itâs nice and soft and floppy until you pump it up, when it forms a fairly rigid circle. Then, of course, it has to be encased inside a tire and rim, which holds its shape and protects it from punctures. A pressure suit is built in approximately the same way. There is a bladder of thin, soft rubber which acts as the inner tube. Then there is a restraint layer, which holds the bladder in and which conforms to the shape of the astronautâs body. Then there is an outer layer, to keep out meteorites and the sunâs heat. The problem is that, unlike a bicycle tire, which always remains round, a pressure suit must constantly change shape. As the astronaut bends, it must bend; twist as he twists, and in general act as a tough outer layer of skin. Now, it is easy to move inside a suit that is deflated, like a floppy inner tube, but it gets to be hard work when the suit is pumped up, or inflated. Then the suit becomes rigid, and it is difficult to bend at the waist or elbow or shoulder. The suit designer must be part engineer and part magician to invent a suit that is safe and protective without being cumbersome and rigid.
I enjoyed working with the engineers who were wrestling with these problems. It required a lot of traveling, because there were different kinds of suits and backpacks and chestpacks, and they were made not in Houston but in far-off places like Connecticut and California and Delaware and Massachusetts. Since I was the astronaut officeâs specialist, experimental pressure suits were made to my size, and I was required to wear them under various conditions to determine their comfort, reliability, and mobility. This work really kept me busy, hopping around the country from one meeting or test to another.
Some of the tests were fun, but others were just plain hard work. Whenever we wanted to simulate weightlessness, we flew in the back end of a Boeing KC-135, which was just like the rear of a commercial jet liner, except that all the seats had been removed and the walls had been padded. The KC-135 pilot would dive down, gain speed, and abruptly pull into a steep climb. Then he would push over, following an arc shaped like a parabola, and for about twenty seconds we and the airplane would fall together, temporarily weightless. During this twenty-second period, we would hurry through our tests. One of the most difficult was to try to get back inside the Gemini cockpit and close the hatch over your head. The Gemini was very small, and while weightless, I used to keep popping up out of the cockpit, like a cork out of a bottle. It took all my strength to bend that suit enough to wedge myself down in the seat so that there was enough clear space over my head to close the hatch. On a typical flight, we would stay up in the KC-135 and do forty or fifty parabolas. The first few times I tried it, it was fun, especially if I didnât
have to wear a pressure suit. Once we even dressed a friend up in a Superman suit and took pictures of him holding two other men at armâs length and then throwing them up in the air. That was easy to do while all three were weightless. But after a while the KC-135 stopped being fun and became hard work. For one thing, it was usually quite hot inside the pressure suit, and after a couple of parabolas of strenuous work I would be breathing hard and sweating a lot. Sometimes I even got a little bit of claustrophobia, which is an awful feeling that you are trapped inside something and must get out. Of course, I was trapped inside the pressure suit; when I didnât feel I was getting enough cool air to breathe, I would get a little panicky and raise the visor on my helmet to get a whiff of fresh air. That worried me because, of course, in space you couldnât raise the visor without deflating the suit and dying. Another problem in the KC-135 was that the parabolas, and the pullouts between parabolas, tended to make you sick. I never got really sick myself, but the sight of a
I enjoyed working with the engineers who were wrestling with these problems. It required a lot of traveling, because there were different kinds of suits and backpacks and chestpacks, and they were made not in Houston but in far-off places like Connecticut and California and Delaware and Massachusetts. Since I was the astronaut officeâs specialist, experimental pressure suits were made to my size, and I was required to wear them under various conditions to determine their comfort, reliability, and mobility. This work really kept me busy, hopping around the country from one meeting or test to another.
Some of the tests were fun, but others were just plain hard work. Whenever we wanted to simulate weightlessness, we flew in the back end of a Boeing KC-135, which was just like the rear of a commercial jet liner, except that all the seats had been removed and the walls had been padded. The KC-135 pilot would dive down, gain speed, and abruptly pull into a steep climb. Then he would push over, following an arc shaped like a parabola, and for about twenty seconds we and the airplane would fall together, temporarily weightless. During this twenty-second period, we would hurry through our tests. One of the most difficult was to try to get back inside the Gemini cockpit and close the hatch over your head. The Gemini was very small, and while weightless, I used to keep popping up out of the cockpit, like a cork out of a bottle. It took all my strength to bend that suit enough to wedge myself down in the seat so that there was enough clear space over my head to close the hatch. On a typical flight, we would stay up in the KC-135 and do forty or fifty parabolas. The first few times I tried it, it was fun, especially if I didnât
have to wear a pressure suit. Once we even dressed a friend up in a Superman suit and took pictures of him holding two other men at armâs length and then throwing them up in the air. That was easy to do while all three were weightless. But after a while the KC-135 stopped being fun and became hard work. For one thing, it was usually quite hot inside the pressure suit, and after a couple of parabolas of strenuous work I would be breathing hard and sweating a lot. Sometimes I even got a little bit of claustrophobia, which is an awful feeling that you are trapped inside something and must get out. Of course, I was trapped inside the pressure suit; when I didnât feel I was getting enough cool air to breathe, I would get a little panicky and raise the visor on my helmet to get a whiff of fresh air. That worried me because, of course, in space you couldnât raise the visor without deflating the suit and dying. Another problem in the KC-135 was that the parabolas, and the pullouts between parabolas, tended to make you sick. I never got really sick myself, but the sight of a
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