Why NASA Will Pay $3.5Billion to Rent Space Suits Instead Of Building Their Own.
Вставка
- Опубліковано 3 чер 2022
- This week NASA announced the winners of its space suit contract for ISS and Artemis - Axiom Space and Collins Aerospace. Unlike traditional space suit contracts this isn't to buy the suits, but to rent them for specific missions, outsourcing the responsibilities after NASA's internal development program repeatedly failed to deliver a final product.
NASA's xEMU program was supposed to be developing the space suit for Lunar surface operations, but despite lots of innovative research the project never managed to deliver a suit that could proceed to testing and operation. With the Artemis program already setting schedules the suit requirements looked like one of the big blockers after the Launch vehicle and lander.
Follow me on Twitter for more updates:
/ djsnm
I have a discord server where I regularly turn up:
/ discord
If you really like what I do you can support me directly through Patreon
/ scottmanley - Наука та технологія
John Glenn in a 1998 interview: “I felt exactly how you would feel if you were getting ready to launch and knew you were sitting on top of two million parts - all built by the lowest bidder on a government contract.”
all built by the lowest bidder on a government contract."
Still too expensive.
there are no low bidders now. No compete contracts.
...while still accomplishing far more in space than any organization ever has, or ever will.
@@PistonAvatarGuy space x made nasa look like a joke and they haven't even been around for 10 years.
@@jordankelly4684 And how is that? By matching the capabilities that NASA had 60 years ago? By spending a decade trying to get the Raptor functioning? You do realize that the entire Apollo program took place in the same length of time, right? Nothing that SpaceX has done can come close to launching a space station into orbit (with a reusable spaceplane, no less), or landing probes on other planets, or launching orbiting observatories into space, or sending men to the moon, or driving rovers around on Mars, or flying helicopters on Mars... the list of accomplishments that NASA has made that SpaceX can only dream of are endless.
I don't understand where people like you come from, have you just been asleep for the past 60 years? It's just amazing how badly people can be brainwashed by corporate propaganda.
"ZIP Code Contracting" lol that one's new to me, but yeah, this reeks of pork barrel politics designed to waste as much money as possible. The idea that we can't build affordable new suits in a short period of time 50 years after the last moon landing is pathetic.
And it's not like they really need to reinvent the wheel; just take a proven design from the Apollo or Shuttle era and build new ones, with upgrades to the materials and electronics. Why does this have to be so difficult?
The simple explanation as to why we can’t replicate Apollo 11 tech is that we’ve already finished the space race.
The US and USSR were funding their space agencies like crazy just to be able to be the ones who got to the moon first.
Since then funding has reduced and prices have increased, there are contractors who will focus their efforts entirely on suits to sell to many agencies because that’s how it’s profitable, it’s not profitable to take money away from other areas more important areas of nasa just to build suits.
NASA will likely never see the funding it once received return unless there’s an urgent need to get going into space. There’s simply so many bigger issues on earth.
It’s just taking the taxpayers money, and moving it to someone else’s pocket, but they’ll get a bigger budget next year. The private companies are much better than NASA.
@@LCaddyStudios Oh really? Then where is NASA getting the crazy money mentioned in this video? The Apollo and Shuttle suit designs are already proven and the major development work was paid for long ago. Simply take those designs update the electronics and maybe some materials, and build more. No need to reinvent the wheel.
@@RCAvhstape the 2022 NASA budget is about $24 billion, back in the 1960’s it reached a peak of $5 billion, which adjusting for inflation is something like $45 billion today.
The Apollo missions cost them $25 billion, which is about $257 Billion today.
Nasa only uses half their budget nowadays on space missions, unlike the 60’s where nearly all of it paid for space missions, with the rest of the budget today paying for telescopes, technicians etc, so they’re trying to accomplish what was done on a $45 billion dollar annual budget with around $12 billion
That’s why nasa has stated they can’t replicate the technology used for the rockets, it’s too costly to rebuild the same rocket design that Apollo used.
The same can be said for the space suits, they were something that nasa would have spent an extraordinary amount on in the 60’s developing and considering how far technology is advanced I’d say the old suits are no where near as good as what independent companies have since made.
By outsourcing NASA is able to keep costs low, someone else pays for the R&D, they simply just rent or buy the suits they need.
The first science fiction book I read was "Have Spacesuit, will travel" by Robert Heinlein. I fell in love with the genre. The protagonist wins an old spacesuit in a marketing competition, and ends up meeting a damsel in distress, who happened to have a spaceship. For a 10 year old, this was all splendid stuff :)
RH really knew how to inspire us 10 year olds - and also write novels to be enjoyed as we grew up.
Ah, my first introduction to BEMs...
@@mkvv5687 what's a BEM if you don't mind me asking?
@@regarded9702 Bug-Eyed Monster = BEM
Great rollicking space adventure story
Does that mean sending 10 astronauts to the moon could cost the same price as 3 James Webb Telescopes and a half on the EVA suits alone?
jup.
EVA suits
LMFAO
@@kyarumomochi5146 eva stands for extravehicular activities
@@esapophenic No it stands for eva units
@N Fels it stands for EVA units and you cant change my mind
This is so depressing. Having worked on the government side of things and seeing the way contracts tend to go, I am not at all optimistic about this in either the long or short term.
Typical nasa, I worked on Space station Freedom Life Science Module. Worked on that for near a decade. then it was all cancelled. big waste.
@@dave8599 the unpredictability of funding and mission goals has little to do with NASA. This is mostly in the hands of Congress and the Executive Office. If we could just fund NASA properly and let them do their jobs, I'm fully confident they would blow us away with their results. *Edit - typo.
@@SemperPearce fund properly? They should become cost effective like Chinese space agency and spacex, its pretty hard to believe that spacex can develop reusable rockets but nasa cannot.
It’s almost like government is designed to be a money laundering funnel instead of a working organization payed for by taxpayers.
@@shubhamkumar6689 The Chinese Space Agency/SpaceX don't have to make sure 50 senators and 100 congress keep voting for their funding by giving expensive, unnecessary contracts (aka the *actual* government handouts) to imbeciles in their voting district...
Give NASA some properly guaranteed funding and a more independent management structure rather than "friends and family" and the institutional knowledge, prestige, and sheer amount of government funds available can produce wonders. Unlike public comparies, there's no need to actually be profitable, and unlike private companies results are still answerable to the public instead of just "space tourism for billionaires!"
"2 different contractors working on boots". Well obviously, one for the left boot and one for the right boot.
Ten contractors for the gloves, one finger each 😂
I've fallen out of step when keeping up with a lot of this stuff. I look at the headlines but haven't had the time to indulge, because I have too many interests and hobbies for my own good lol. An update like this thats only around 15 minutes long and gives a quick summary along with plans and some healthy speculation, it's awesome and really helps me get back on track with these things! I've been appreciating your methods of reporting and even teaching ever since I started watching your channel some 6 or 8 years ago for Kerbal and Elite Dangerous videos. Keep up the great work Scott!
I worked on xEMU for a time and when I was there the plan never was for NASA to manufacture the suits but to instead give away our design and test data to let contractors streamline the design and manufacturing themselves.
You can't expect to take a half-century break from developing surface spacesuits and retain the institutional knowledge. The company names may sound familiar, but all people and working relationships of Apollo program are long gone. So now it's all done pretty much from scratch.
May be thats a good reason to make it yourself as all technology will become lost in space again ;)
the good thing is I think, NASA has much much better knowledge testing and understanding what they want in a space suit to write the contract
False , “from scratch “ 😂
The West became too busy babysitting other societies.
Lol. Because that’s what technology does. Takes breaks.
The weird/confusing thing about Collins is that it's a bunch of separate business units under the Collins brand. As I understand it, the unit of Collins that's doing this is actually the heritage United Technologies Aerospace Systems (hUTAS) part of the company. They were formed when Hamilton Sundstrand (owned by United Technologies) bought Goodrich in 2012. Then in 2018, UTC bought Rockwell Collins to form Collins Aerospace.
I've worked at this company for almost three years and it's still kinda hard to wrap my head around.
I worked for UTAS/Collins and they're bogged down by the old way of doing things (think Boeing). The merger last year with Raytheon only made it worse, as there's now twice the corporate oversight. I worked there for 31 years and went through numerous buyouts, and I saw the culture become so bad that many long time employees like myself left. Bottom line is that the way people are treated they aren't invested in their work.
My money's with Axiom all the way! 👍👍
Probably involved in laundering money for corrupt politicians
And it's all Raytheon now lol
It’s not supposed to make sense.
Here's the original nasa footage of the apollo suits ua-cam.com/video/Lb76B0XQpZc/v-deo.html
The apollo suits werent that bad really when you look at them, they worked well on the moon given their limitations at the time, and they were also used on EVA's on skylab.
With the mix of craft and suits planned for lunar landing, maybe it's time to develop a standardized suit connection system. If every suit and every spacecraft used the same set of connectors, that would simplify things, and probably save some weight and space as well.
Seeing the Oceaneering hot dog sticker as we used to call it sure brings back memories. I worked for the offshore side with ROV's but diving and diver support was out of the same office. The space based portion of the company had offices in Houston the reason Oceaneering was selected was our experience in harsh environments.
im sure their experience with 1 atm dive suits helps too
Nuytco designed joints in some of those suits presumably..developed in North Vancouver. All part of oceaneering.
I like the space is hard people vacuum is deadly forget divers have been working with 50 bar pressure differential for decades
Did you enjoy working with oceaneering overall? Really interested in working for them when I graduate.
My old man, a North Sea diver, had one of those on his car back in the 80's
it's crazy to me that we are still using the old eva suits, instead of making new ones long before we're forced to do so
It's all a matter of money I suppose, developing new space suits is very expensive!
And NASA *did* try to make new space suits, but after many years and 420 million dollars got almost nowhere.
Crazy is the SLS is reusing technology from the same era.
@@user-fr3hy9uh6y because it’s good hardware and it’s not the same. It’s a new, refreshed and modernised design
@@iveharzing the silly thing is that they act like they have to develop a totally new design from scratch, rather than simply using the existing design and upgrading the issues and changing out to new parts when the old ones aren't available.
Kind of like how Tesla just changed processors when the original ones were backordered.
I suspect they don't want to do this because they want the juicy money for all new suits, and so they wait until the old ones are failing and they can claim an emergency lol
Same reason U.S. doesn't fix bridges before they fall down.
Honestly, I think the port method to get in an Eva suit is not only more practical, it's better for safety. If you have an emergency and you need to suit up as quickly as possible, just jumping in one and a single point closes and seals is a lot better than having to put on several parts and make sure each part is sealed properly.
It's less convenient for maintenance, as you can't just replace parts, you have to replace whole suit.
Kudos as always on the vid. I had to comment on one of the unique ways NASA and the Air Force deal with procurement of obsolete equipment.
In 1976, I had a little custom fabrication shop in Santa Clara. All SCCA race car and performance street car stuff.
Ford Aerospace/Aeroneutronic?, had received a contract to build (8) 19 inch rack comm units, as replacements for ITT Kellogg units built in the sixties. These were part of what was called the "operational voice communication system""OVCS", used at each tracking station around the planet. Very robust, very interesting units. Kellogg went bust and I happened to specialize in building aerospace wiring harnesses and custom aluminum fabrication. Long story short, I coordinated the fab, silkscreening, build and test of the units. They had to be exact duplicates of the originals, and in fact, the only deviation we're diodes. We could not get the old "top hat" germanium units, and subbed those. But physically and visually, they were near perfect matches. These units were the station-to-station units. They liked the results so much, I got the station-to-Whitehouse unit contract. I, as in, my company, Spartan Engineering, the telcomm subcontractor, Ford Aerospace, NASA, and Air Force. Wow.
Awesome story!
If they go down the road of separate on-orbit and surface suits, then maybe it's time to revisit the idea of the 'bottle suit' for the former? These various concepts simplified some of the problems of a full anthropomorphic suit by recognising that the main suit-like things that an astronaut needs on EVA are hands and relative smallness; everything else is essentailly just a miniature spacescraft that is made more complicated for little benefit by having two articulated legs. Bottle suits were therefore small, hard-shell tubular or conical spacecraft with attitude thrusters and a clear dome plus a pair of 'waldo' or 'glove box' style arms at one end. Instead of entering or leaving the parent craft via an airlock and having to be laboriously put on like a suit, they instead docked to a port and the pilot simply climbed in and closed the dome. Life support equipment could be distributed around the lower part of the bottle suit 'hull' in an efficient manner instead of being crammed into a backpack. There's no reason why you couldn't have it teatherd for safety reasons, and another advantage would be that parent ship could take control of the bottle suit and fly it back to a docking by remote control if the pilot was incapacitated.
Ah. Like the ones they had on the NX-01 in "Star Trek Enterprise"?
The Orbitial Reef space station is going to have one of these called the SPS, (single person spacecraft) which is essentially what you are describing.
Better yet, robots remotely manipulated. Never leave the capsule.
@@ThatOpalGuy then you start asking the big question that NASA doesn't want to answer, which is why even bring astronauts at all? At the current moment the ISS has been deemed not worth the cost by a lot of scientific organizations. The ISS literally only exists as an excuse to send people to space, pretty much all the science down there could be done without people for a fraction of the cost. The few experiments requiring people (health effects of space on human body experiments) could be achieved via launching people to space in a small temporary vehicle which returns with them once the mission concludes. There's no reason for keeping a constantly staffed space station around at the moment
@@amazingsoyuz873 first, we need data about long term zero g experience living in space regarding humans.
Second, see first.
For that reason alone it's worth building orbital facilities.
Kind of crazy that they're going to private partners, considering they could have also hired like 10x the amount of engineers and continued on their own with that kind of budget.
Glad you're an expert, sharing.
Government is uncaring incompetence, irresponsible waste, greed, corruption & Nasa is government.
Perhaps but when you add politicians to the mix it becomes inefficient and corrupt quickly. Politicians promote inefficiencies to create more job opportunities in their states so that they can keep winning elections despite the program's failings. That's why the current space suit development has cost $420 million it's still not complete and would require another $1 billion and “might” be completed by 2025. This is in all likelihood untrue and delusionally optimistic.
they are
Cause we suck! Bet China has a working suit to go with their new friggin space station! China is the world leader in space!
4:03 Recently Hamilton Sundstrand was acquired by Collins Aerospace, and took on their name. Hamilton produced, operates and refurbishes everything except the soft goods on the current suits (EMU). They also produced the Apollo suits, life support/ thermal controls for ISS and satellites. Collins is the most experienced on this contract.
You do brilliantly informative videos. I like your style.
Hopefully at some point in the future, all the space programs will get together to make a standardised life support connection for their space suits. Having to make so many suits for one astronaut is insane. Imagine if they have a connecting flight to the moon but brought the wrong suit to the ISS lol.
What about emergencies say an astronaut has to use a Boeing capsule but only has a Dragon capsule suit.
It would suck if you are running out of air and your type 2 umbilical connection wont fit the type 3 socket on the capsule.
one is reminded of apollo 13 astronauts needing to build an adapter to use CM oxygen scrubbers in the LM
You joke, but remember that the Mars Climate Orbiter was lost because Lockheed built it using imperial measurements and NASA used metric for all their calculations.
No because that would reduce production costs, meaning they would have to drop the price.
Remember, profit before anything else!
The future of Financing Space Travel may depend on Sponsors who have their logos on space suits or get mentioned in the mission log.
M&M's are the perfect snack while in Zero G and Low G environments.
So you're saying we'll see TACO BELL or SUBWAY on them soon. 😉
One thing's for sure, we won't see soda in zero-g.
If you know anything about what the term "ullage burn" means, you'll understand the problem with trying to open a carbonated soda drink in zero-g.
They tried it once in the shuttle era, it didn't go well.
This was probably one of the most amazing and under appreciated elements / challenges of the Apollo program.
Here we are, half a century later, and the same task is seemingly impossible. 🤦♂️
Not at all the same task, unfortunately, even if the same goal. The Apollo suits worked safely for the several hours they needed to, but not far into the lunar missions NASA was already looking at how to make better ones because of all their problems. Astronauts described torture-like experiences during prolonged habitation, and the lunar "dust" (more like millions of tiny scapels, given no water to smooth the sharp edges) was quickly eroding some of the contact sufaces towards an unsafe condition (had the suits been utilized over a longer period of time).
@@marcmcreynolds2827 plus NASA isn't as willing to take risks like they used to. Now everything needs to be as safe as possible, have loads of redundancies and so on. I'm sure more than one person has looked at the old equipment and been horrified at level of risk the astronauts were subjected to compared to the modern equivalents.
The magic suits done the job perfectly!
@@KMCA779 "NASA isn't as willing to take risks like they used to" The risk level has gone up and down over various programs. Mercury and Gemini were realtively low risk in terms of the hardware being used in combination with the abort options. But the Saturn V started carrying people to the Moon (Apollo 8) immediately following an uncrewed flight which exhibited serious propulsion issues and part failures. STS was a hot mess of risk from the first flight until the end of the program -- a lot more serious issues than most people realize. NASA felt pressured to fly regardless of unresolved Loss of Crew problems in part because of the Reagan Administration's edict to maintian the nominal flight rate. Before long, they were essentially "used to it", i.e. normalization of deviance.
From my very limited "insider info" on STS [edit SLS], it seems they are sort of stuck with having to analyze everything to death because they don't yet have any real flight data. So something comes up with for example a nonlinearity in the structural connection between the SM and the vehicle, and maybe it's not actually a big deal but no way to know for sure until they fly. So endless analysis in the meantime. Note that both the Saturn V and the STS programs uncovered and resolved a lot of needs-fixin' things from their first flights.
Hire a latex girdle and bra company. They came up with the Apollo suits.
Amazing video!
Well done!
Thanks for the detailed update, I was rather confused with the new announcement.
Dave, 9 years of 'innovative research' and over $400 million, for NASA to fail to make a working spacesuit for the moon, y et their astronauts supposedly managed to do all these activities in 1969!! To me it makes about as much sense as solar roadways!!
With all their trillions in cash and gold reserves just sitting around, the chinese would have been walking around up there years ago if it was so easy in 1969!
It gets more and more obvious that we never walked on the moon every year!! As the only redpilled, science based youtuber out there, I'm begging you to consider ending the insanity!!
And Lance Armstrong sounded frustrated in his reply to you. Guess it's been a pain point there for a while.
NASA has been budgeted from 1958 to 2011 amounts to $526.178 billion-an average of $9.928 billion per year. During the 1960's they put out video of a group of grandmothers they hired to make all of their spacesuits, sewing and cutting fabric etc. like they were quilting and these granny suits performed flawlessly in mission after mission and to the moon and back over and again. This one fact alone makes you wonder if the Granny Suits were merely used on a sound stage?
@@guidedmeditation2396 Exactly!! I'm pleased that someone else can see it too 🙂👍I believed it most of my life, we all did, but the more and more you look into it, the less likely it seems that it was real.
I mean NASA claims that they chucked the telemetry tapes from 'man's greatest technological achievement' in a cupboard, and then accidentally taped over them years later 🤣🤣🙄
@@guidedmeditation2396 Exactly my thoughts, they allegedly haven't been back to the moon because the scientist Michio Kaku said they simply can't afford to return since 1969. His words not mine. Now they have billions to spend on hired suits. Makes you think "Mmmm!" 🤔. Another man on you tube said they can't go to Mars yet as the space radiation would make the astronauts in the ship extremely ill. Funny though they allegedly went in a tin can fifty odd years ago with commodore 64 technology. Just looking at the facts.🤥
1960: NASA engineers design a space suit and space ship with some help from contractors
2000: NASA engineers design some parts of space hardware and maintain competency in space hardware while most hardware is contracted out
2020: NASA contracts out nearly all engineering work and manages personal
2030: NASA outsources all high level managment to private industry, outsources lobbying congress to private industry. NASA leadership sits at home and draws a paycheck.
2035: NASA sells their naming rights, resulting in the Disney Universal Management Air &Space Systems (DUMASS) launching the Red Bull rocket lifting the J. Crew crew vehicle on the M&M/Mars Mars mission.
@@MonkeyJedi99 thank you for that comment :D
2022: Sheeple finally start to realise that the moon landing never happened.
@@MattyEngland - Yeah, right after they find abducted children in Hillary's basement, being experimented on by lizard people.
/s (just in case Mr. Poe is right again)
@@botondtoth8263 Lol, i'm not into flat earth, lizard people, chemtrails, 5G etc etc, or any of the usual 'conspiracy thories' I just think that the moon landing seems less and less believable with every passing year.
I mean, 9 years of research and $400 million, to not be able to do something they did multiple times in 1969-73? Makes zero sense to me
Hey Scott, love your t-shirt message. Very correct!
The part of Collins that is doing this work is Hamilton Sunstrand. This is the modern iteration of the same Hamilton company that was the prime contractor for the Apollo A7L and the current EVA suit system. Plenty of in house experience there too.
when "Renting" something is more cost efficient than not having the authority to control costs via a one time purchase, it's in effect a long time subsidy that due to lobbying will probably be increased due to easily foreseen delays and setbacks to the point it would be cheaper to outright buy it. See current nasa admin argue against cost plus contracts. While I tend to like SpaceX, the are the exception that proves the rule that contractors usually also subcontract, which leads to the lowest quality for the highest price. See starliner. This notion that a private bureaucracy is somehow more nimble than a public bureaucracy is ideology at it's purest delusion. Nasa would be the best place to develop a better space suit, but it's pretty clear that NASA is made up of proficient problem creators, Rather than people who "don't care who did what, you just make sure this bolt here is properly tightened." When thirty year relationships with your counterpart at Boeing matter more than actually figuring out how to land a god-damned rocket, your in a bullshit job.
Boeings relationship with Nasa has been the art of charging as much as they possibly can for an amount of work by stringing it out, it has always been a crap model. I wish they would do everything on an absolute cost basis and hire out bids where a company just does not get paid if they do not produce results. What companies besides SpaceX have done is akin to a shady mechanic quoting a price and doubling it when they have your vehicle and know they have you by the balls. It should not be allowed.
I worked for the state. Many work spaces had water coolers that used bottled water. The bottled water company provided the coolers if the water was bought from them. The administration complained about the cost of bottled water but wouldn't approve capital expenditure to install permanent water fountains.
Word
A spending plan by the same kind of people who let a stealth jet hit ludicrous cost overruns without any contract penalty.
Just call it what it is. Corruption. It bogles the mind that anyone wants to give these malicious idiots any more power
According to the press conference, $3.5 Billion is the cap on the lifetime of the commercial space suit program. We'll get the full contract toward the end of June but it sounds like it's a race on who can get to milestones first to get paid. But we'll see. Everything is subject to NASA budgets staying funded for this program.
Oh that's not to bad of a price then.
Once the program stretches into a new administration or Congress all bets are off.
Not just keeping it funded.
We have to worry that Congress will just screw around and use it as a way to give money to their real masters.
Name one time that’s worked out like that.
I'm a taxpayer and I do not approve! Stop space exploration now!
Great video as usual.
By the way, I realy like the T-shirt.
PFFFfft.. "it could be way below that" Scott.. please. I almost spit my coffee on my computer.
The primary key to rental of space suits, like any other piece of equipment, repair/replace and maintenance typically is included in the rental cost.
If and only if the contract is written and negotiated properly.
The US government is not sitting on a good history of doing that.
@@MonkeyJedi99 Agreed
In the 1960's they put out video of patriotic grannies they used to make their space suits, cutting and sewing them together with perfection and these suits performed flawlessly to the moon and back over and again. Even if they paid each granny $100,000, with a $3,500,000,000 billion dollar budget. Even if you just spent two billion on labor they could hire 20,000 grannies to make their suits and have 1.5 billion left over for supplies and research and development of the suits. And if the other suits worked flawlessly how much more R&D would they even need to do?
@@guidedmeditation2396 paying employees that kind of money isn't American now, ya socialist.
The delivery orders will be firm fixed price and the Government will not take ownership of the hardware so all maintenance, repair and replacement is included in the cost.
Imagine if a congressional committee set out to design and develop a car.
They might be launching the exciting new Ford Model T sometime about now.
The Jeep? Maybe not directly by a congressional committee, but one of the more famous vehicles truly designed by committee - a 1/2 ton 4x4 utility truck actually.
Homermobile 😆😆😆
@@jonathantan2469 with speed holes!
@@Erik-ko6lh I mean the whole point of congress is to stop progress. Can't have the poor supporting anything besides brutal, laissez-faire capitalism, can we?
Thanks, great in depth video on the suits! Your last video made me wonder about the suit that NASA announced all those years ago. Shame that it failed. At least, given the choice they're now making I'm wondering if it will ever see the light of space, but who knows.
I just love Scott's T-shirt! Most uplifting message in this whole episode is the one written there...
Engineering and building space suits by contractor committee takes too much time and expense? Who'd have thought... LOL!!! I thought the suits with the back hatch were practical when I had first seen them talked about all those years ago, especially since, if set up properly, they didn't need an air lock... the back of the suit docks to the habitats, the door in the habitat opens, the door to suit opens, and exit and entry in and out was direct... seemed like a pretty efficient feature if it was workable...
Don't worry, it's all just a big headfake. No suit even similar to this can withstand the "vacuum of space". The Apollo suits were filmed in a Nevada junkyard. Man has never been to further into "space" than a sports car can drive in under a half hour on an open road.
It does have a lot of advantages on paper, especially when considering the ability to prevent lunar or Martian dust from entering the habitat. However the disadvantages of a rear entry suit is a tremendous increase in weight, and there is still a need to bring the suit into the habitat if it needs any resizing or surfacing. It is an interesting challenge!
@@PeterVanderKley Another big thing is that is massively increases the area needing sealing, as vacuum tight seals are heavy and big, so having more is generally bad, particularly on the back, where the heavy eva pack is fitted - too much weight there and it becomes very hard to stand up, even in low gravity. Having the weight around your waste is easier, since it just compensates for the lower gravity.
Another key 6502 feature missing in modern clones is the larger transistors and higher electrical margins, combining to increase radiation resistance.
For a buyer the size of NASA wouldn't it make more sense to contract with Intel to fab some replicas with giant transistors than to go on an archaeological dig for decades old processors with whatever physical, environmental and electrical injuries they may have sustained since being made?
Larger transistors are more prone to radiation upset. Best is SOI with smallest transistors. And add redundancy and auto recovery then super robust.
@@tactileslut I think they likely realized that the cost with trying to replicate old antique chips is a waste of time compared to just upgrading to modern hardware. When it comes to making chips like that, your main cost is fabs. I doubt Intel during one of the biggest shortages for chips in recent history will charge cheaply to waste fabs on recreating antiques.
@@tactileslut it's an entire process, I don't believe anyone has the machinery anymore to make that size processors. It's not a quick change to go "back in time" 40 years. The machinery, processes, and materials just aren't the same anymore. It would be like asking Tesla to make an old GE 100hp brushed electric motor... It becomes a challenge to manufacture it properly. They could do it, but would have to go through all the same learning curves before the motor was reliable... Tough task when you just need a handful.
@@tactileslut A buyer the size of NASA? NASA is a tiny buyer. They would probably only need a few dozen chips.
At first I too thought renting spacesuits didn't seem to make a lot of sense. According to a June 2nd New Atlas article, NASA is renting spacesuits with the intent of stimulating private space industry. So it might seem expensive, but consider that in addition to acquiring spacesuits, this program acts as a potentially very beneficial subsidy for a fledgling industry.
Those Orion suits are so cool. I love retro-futuristic style things, it’s wonderful.
Scott: The EMU is heavy, it's not something you can wear during launch and landing.
Mark Watney: Am I a joke to you?
From what we can see, these new space suit concepts have lots of nooks and crannies which would be vulnerable to lunar regolith - which according to the Apollo moon mission reports gets in everywhere. It is a danger which should not be underestimated!
Exactly. Trying to design a suit that would be sufficient in orbit *and* on the moon turned out to be non-viable. Though, sometimes we learn more from our failures than our successes. Using the base model, they can modify each type to be best suited for its purpose.
Thanks for this update. Certainly, from the "man from Mars" viewpoint, it is the craziest thing in the world to have a couple of dozen people in space and they seem to all have different space suit designs. Please keep us informed.
I knew a glove designer who came from the athletic shoe industry. The tech that goes into the gloves is amazing. Multiple layers, gloves made for specific astronauts. Cool stuff
I do feel like perhaps NASA should buy the suits instead of renting them, but I guess it makes sense for NASA to do
If NASA buys them, then they also have to maintain them. Renting doesn't require that.
it seems like its a little more complicated than just buying a thing. space suits arent just something you can buy and it works for a while until it doesnt, they require regular maintenance by people that know a lot about them, so it seems like theyre paying for the training and maintenance as much as they are the suit itself.
id still much rather they build their own tho
@@sethdrake7551 and if the suit craps out well or mission requirements change, lets cancel that rent payment..
even if they buy them they still need to buy the parts and support from the actual manufacturers, so they would still pay for an expensive support contract
@@DD-zh4by Well you should talk to congress about that since they approve the budgets and its up to them the programs are properly funded. The agency is wasting the money is often a diversionary argument to divert from the fact the agency was not properly funded in the first place. This argument often does not apply to the US military though.
Okay, this was all thoroughly explained and presented, but... which one can you cut at the glove and get to fly like Iron Man?
(A qualification requirement for the Mars suit.)
sadly none :(
I UNDERSTOOD THAT REFERENCE
Marvel crap isn't real.
@@thomasvleminckx good sir your sarcasm detecting unit seems to be faulty, you might need to go to a sarcasm technician to have it fixed.
@@mastershooter64 Not sarcasm detection unit, pop culture reference unit, he thought the reference was to the Iron Man suit when it was in fact a double-layered reference.
Mark Whatney in the movie "The Martian" was making a reference to the "hand thrusters" as used in the Iron Man suit, which he improvised one of by puncturing his suit glove in such a way that he could just barely control the resulting explusion of gas to create an improvised cold gas thruster using suit atmosphere as the reaction mass, in order to make up some of the velocity difference between his stripped-down MAV and the Mars Transfer Vehicle he was trying to dock with.
@11:30 the looks on the astronauts faces on that shuttle launch is priceless 😍
Which mission (STS-???) was that?
Would be cool if you made a video on astronauts reacting to launches!
Interesting. Thanks for good stuff.
I wonder if they're letting the contractors take over where they left off or if the contractors are starting from scratch. I also wonder what's going to happen with that vehicle they tested that is supposed to work with the suit they worked on. The suit was on the back of the vehicle and the astronauts could climb through a hatch in the vehicle and straight into the back of the suite and then walk around outside without needing to cycle an airlock.
Almost certainly the latter.... the xEMU = design by committee and would there are probably a ton of cost and complexity optimizations a clean slate design could achieve.
The funding ends up in the pockets of politicians
for pity's sake. _Tubes,_ not fabric.
They want a wearable space capsule, not a multi-layered tuxedo.
Saying Collins has in-house experience from the Appollo suits makes it sound like they have a pool of 80-100-year-old engineers standing by from the last time they created suits.
@@-danR Like fabric will just gather dust
Greed ruins everything especially progress. Nice work as always Scott.
Not exactly. Engineers aren't cheap and there's a lot of mismanagement involved.
@@samsonsoturian6013 Yeah mismanagement of funds. Make sure you give them a little extra from your wallet.
@@G.K.Walker most people aren't as dirty as you think.
@@samsonsoturian6013 look I didn't say illegal. Aren't pharmaceutical reps legal drug salesman (dealers)?
@@G.K.Walker only if you're a liar.
Come now, there's enough real crimes with the likes of Martin Shkreli and whoever it was that tried to butter up army requisition officers with expensive perks last year. You don't need to pull stuff out your butt.
Collins does have strong heritage experience with space suits. A dozen years ago Collins was a dozen different companies, one of which was Hamilton Sundstrand which helped manufacture the old space suits from Apollo to the shuttle.
Actually UTC acquired Raytheon in a “merger of equals” and then rebranded to Raytheon Technologies. There are four companies under the corporate umbrella: Collins Aerospace (where I work), Pratt & Whitney, Raytheon Intelligence & Space and Raytheon Missiles & Defense.
6502 was a great little processor, learned assembly language on it, but that was in 1975 when it was state-of-the-art.
I loved the 6502, I hand built my first computer using one. Those days you could actual understand how the micros all functioned, beyond me now withe the current micros :(
Lucky you. I cut my teeth on Z80.
And for what you'll do with spacesuits, "not state of the art" is actually preferable. It reduces the chance that part of the instruction set may have an unanticipated effect on something critical, because it's got a much smaller instruction set. Also, the older processors have larger components, which makes them more fault-tolerant on a hardware level.
At this point i feel making an orbital suit would be cheaper if they made a miniature spacraft with 1 laying down seat and a spot where the astronaut can put their arms through and manipulate things like in a early born box if they want but they can also move around in the craft.
Yes, they'd be able to wipe their face if it got wet rather than that being a lethal situation. Being able to touch your face is very important for humans
@@JohnBlackburn1975 yeah I remember hearing about that dude who almost drowned in space because of an air conditioning malfunction and he started sweating.
“NASA launders $3.5 billion to favored corporations using a few space suits” There, I fixed the title
Great and Very interesting video
NASA: "Excuse me mr politicians... can we get some more funding so we can make our space suits?
Politician: "No, make do with that budget."
NASA: "Well, you forced us to contract with 50 different companies, so even if we have like 25 million a year, that's being spilt up between our in house coordinators, and all those other teams to like 500,000 a year, wich means basically none of these companies can even pay their men to work on this full time, let alone actual equipment and material costs. We're stuck with massed part timers right now... if we had enough to pay everyone for a straight year or two we could get this all done... Or if we could drop some of these contracts and...
Politician: "NO! You no drop contract with person from my state! Bad, you're just being greedy NASA!
-X years later-
NASA: "We probably won't be able to finish our Space Suit in time for this other program as things stand... It just takes way to long to get info and updates back and forth between all the teams and to iterate on stuff."
Politician: "You can't do anything right... why not pay some other company to do it? Open a private competition? My state has a company that would happily compete in such a contract..."
NASA: "We don't have the money to rapidly work on and iterate on this ourselves each year... there's no way we can afford to pay a private company much with our budget for this, and because of you we're still locked in on existing contracts with all these other companies for individual parts anyway..."
Politician: "Well, you can break off those contracts if you hold a competition to give it all to one... (other politician wacks him on the head) sorry, two, companies."
NASA: "Two? You want us to suddenly have the money to pay for not one but two companies to work on this on their own now?"
Politician: "Yes, if you can make that happen then we might be able to see to an increase in funding for this new competition of yours..."
NASA: "... you know what... fine... hands are tied and not really like I have any say in this unless I can somehow pull money out of my own ass, so sure, but we get to right up the contract requirements for the suit at least...."
Politician: "Yes, of coarse... though there are a few key parts I think we'll have to insist on just to make sure everything goes smoothly..."
NASA: "F!@$!%%!@!!!"
Sadly weapons to kill each other is more profitable at the moment.
Politicians only care about money laundering and flying to epsteins island...
Pain
100% what happened. NASA isn't incompetent, but the politicians holding the checkbook are incredible corrupt.
Also:
- Oh my god NASA has spend 400 million with no ready suit, it will take billion to make finalized suit.
- unacceptable, everyone criticizes NASA for expenses
- NASA awards 3.5 billion dollar suit contracts to outside contracting and it will take still years to get the suits
- acceptable, nobody blinks an eye.
Like hello it is still going to cost that same billion to make the final suit design and first production examples. Though as Scott said the main benefit to NASA is now "contractors fault. Nothing we can do. Go bash the contractor in media instead of us."
$3.5 billion dollars for suits that might see 350 hours of use over 10 years.
$10 million dollars per hour.
This... is... pathetic.
They had the plans, they had superior tech. They had Half a billion dollars and years to work... they came up with nothing.
This... is ... DISTURBING.
The people running these programs are clearly the Wrong people.
More like people pocketed funds and said they had issue...ie all govt ran programs sumed up.
The suit's cost is nothing compared to the cost of labor with the thousands of engineers involved in creating high tech suits we don't need.
Big govt contractors like Lockheed and Raytheon love to waste money, big surprise
Contracting every project to private industry is the downfall of literally every major US government service. The roads stink, the electric grid is garbage, the water is filthy and contaminated. The military is bloated and wasteful.
Seriously, we need to stop contracting everything. Private corporations just vacuum up money and deliver mediocrity.
@@bluejar5614 I wish
Great video, as always! Your tee-shirt is so nice! But I would have writen : "not half empty, not half full, but twice too big".
3.5 billion over 10 years.
That works out to almost a million dollars a day. This is pure crazy.
Nice work, if you can get it!
And they don't use them every day... maybe 5 time a year.
This is some 100% proper information. Thank you.
I certainly wouldn't call Jared Isaacman a tourist in the context of the Polaris missions. He's more of a technician considering he will be testing the new spacesuits.
Here's to him orbiting earth as an independent satellite...forever.
Uh, no. He will be using SpaceX's new EVA suit. Polaris is a SpaceX Dragon mission.
the moonraker segment made my spit out my water, thanks for the Laugh Scott
I wonder when we and if we will see motorized exoskeleton style suites. I guess for the moon walking it could be super beneficial to be able to move more normally. More parts mean more points of failure on the other hand. Nice vid. Thx
Why oh why are they not developing telepresence systems? You don't need a human being outside the space craft to work on the space craft, you don't need a human being outside the lunar base to do construction and exploration. Just build robots that are controlled by a telepresence system. The human stays inside the space craft or lunar base and wears head-mounted displays, hand tracking devices and such, controlling the robot that's outside. I had recommended this sort of thing back in the 80s in my "The Inventors Sketchpad" column in the old Interface Age magazine. Connect a VR system to a Boston Dynamics robot and you've got everything you need. No need to develop a space suit for the human. MUCH lower cost and can probably be put together in six months.
This is what I was thinking.
Didn't they send a robot up to the ISS specifically for this purpose? I remember a thing shaped like a human torso and arms that would attach to the Canadarm
People naturally want to get of the car and walk around. Of course telepresence and autonomous robots will be developed and used extensively, more and more as technology advances. But, just think about it, would YOU work your butt off for years to get a slot on a lunar mission, fly to the Moon, and be perfectly satisfied with never being allowed to go outside? Yeah me neither!
Boston Dynamics robots aren't capable of doing a fraction of what a human can do.
When they can, we can talk about this again.
I'm always finding other writers in these STEM news related comment sections...
It's a fine idea, but I couldn't see it as an absolute replacement. I could imagine scenarios where you would still desire or require continued and improved space suit development and usage.
Still, for most cases today, your VR/robot interaction maintenance system would reduce the risk to life and limb, which reduces the costly measures involved with human involvement in these costly measures. 😁
I imagine the private space industry could work with this, and lower their overall cost, but I'm not convinced that's one of NASA's current talents.
@@ke6gwf You apparently missed the part about the robot being controlled by a human operator, via telepresence technology. From the human operator's perspective it would be just like actually being there where the robot is.
To me, all this only goes to show how impressive the people were who both designed and sewed together the space suits of the 60s and 70s.
You can't punch holes in a space suit? It's got to retain one atmosphere of pressure, inside, heating and cooling elements, a pressing pump, air tanks, moisture, control, valves, a battery pack the size of a Tesla battery, this is all nonsense.. money laundering, and misdirection...
The Apollo suits worked safely for the several hours they needed to, but not far into the lunar missions NASA was already looking at how to make better ones because of all their problems. Astronauts described torture-like experiences during prolonged lunar use, and the lunar "dust" (more like millions of tiny scapels, given no water to smooth the sharp edges) was quickly eroding some of the contact sufaces towards an unsafe condition (had the suits been utilized over a longer period of time).
@@metalicminer6231 Kay, what? How is them renting new suits money laundering?
@@bayardkyyako7427 the whole of the space program is money laundering, in all reality it brings nothing to of advantage to anyone.. it's dreamers wasting money.
@@metalicminer6231 By your logic then 75% of science is money laundering because it doesnt directly give an advantage to anyone. Also its not money laundering idiot, its funding directlynfrom the government, there isnt anything illegal there.
Collins used to make very good quality radio equipment during WW2 and there was a lot of war surplus stocks during the ‘50s and ‘60s.
known for excellent quality HF radios.
I worked as a commercial diver for Oceaneering. They have different division, the one I work for has a bunch of asshats that ran it but that was back in 2005.
3:56 Well technically, almost every suit company has experience on building EVA suits for the surface of planets (the Earth)
I don’t know how Scott manages to put so much time into making high quality content while also spending time with family, working at Apple, and presumably having a social life.
@@emmanotsostrong hes also learning how to fly a plane.
Meanwhile, I barely can get through my youtube queue!
@@flewdefur I mean, the world has a _lot_ of very talented cats. It's not really our fault.
Ha Ha - long time ago I was in a big German firm. Some big bosses thought:
- our engineers are too slow, to expensive.
- Lets buy it from one contractor completely
- What they didn't know - the contractor was absolutely fearless and painless about fulfilling the contract. We had an endless mess - that platform NEVER met expectations and was neither capable of giving the necessary power nore the features. Not to mention some security problems.
OK, they had only one to hit on - but there were simply no consequences.
Its probably better to build some small modules in car size with robotic /mechanical systems like mini submarines instead suits. Which will be cheaper easier and lot more flexible in most cases.
8:00 SpaceX has even space suits without backpacks. I see real world technology finally catching up with videogames and their 30second oxygen supplies....
SpaceX has nothing because they're not doing anything but spreading lies thanks to their psychopathic leader.
Hamilton Standard, now part of Collins Aerospace, has been making spacesuits since the 60s.
Yes I was a little disappointed he didn’t realize/mention this. Collins is the evolution of the company that provided the Apollo suits (with ILC) and is the prime contractor of the shuttle and ISS EMUs.
@@patrickwhalen8972 in regards of Hamilton Standard and ILC Dover, the former constructed the PLSS, OPS, "bubble" helmet, the wrist and helmet disconnects, and life support disconnects, while ILC Dover manufactured the suits proper. For the Shuttle/ISS EMU, the Hard Upper Torso (HUT) and all of the life-support hardware was manufactured by Hamilton Standard, while ILC Dover manufactured the "soft" components, being the Lower Torso Assembly (LTA - the "pants and boots" of the EMU) and the arms.
@@rwboa22 thanks for the clarification. That’s why I said “with ILC” but nice to have the details.
I've Made the heating and cooling manifold for the iss space suits took 6 months to complete over 30 operations my company also machined the air bearings for the arm and neck joints
Collins is now the new name for Hamilton standard
Its' amazing what can get done when there is a hard deadline, and how little gets done when there isn't one. Sputnik -> Apollo 8 was 11 years, the same as from end of Shuttle flying til now.
Holy shit I work for Collins didn't even know they were making a spacesuit
Are they bragging about it now that they got the contract?
@@CountArtha nah most employees are pretty chill
Honestly, should probably just rent out their rocket development at this point as well.
It's not known as the United Corporations of America, for nothing.
Fuck it. Just shut down the program and hand the contracts off to third party aerospace companies, NASA has become a joke
Import it from Chyna.
What rocket development is happening at NASA? SLS is a pork barreling operation
That's kinda what they already dead. For $300M of NASA's budget we got the first iteration of Falcon 9. NASA does not own the Falcon 9 rockets; they contract SpaceX to launch their payloads on SpaceX owned rockets.
This saves the government money and time and allows for innovation not possible with Cost Plus slush funds like SLS and Orion.
The HLS Starship will also be "rented" by NASA for a fraction of what SLS+Orion costs.
The Collins facility here in Rockford Illinois is huge.
A passed family member was one of the engineers that worked on developing the original Apollo spacesuits. He had some interesting stories about the process.
Ok buddy, find someone to help you. We need a book written about that. I would buy it.
@ignas 1011001 It was a long time ago and I remember very few of the stories, just that he had some. Worked with developing/applying polymers to the suit construction before 1968, but I could be off on the dates. It was challenging work and I recall him saying they were very tough on the young engineers.
Tbh if you work in aviation at all UTC/Rockwell Collins is *EVERYWHERE* and manufacture almost everything you can think of on aircraft.
I remember some talk about a mechanical pressure suit, instead of using air, it uses elastics to keep the astronaut body under pressure, so you just need to feed the helmet with life support. I wonder how that development is going.
That's an idea that goes back a long way. The earliest designs were tested in vacuum chambers in the 60s. But then you still need temperature control units and heating elements probably.
It is a good idea. For something like Mars surface it would probably be far better than a piecewise rigid balloon, as long as the temperature controls are included in the tension fabric.
Good point. I vaguely remember that, work was being done at a university. If I remember correctly the problem was having the fabric exert enough pressure to operate in a vacuum, but I may be mistaken.
That's the same way a partial pressure suit works. For a short time it will keep you alive, over a longer period of time the suit seems like it is trying to eat you alive.
@@jounik Well they already have undergarments with tubes that circulate water for cooling, it shouldn't be impossible to have something like that between the pressure layer and the outer insulations layer. Would need some way to deal with humidity too, so you don't end up filling the bottom half with sweat.
the issue is that the pressure in the suit wants to push the arms and legs to *their state of maximum internal volume*, so i suspect if you, for example, oragami'd the joints with hard panels hinged together so that the internal volume stays the same throughout the movement, the air pressure wouldn't want to move the joint
As someone who rode out the UTC/RTX merger as part of Pratt, the Collins space laser joke really summarized that whole experience!
My guess is SpaceX did the same thing they did with Starship - offer NASA what they are developing anyway despite it not meeting the specified requirements and tell NASA to take it or leave it. They took Starship since they had no confidence in any of the other bids, but they may have left SpaceX's suit since it isn't what they are looking for and they think they can get what they are looking for this time.
They took Starship not because they trusted it more than the others, it was the only option that fit into their tiny budget.
@@GilWanderley It helps that even on paper the Alpaca didn't work.
How did Starship lander Not Exceed the NASA requirements? The lander version can land 100t and dozens of people on the moon. The Goal was to setup a Sustainable presence on the moon. None of the others could achieve that by landing a few tons and a few people at a time.
Regarding the suits. Spacex is the only one who can design their own computers and at least designed a flight suit. Neither of the other two has done so.
Also the Spacex suit that had Some of the abilities of the desired suit, was due to use in 2022-3, not 2025. Musk told them many months ago that he could build it (the whole spec) by 2024.
How does his company Not have the most experience with living engineers?
... and where the Heck did they get $3.5billion as a price....?
@@avgjoe5969 Exactly, it exceeded the requirements. It didn't meet them. It is far bigger than what NASA requested. Ordinarily, that would have disqualified their application.
the problem with tailored suits, especially in long duration mars or moon colonization is limited interchangeability in emergencies. if there is a emergency decompression event you have to grab whatever suit is handy. hope it fits..
or you may damage a suit and have to wait for it to be repaired or replaced, in the interim that astronaut has no spacesuit he can use, which is again a safety problem.
But for emergency use you don't need a suit that does the other job very well - just able to keep the occupant alive and retrievable. That makes the design task for each version much easier.
@@kenoliver8913 It is not about can a suit do other jobs, it is about do we need to bring 2x amount of suits for 1 spare, or we bring 1.5x amount of suits for many spares. In my opinion IVA suits are nice to be tailored as it will likely simplify the process of wearing it and may even reduce the chance of breaking / leaking. When accident occur in space stations / moon bases / mars bases / whatever, wearing the suit fast is important. But for EVA suits? I would rather they be one-size-fit-all or a-few-sizes-fit-all in long duration missions and/or space colonization. Imagine the craziness if every astronaut have to bring their own EVA suit to space station, and then no EVA activities for you because your suit malfunctions and your colleague can't exchange his suit for you to go out. Imagine the situation if it is not LEO space station but bases on Mars.
IVA suits are lighter, thus sounds more okay to bring multiple backups.
The thing about Orbital EVA suit vs Surface EVA: --- Why not have two different BOTTOM halves optimized for the two environments that can interchangeably attach to the same top half?
Surely the environmental control system is going to be similar, and the top half needs similar mobility, since you need very articulated mobility when doing orbital repair work as well as surface work.
And if you have the nifty backpack hatch, you could use that attached to a pressurized rover to allow entry from inside the rover without getting dust in the airlock from surfaces of Moon and Mars. The suit itself would be the airlock.
I will be VERY DISAPPOINTED if they miss this opportunity to do the suit hatch entry method, since that fixes so many issues that they had with the Apollo suits, and would make daily EVAs possible on an extended stay on the moon.
Well I think that’s sorta going to be the case. Axiom’s been contracted to design an Orbital suit based off its Lunar suit.
It’ll be used on their Space Station when that gets put up.
Just did a search on NOS 6502 processors. As I thought, readily available. Doesn't mean other, low production items are available.
Heart breaking. Another symbol of what we have lost.
The whole post code contracting so you can get funding which then doesn't result in anything because you had to do post code contracting to get the funding... What a system!
I'm an embedded systems software engineer (40+ years). If the 6502 (a processor I HAVE programmed in assembly language... yeah I'm that old... sigh) is not available then you can "build" one in an FPGA and even add the code and memory to make it a one chip replacement. Easy peezy!
Love the shirt, Scott.
Could you do a video on mechanical counter pressure suits? I would love a reliable breakdown on if they are possible.
Mechanical counterpressure suits have been tested and used before, just not in space.
The tightness required for 0.3 atmospheres is equivalent to about 30 layers of the tightest fashion stockings, or about 3 layers of the tightest orthotic compression stockings. And now you have to pull this on in zero-g, and it chafes, and the compression isn't quite even. It has to be custom-fitted to each person, but your body shape changes in space. And if you're male (have male anatomy), your genitals need a separate specialised pressurised compartment.
The David Clark partial mechanical couterpressure suits were worn on the U-2 and some X-series aircraft. You'll have seen pictures of them: there's a hose running along the outside of the arms which inflated, turning capstans which tightened the garment.
The Space Activity Suit consisted of multiple layers of elastic stocking fabric, each donned separately.
The SpaceX IVA suit has a fairly tight body stocking underneath which might provide some mechanical counterpressure in addition to the suit air pressure.
The MOS 6502 - "moss sixty five oh two" how it's really pronounced lol. I think it's still being made there's a zillion clones. Edit: what's probably hard to get are the space radiation hardened samples. That and nobody wants to code assembly lol.
Probably not one that's been space grade approved. A clone would need to be individually approved independently
Lots of coders still alive. But yes, 6502 assembly is limiting. It isn’t very C-friendly.
@@noop9k I started with 6502 assembly, but then moved to Z80 assembly when it came out, so many more instructions than 8080/8085 micros.
@@noop9k The real question is code maintainability imo. That's where the big costs are. Not so much finding programmers, but finding programmers that don't make spaghetti.
Rad-hardened assembly is a bit counter-intuitive. Just because you got a value for a flag doesn't mean it's correct.
"digging 6502's out of old machines" not really the only way. A processor that small can easily be implemented inside a cheap FPGA with plenty of room left over for the surrounding logic, and getting loads of I/O pins besides. Designs like the 6502 in Verlog/VHDL are all around and free/open source. Most older designs of that era could be moved into an FPGA and maintain software and hardware compatibility.
As others have mentioned, a key feature of that 6502 chip they are using is radiation hardness. I don’t believe many current FPGA systems are designed to be used with cosmic ray and other space radiation exposure.
To be fair, this is likely only a few dozen suits, so even if you do have to harvest them from old computers, there's more than enough to go around.
A lot of the difficulties with suits come from the fact that they are anthropomorphic. Human beings are the wrong shape for space.
For EVAs, how about a tool-wielding robot controlled from inside the vehicle through video goggles and manipulators? They could have features like a third arm for docking, to free the others for tools. Long EVAs should be much less exhausting that way, and be continued by swapping "pilots" for extended shifts.
For planetary surface work, consider a ball-shaped cabin (see the B-17 ball turret) with the same sort of controls, supported for mobility either by a wheeled rover or perhaps a multi-legged exoskeleton. ( The Spiders of Mars?). The vehicle could be semi-autonomous, with the driver pointing at a destination, and the thing's CPU deciding which leg to move next. (That's a mere matter of engineering details.)
Add more limbs until the bots look like space crabs. Everything is turning into a crab anyway...
Robonaut
ETA: For Mars, it makes a lot of sense just to keep the humans in orbit.
@@travcollier The two objections to that are probably meteors and radiation. On, or more precisely, under the surface, they would be protected from those hazards.
@@parrotraiser6541 Well, there are a couple of moons with plenty of material to use as shielding. Can either dig in on one of those or yeet material up to a space station in orbit of Mars.
I was thinking about short visits though. Sensible long term stations and colonies are pretty far off. We've got a big moon and lots of room in orbit of Earth.
@@travcollier Using one of the moons as a pre-built space station sounds like a good idea.
Boy, the last I heard anything about NASA and space suits was your video about the big red, white and blue one, which I first watched a year or so ago. I thought that "old" suit was still what was being worked on, but I did watch the live stream about this and was immediately looking forward to this video about it from you. Even watching their stream though I didn't pick up at all that they were renting them, thought Axiom and Collins were just building a few of them for NASA which would be owned by them. Big changes from what I heard last, I'm looking forward to what kind of suits these companies will make though and hope it works out well and isn't remembered as a bad decision in the future like a few other choices NASA has made before.
when all the engineers are all long since retired, does the company still have experience?
I love how the scenes in movies with lasers in space, actually show the laser beam even though it has virtually nothing in which to interact.
it's almost as if it was fiction or something
YOUR T-SHIRT IS JUST GREAT :-)
So excited for your content, Scott. Never a waste of my time.