they obviously need
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SpaceX's suits are designed to be perfectly functional for an extended period of time in a vacuum if Dragon loses pressure. The problem is that they are completely reliant on their tether to the spacecraft for life support and cooling. An EVA suit needs to do all that itself (and the cooling is the bigger issue), as well as provide insulation against heat and radiation, and probably more flexibility too. The SpaceX suits only need to be flexible enough to let them reach anything on the control panel while s
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It's amazing that they managed to do it back in the 1960s with a lot less time and money.
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Get SpaceX to do it (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Get SpaceX to do it (Score:5, Insightful)
We're actually talking about different types of suit here. SpaceX's "Starman suit" is worn inside the capsule. For EVAs and wandering around on the moon, you would need a pressure suit.
In terms of historical suits - think of the orange suits the shuttle astronauts wore (inside the vehicle on launch) and the larger, heavier suits they wore for EVAs. SpaceX's suits are the equivalent of the orange ones.
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Yes, right. It would still be interesting to see how much it would take SpaceX to do an EVA suit.
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Indeed, suits for EVA or walking on the Moon require a lot more equipment, as well as being able to protect the user from vacuum indefinitely. Heat management in those suits consumes a lot of space, they have to have water tubes running throughout and a system to cool that water while radiating away heat in a vacuum.
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Could put this out on a re-written, competitive, bid. Watch things change.
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Give the project to any *one* company, instead of splitting it between two. Also, don't pay them bonuses even if they miss milestones, and don't pay them at all if they don't deliver. That'd sort out this project.
Even in the best of times that two contractor thing would have been a nightmare, but with COVID it's hard enough for even one company to get things done.
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How is that new? (Score:5, Insightful)
Do we need to reinvent the wheel? (Score:5, Insightful)
Going into space and the keeping the mostly water bags of meat alive is tough, no doubt about it. But in this case, can't they look at what's already been done and tweak what's there? Take the same design for the suits used in the 60s and 70s and simply update the materials used to build them. Make some changes to the life support system through smaller, lighter, more resilient components. Use the basic design of the landing module and do the same thing.
Do we really need to spend 17 years trying to come up with something new and flashy when we already have proven technology?
Re: Do we need to reinvent the wheel? (Score:2)
What contractor gets paid a billion dollars for that? What Congressman can campaign on those non-existent jobs? Geez.
Re: Do we need to reinvent the wheel? (Score:2)
You're forgetting the original suits only had to survive the terrain of a desert area and the atmosphere of earth, not the challenges of say the moon. /s
Falcon 9 and Dragon development cost 1 billion (Score:2)
Combined that is.
Just to put the NASA's number into perspective.
And astronauts in the dragon capsule did wear a space suit.
At NASA there must be at least 10 managers for each manager that manages another manager to manage the engineer that designed the logo on the suit.
Falcon 9 and Cargo Dragon that is (Score:2)
Still, there's a stark contrast between the value SpaceX provides and the rest of the industry.
I must be old (Score:1)
But I can't bring myself to care about anyone walking on the Moon or Mars or whatever. Ever.
We know what it looks like. Big whoop. This seems to be more about nerd wish fulfillment. If your life is that boring that you live vicariously through some space fantasies, get a life.
Seriously. Who cares about this?
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https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/infog... [nasa.gov]
With any luck something useful comes out of that 1B other than 2 space suits.
Re: I must be old (Score:2)
old guys gone (Score:2)
We forgot what we did to get to the moon the first time. We've done better in the past, moved faster, been more successful in our mission.
What this shows (Score:3)
1 billion is a lot of money for a pair of spacesuit. Even taking the usual public spending gravy train into account though, I assume there's a good reason for the spending. And I believe the reason is this: if there's ANY problem with those suits that would put the wearer in ANY danger, it would be a PR disaster for NASA. If someone got injured or killed in one of those suits, it could even kill the space program altogether.
I think NASA is desperate to avoid that at any cost - literally.
For me, the lesson is this: stop sending people into space. Human bodies are fragile, expensive to keep alive in terms of resources and emotionally charged. Send robots: they do a better job. It's time we realized the form humanity takes in hostile environments like space is robotic. The original meatbag human design is Earth-bound and should stay there. Our robotic representatives can handle harsh environment much more easily.
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At first, I modded this insightful... but then I was like "Wait, no, that's not how this works..."
The reason we have most of the cool stuff we have is because people try to do stuff like "go to the moon" and while I have no idea if we are getting our money's worth (1B is a lot of money) I don't think "just don't send people into space" is the answer.
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Do you think there's a lot of technology that trickled down from the development of spacesuits? Maybe the male condom, survival foods or "low residue" foods, bio-sensors, possibly some medications. But I can't think of very many. There's a lot of tech that trickled down from the development of rockets and spacecraft though, and you'd still get that with the development of space-going robots. Hell, AI probably improved a lot because of the need for probes to take independent decisions without direct control
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Why climb mountains ? It's way too dangerous ! Why not just send robots there and have them bring us back pictures ?
There are dreamers, explorers, risk-takers. And then there are people like you. If it wasn't for the former, we'd still be fucking cro-magnons living in caves.
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... we'd still be fucking cro-magnons living in caves.
at least we would still be fucking someone then !
In a few years 4-5 SpaceX astronauts (Score:5, Funny)
will be standing on the Moon, watching patiently as NASA's astronauts land. The dust settles and the SpaceX crew in their skin-tight suits hurry to the NASA landing site. A NASA crew member appears in in the hatch wearing their deep sea diving bubble suit. The SpaceX crew help the bumbling NASA astronaut find their footing as they descend the stairs. After the NASA astronaut fumbles for several uncomfortable seconds with some pouch straps, the SpaceX crew once again steps forward to help them retrieve a flag that is then planted. Another NASA accomplishment!
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After the NASA astronaut fumbles for several uncomfortable seconds with some pouch straps, the SpaceX crew once again steps forward to help them retrieve a flag that is then planted. Another NASA accomplishment!
Public-private partnership! Synergy! Grand success all around, reelect Senator Bumblefuck today!
Spacesuits are obsolete for most purposes (Score:5, Interesting)
Space pods with teleoperated force-feedback grippers make much more sense.
As I suggested here back in 2012:
"Get a pod; space suits are a publicity stunt"
https://science.slashdot.org/c... [slashdot.org]
"People need space pods instead (like in [the movie] 2001). Why would anyone want to put on a space suit in space? If you need something in an emergency, NASA has a big bag people can go into developed for the shuttle. If you need to go into a confined space, use a tele-operated small robot. Can anyone cite any reason to put a person in a "space suit" suit other than for generating "people in space" publicity? Shirt-sleeve pods are also much more comfortable than space suits."
The broken link in that comment there is now: ..."
https://github.com/pdfernhout/... [github.com]
"The "shirtsleeve" utility space pod is probably common to all space efforts. It is a self-contained and portable/drivable container/ship that allows for the operator to work in the field, but in an environmentally controlled space that requires no special equipment for life support (working in nothing more than your "shirtsleeves").
Any project that is attempted in space will require extended periods of construction or repair in a Zero-G environment. This is especially true in terms of space stations and space shipyards.
Spacesuits, while advantageous in tight environments, are ultimately inadequate to jobs lasting more than a few hours. This is because they are rather inadequate protection from micrometeorites and other spaceborne debris, and the maneuverability requirements of a suit limit the oxygen supply size that can be attached.
The space pod allows for a larger and more rigid protective shell, room for greater air supply, as well as room for a more numerous and varied assortment of tools. Ultimately, this allows for the opportunity to take jobs further from base, and to tackle larger and more complex jobs that require many different types of tools or large scale tools that would be otherwise impossible to carry around and/or utilize without mechanical assistance. The pod also has the added advantage of completely eliminating the operator specific customization requirements that spacesuits pose - pods do not need to be sized or tailored for the operator, and can be handed off from one worker to the next at shift change time with no modifications.
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I agree with this strongly.
Space enthusiasts like to make analogies to European ocean exploration and colonization as relevant models for space activities. But a much better analogy is exploring the deep ocean. Though close at hand, it is inaccessible without expensive engineering efforts. And we don't have deep sea suits. You want to do something in the deep ocean? You are either in a deep sea pod or using a unmanned submersible and either way you are using remote manipulators.
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But a much better analogy is exploring the deep ocean.
In terms of special equipment being required, sure. In terms of the actual physical conditions, not even remotely! Unless you plan to go deep sea diving on Europa or something like that anyway.
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It is a LOT easier to keep some atmosphere and pressure in a confined space when there is little to no pressure outside than it is to keep a HUGE outside pressure from crushing a container with a much lower pressure.
If you want an example of this just look at a plastic soda bottle versus any other vessel that can contain a near total vacuum at standard earth atmospheric pressures.
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Space pods with teleoperated force-feedback grippers make much more sense.
Why do you even need the pods? Just operate the robots remotely from Earth. It will be a bit slow, even with semi-intelligent robots, but you can afford plenty more operators. Only in the most tricky cases do you hand the job to an operator in the orbiting Lunar Gateway, who will have less lag.
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The reason no one replied yet is because the obvious problem is the time lag even with speed-of-light comms.
Yes, so obvious that addressing it occupied most of my comment. Did you not read past the first sentence?
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Waste (Score:2)
The Largest Challenge (Score:5, Informative)
The largest challenge to going back to the Moon in 2024 is that a program to do that has never existed.
For a program to properly be said to exist it must be funded. Without funding it is merely a proposal for a program. The funding request for the program was never approved. And this is a reflection of the fact that the scheme has no credibility - it was created, along with its deadline, by a directive drafted in the White House and by a speech given by the VP of the previous administration. Major engineering projects require serious developmental plannings, and the schedule comes out of what is feasible, not from what are essentially White House press releases.
NASA was put in the position of doing is damnedest to put up a front of having an actual plan to do this, but I know people who attended aerospace conferences where the NASA presenters were treated sympathetically, everyone understood that they had do do it, but the content of the slideshows were openly ridiculed. No plan, no funding, no program.
BTW - to the argument NASA only took seven years to go the Moon the first time, why should it be hard to go again in five (the time from Pence's Moon Speech that set the schedule)? First, the initial trip to the Moon has 200 billion in funding (current dollars) not 20 billion (the proposed but unappropriated sum). Second, that is still two more years. Third, the first time they killed a crew, and almost killed another one. Sketchy engineering and manufacturing practices that were permitted during the Cold War will not fly now. We demand more safety for astronauts, and don't accept the cowboy "Its a dangerous job, and they accepted the risks". Without some show of necessity, not doing careful safety engineering with thorough testing is unethical.
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by the time NASA is ready to land on the moon again.
Ha. I have a feeling everyone reading this today will be gone by the time we go back. That is if we have to wait for NASA. People will be saying - Trump who? Who was that? Oh yea, the guy on the $1000 bill. Just like today they say Eisenhower who? Who's Eisenhower?
Buy a ride? (Score:2)
SpaceX is mostly privately funding projects within their organization. Bezos obviously can and to some extent does the same. While both companies have been willing and even eager to take NASA funds for projects, the fact is that either company will go to space and accomplish their goals with or without NASA at this time. They also either both own or will own their own launch and landing facilities as well as training facilities. It
Why would it delay? (Score:2)
Why can't they go to the moon if these space suits aren't ready? Did the space suits they used last time not work? How about the space suits being worn by the crewmembers onboard the ISS? What about Russian space suits?
Surely they have spacesuits available to use, they don't *need* these new ones, they're just a nice to have.
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Where is Playtex when you need them? (Score:2)
Spacesuits protect astronauts from space vacuum ? (Score:1)
It's for razor sharp technical analysis that keeps me coming back to slashdot.
just ask SpaceX to do it (Score:2)
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And while they slept, SpaceX would write back "Are you fucking stupid??? Do you want your people to survive???"
Should be easy to do. (Score:1)
Just give it to MIT to do or maybe JPL. We have plenty of data to use. The Gemini, Apollo, space shuttles and other programs. So we know the problems and the solutions and shortcomings. Shouldn't be hard to do.
The only problem I can think of is if they have to accommodate women. I think that was a recent problem. That's easy, just don't send women or find an alternative way for them to go. Catheter maybe? I think some of them used a big diaper.
Any way you slice it, it should be way less than a billion. It o
Pointless comparisons much? (Score:2)
First off, SpaceX and the commercial sector benefit from NASA publishing everything they do. So let's agree they got a few billion in R&D for free.*
When it comes to suits: NASA's actually figuring out how to do it. The commercial folks just mooch, cherry picking what they want and don't. So the flight suits only have to make one trip? No problem, latex-coated denim seems just fine. On the surface-capable suits, NASA's now having to figure out how to minimize exposure to surface materials. This is so