at 2.56 please explain how that is possible? fake video? if anyone knows i would think it's you.. and no i'm not a space denier or anything like that, just curious..
The problem is the philosophy of design. They're acting like it has to be designed 100% perfect the first time. The problem with that is that no one is that smart, and there's going to be some flaw that you did not anticipate, and that's going to be the source the failure. So instead of spending billions trying to perfectly engineer at the first time spend tens of thousands of dollars to make one, tested, find out where it fails, then it'll rively repeat until you have a good design. Then you can spend a few million dollars on further refinements, and then continue testing. This is what NASA has been doing for decade, they instead of iterative Lee testing, they simply try to design everything perfect the first time in the problem is there will always be a flaw or mistake or misunderstood principal that somebody missed. And if you build your entire device on an assumption that incorrect then you just made a massive failure. Iterative Design & Testing prototyping is the way to go.
"A couple of dozen more" ? why stop there? Divide the task list by the number of contractors and project time can be shortened in a linear manner by simply increasing the contractor count. This is taken from NASA's "Guide to Project Management".
Yes, but by doing so it is training up an industry of contractors and high-tech workers who can take their very unique skillset and use it to design future human-spaceflight-related equipment. One of NASA's main purposes is to try out different designs and integrate expensive technologies that private companies simply cannot afford to do. Constantly trying to compare NASA to a private company is apples and oranges. They both have completely different mandates. On one hand you have a government organization whose mission is to use taxpayer dollars help develop the space industry and develop the infrastructure and knowledge base that is too expensive and too risky for a private company to do by itself. A private company, on the other hand, is the end user of that taxpayer-funded research and development costs. NASA makes it possible for private companies to nucleate around the industry.
Almost all aerospace projects have tons of subcontractors The fact that space reporters on Twitter choose to focus on unimportant details as this to blame expected development delays is frankly frustrating
@@brokensoap1717 Yes, and such arrangements is what caused Boeing's downturn. Ben Rich, head of Skunk Works put it this way: The contract to build a warship in 1800 was three pages long. The contract to turn that same ship into a museum was three hundred pages long, not including subcontractors. There was even a full chapter of legalese on how they would paint the ship.
@@samsonsoturian6013 I'm not just talking about Boeing. Literally all aerospace projects work like this because they pretty much have to. Complex projects require thousands of components one company can't make by itself
@@brokensoap1717 yea, its kinda hard to imagine that any one company has the skill set for all the diverse technologies required in a space suit. If they were building a suit everyday for mass market, sure, then you’ll eventually get one space suit company. Or maybe several.
I worked at ILC for 11 years designing gloves and now on the Artemis suit and found your video very accurate and am continually amazed at the footage you are able to mine for your vids.
Close to the Johnson space center at NASA, Clear lake. Houston Texas ? If so you probably worked with my mother . She went to work at Rockwell International. Seamstress on space suites for the space shuttle.
@Maryo_Nicle7 Space X's suit isn't resistant to micro space debris has no life support apparatus other than a pressurizer. The suits can't even handle radiation from the sun. The reason? The suits were never designed for such missions.
An interesting issue with the next gen suits I heard: Moondust is as sharp as glass. The Apollo suits were only used for a few hours, but were almost shredded by the end. The Artemis suits will be used for weeks; their durability needs to be upgraded massively.
That's why I'm surprised that they haven't ditched the idea of walking on the moon and gone with enclosed vehicles instead. I guess it's too early to build a tunnel from a lander to a rover.
@@kentslocum there are various ways to avoid the lunar dust, for example by charging the suit electromagnetically so that it repells the dust. Even tho this exact concept might not be used, some other Form of protection is used and im sure NASA is well aware of the danger
@@gcisbani I agree, still that's not the only issue they are facing from the lunar landing. Starting from radiations to cpu tech, but overall yeah we can safely assume that they are not hiding anything....
I really fail to understand how the spacesuit development threatens to delay the project when the launch vehicle has yet to fly and an all-new lunar lander hasn't even been fully designed yet!
Just that we know now that the suit is delayed. Likely the lunar lander will be delayed as well but we don’t know it yet. So maybe they will sync up anyways.
@@TheBooban There is no way a brand new lunar landing spacecraft will be designed, built, tested and ready to fly by 2024. That deadline, changed for no reason other than a politician's ego, was never going to be met anyway!
@@markmaz56 You say that, but Obama and even G.W Bush talked about space programs in the exact same way. Pretending it is somehow Trump's fault for wanting to kick the project back into proper development is just dumb. The last four presidents wanted the exact same.
@@PHeMoX Previous administrations and NASA set a 2028 target for a lunar landing. Consequently, all funding was based on this timeline. Trump changed it to 2024, for no other reason than his belief he would still be in office and take all the glory, but the funding didn't change to reflect this VASTLY accelerated deadline. There is NO ONE who knows anything about space who considered the 2024 deadline to be "proper development!"
One problem that engineers are trying to tackle: lunar regolith ("dust") was found to be a much more serious environmental factor than expected during the Apollo missions. When it got into seals on airlocks and space suits, it created leaks. It is about as healthy when inhaled as asbestos...so the new ones are being designed with the philosophy that humans shall never come into direct contact with the regolith, and that of course complicates things. A lot.
If lunar regolith becomes a big enough problem during the Artemis missions, they might abandon the idea of a permanent lunar outpost entirely. Mars might be further away (MUCH further), but at least it's not quite as hostile. Well, except for the dust storms. And radiation hazard, since Mars has no appreciable magnetosphere. ...Exploring space is bloody difficult.
@@Cailus3542 Martian soil isn't much better. It contains copious amounts of perchlorates, which are used to make pesticides here on Earth. I don't know if it has been examined for abrasiveness, but if it's as abrasive as lunar regolith, it's likely to be just as problematic 🤔
The new suit provides more mobility with arms and legs. In the old suit that went to the moon the astronauts had to hop around. Now they are able to normally walk. And it is much safer and stable if you fall. But i agree, the old suit looks way more modern.
Im sure the new suit will be more comfortable and capable, but damn if its not ugly as hell. Old suits looked way better. Im sure if SpaceX gets into the suit game they'll work on the looks.
Slowly it gets done as everyone still shows up to work and does their jobs. There's a similar story with the Pentagon where there are so many departments that no one can keep track of them all. A bunch of briefings that could just be an email since they don't allow questions, only these briefings are on the other side of a building the size of a small town. The unclassified parts of the building have neither cell service nor wifi in spite both being needed and allowed. An abundance of superfluous offices exist that must approve certain things and file reports but one wonders why the office was created in the first place. Like the Leathality Branch, or an Air Force liaison office to army R&D.
The problem is the philosophy of design. They're acting like it has to be designed 100% perfect the first time. The problem with that is that no one is that smart, and there's going to be some flaw that you did not anticipate, and that's going to be the source the failure. So instead of spending billions trying to perfectly engineer at the first time spend tens of thousands of dollars to make one, tested, find out where it fails, then it'll rively repeat until you have a good design. Then you can spend a few million dollars on further refinements, and then continue testing. This is what NASA has been doing for decade, they instead of iterative Lee testing, they simply try to design everything perfect the first time in the problem is there will always be a flaw or mistake or misunderstood principal that somebody missed. And if you build your entire device on an assumption that incorrect then you just made a massive failure. Iterative Design & Testing prototyping is the way to go.
1960’s: “We have almost 50 billion dollars to work with. Let’s do it!” 2020’s: “We barely have 20 billion to land on the moon and do everything else. How are we going to do this”
It was a close run thing in the 60s too. Part of the problem is that aside from advanced prototypes NASA hasn't ordered new suits for over a generation so there's not the same level of infrastructure and expertise. The Russian Orlan suits by comparison are replaced every few years.
I think the Orion flight suit is pretty much ready to go, being a much less ambitious modification of existing designs and it is intended to function during EVA with an umbilical much like the Gemini suits or the modified Apollo suits used for Skylab. So if all else fails they've got that for emergency EVAs.
In addition to the two basic kinds of EVA spacesuit covered here, there are also IVA suits. IVA suits are only used for the riskier parts of the flight, and are only meant to keep the astronaut alive if the spacecraft has a leak
@@Caseytify Musk space suit can pressurize, but it needs the Crew Dragon capsule to provide the life support system for the astronauts to survive. The space suits that go on the moon and do space walks need to carry their own life support system so the suits are like a mini space ship.
I wish the video actually explained WHY it's taking so long to replace the EMU. Some questions: 1. Why has NASA been using the same design for decades? Reliability? Priorities for other r&d? 2. Why is the xEMU taking so long to complete its development? Cost? Technical difficulties?
It's NASA, that the real reason for the delays. The last 10 years is been all about securing jobs by various state officals and not about getting on to do the jobs that are needed. Look how far SpaceX has come in the last 10 years then look at how long it's taking NASA for the SLS/Artemis programs. There is no drive in NASA to achieve anything in Manned Flight. I know the federal funding has been short but again look at SpaceX doing more for less dollars
1. It works well enough for the ISS, and has been up there the whole time. 2. Mismanagement and politics. You see they refuse to copy old designs because they weren't specifically built for girl anatomy and don't have fancy computers hooked up. Also, you see they have 27 contractors, which I don't know why some governments and corporation keep doing that, because it makes the simplest things complicated. If one group changes something, then it must be approved by all the others. Which means if the change effects anyone else several departments will also submit their own changes. Repeat. Also since no one group is married to the project there's no incentive to finish on time or on budget.
The reason they're unable to "replace" the old spacesuits is because they never went to moon so they haven't been used on moon, so basically they're developing a real one that works from scratch.
Is it me or does there need to be a cleaning house at NASA who clearly isn't up to the next gen demands of a return to proper space travel. Both in terms of personnel and the governance structures which clearly need to be significantly improved.
Seriously. They're just CRAAWWWLLINNNGG. NASA should stick to what they're good at: working with JPL and others to develop technologies and satellites.
How to fix NASA in three easy steps. 1. Fire all diversity and affirmative action hires 2. Focus on the mission of space exploration, not 'climate change' or 'equity' 3. Cut the bureaucracy by 75% across the board, starting with 'diversity and inclusion' programs Once the rot has been cut out, NASA should be back on track. Although I'm not sure it matters at this point, as the country is more than likely to collapse in the next five years.
It's often less about NASA, and more about the politics. Sometimes, they can't change contracts because some senator has promised XYZ to some contractor and won't fund changes, or else some other committee gets all fickle about what they think they should pay for vs what they won't. The whole space shuttle mess was almost 100% about politics, for example. And yes, add that to the typical government agency overhead and attitude, and you get a lot of things like this. It's easy to point to NASA, though, and say they need to be cleaned out, when in reality, the problems are largely external. I'd say to just go with companies then, but companies won't do research or work unless it leads to some sort of tangible short-term business. So things like moon/mars are a tough sell, as are telescopes, and support for the space station, exploration and colony setup, etc. Businesses and politicians both tend to think very short term instead of long term.
Oh big time! NASA has become just another bloated, inefficient government bureaucracy. Gone are the days of innovation and daring which put us on the Moon in the first place. Now, companies like SpaceX are the ones doing big and bold thing while NASA sits around with them thumbs up their asses.
As someone who worked as a NASA contractor, the issues are bureaucratic, and largely on the side of the contractors. Bad contracts with bad incentives (Lockheed and Boeing have contracts they can make more money from by causing delays). There's certainly internal management issues on the civil servant side as well. I wouldn't say that lack of talent is an issue, although it could be argued that there is some bloat in the form of unnecessary management structures that inevitably arise in a 60 year old organization.
I'm sure there's plenty of bloat and pork in there, but it's not like you can just go down to Walmart for spare parts. Each manufacturer needs to keep tooling and training and etc to make a handful of parts that no-one else uses made with decades old tech that doesn't exist anymore. Economies of scale also hits HARD here. Any remotely complex piece of equipment has a multimillion dollar maintainance program, but when there are millions of users, the cost can be spread around.
The Apollo Program was THE single most advanced, thorough, and successful thing the mankind has ever done. ALL people who left low Earth orbit returned home alive and healthy! Totally awesome.
Yes, but it was also a titanic gamble. The Apollo missions took insane risks and persevered through the exceptional hard work, rigorous professionalism and brilliance of the people involved. The Apollo ships themselves were as barebones as you can get. It wouldn't have taken much to lose an entire Apollo crew, and Apollo 13 nearly was lost.
@@Cailus3542 Yes. But the mere fact that nothing like the Apollo Program has ever been replicated shows how incredible those results were 50 years ago, in technological stone age. For example, I don't think the actual probability of a safe voyage to the Moon and back has increased dramatically, despite numerous improvements in all areas. The environment out there is still as deadly as it used to be.
@@thinkbank8709 debatable I'd be surprised if they get a functional cargo starship to orbit before 2023. Maybe SN20 could launch before Artemis 1, but even that sounds extremely iffy. And even if that works, and that's a very bif if, perfectly its far from a functional vehicle that can take payloads to orbit.
@@brokensoap1717 It’s looking more and more like the case. SpaceX are planning on putting starship in orbit before the end of the year, and for the most part the starship program has stayed in schedule. SLS on the other hand was supposed to fly for the first time in 2016 and has been delayed 7 times since. It’s also being developed by Boeing who have proven with Starliner they absolutely cannot be trusted to deliver on time. SpaceX seem more energized and eager to get Starship operational as quickly and cheaply as possible. Boeing on the other hand have proven they can only be trust to milk as much money from the project as possible, which is why SLS has so far cost almost $20 billion for mostly repurposed tech from the shuttle era. I have my money on Starship and SpaceX
Bulky, yes, but the Newtsuit-style articulation is leagues ahead when it comes to flexibility in a pressure differential environment. It's a little more difficult with the high pressure being on the "wrong" side of the suit (compared to deep-sea diving), but the constant volume means the user never has to waste energy compressing air just to walk or raise an arm.
Yep.. and if Bozo - oops, Bezos - gets his way, they'll have to climb up and down a 30' ladder multiple times in those suits, sometimes carrying gear and/or samples, without falling and killing themselves. At least Starship, despite being taller, will have an elevator for them to use. MUCH safer!
@@manstonhisk667 - I'm not a fanboi. Some of Elon's ideas are laughable. Hypertube, for instance. But even I can spot the difference between someone driven by a vision of the future, and someone driven by devotion to the bottom line. Who doesn't give a damn if he holds progress up, so long as he gets more money out of it. And besides, as I pointed out, Starship's system is clearly a lot safer than struggling up and down a LONG ladder in a bulky EVA suit.
@@MozTS it's the same reason pot holes never get fixed in cities. Give Unions a blank check and no time line for a state funded job and they never finish it on time or on budget. As for China, nothing the CCP says holds water, especially financial reports.
NASA could learn from what Musk said: "Our engineers' first priority should be to eliminate the need for the component they're working on." The NASA approach often has this backward, with all due respect.
fyi...everything that Space-X is doing has been done successfully before...20+ years ago... well documented, vids starting to show up.... and in essence, Space-X is a multi-billion dollar taxpayer funded training program!
They got the original EMU made for less than half the price they are currently at (when adjusted for inflation). It goes to show the cost of bureaucracy these days, I'm surprised anything gets done at all.
So how did they develop and then use operationally the Apollo spacesuits 52-53 years ago for use in 1969 for the first luna mission, but today we're struggling something fierce?
In Canada you need liquid-cooled underwear for 6 months of the year and liquid-heated underwear for the other 6 months. If they ever get these suits working, maybe I'll mortgage the house and buy a suit.
@@Darenz-cg9zg I have heard about your problems, I bet you find it funny to hear of the Climate Alarmists panicking about a 2 degree warming by the end of the century!
@@Darenz-cg9zg even if its average its still nothing, for there to be very high heat in places it means no warming in others. the warmest it gets in antactica is -12 degrees, so it will still be below freezing. Nothing to fear. Also, it has been discovered that the scientists have not factored in the sun properly, so their models are wrong. If you look at recnet vids on Suspicious Observers chanel they mention it. Some other weather scientists are in the process of suing the IPCC right now
@@utubeape oceans are warming up and tropical storms and hurricanes are getting stronger and more frequent.. Yep nothing to worry about lol climate change is real whether you deny it or not
@@THIS---GUY the effects you mention are to do with the earths magnetic field weakening due to the sun, the jet streams are changing location, this is causing the storms to appear. the magnetic poles are moving too, the south pole is now in the sea around antarctica. This is similar to what happened about 400 years ago and is well recorded in history, we are entering a cooler period. Climate is changing, but it is the sun that is responsible not mankind
Rhetorical question here, and I'm not trying to be a jerk or anything like that. How could they not be anything but the most critical piece of equipment for space missions though? Particularly extra-vehicular activities (EVAs'), which include spacewalks. EMU's are basically the smallest human rated spacecraft. Can't survive in space, or on a planet/planetoid devoid of an earth-like atmosphere, magnetosphere, etc. without one. I totally understand your amazement though. I'm kind of a nerd about this stuff and the amount of engineering and problem solving that goes into something like an EMU never ceases to amaze me. Especially it being created during that time period. Just wow.
Fun fact : in order to be able to move dextrously in a vacuum, EMUs have an atmosphere of 100% oxygen at 30% pressure. In order to not blow up internal organs at such pressures, astronauts MUST perform an hour of 100% oxygen breathing prior to putting the suit on... Every. Time. You see someone EVAing, they had to sit for one hour beforehand, bored out of their minds for a 1/2 hour of activity !
There’s a reason why this design is so old. NASA has already been through all of this and the final brilliant design from Playtex has reached its conclusion. The basic function of a firearm hasn’t changed in 100 years. It reached its conclusion (brass, projectile, powder, cap, etc). New materials, new manufacturing techniques and small changes are fine for the suit, but the reasons for a complete replacement sound flimsy at best imo.
>but the reasons for a complete replacement sound flimsy at best imo. Not really. Advancements in tech have made many old electronics and hardware components obsolete. The design is there but it requires parts so out of date nobody can make them. Thus it makes more sense to design a new suit that might not be much more advanced but can use all the modern components and include a bunch of incremental improvements and compatibilities. Imagine taking a car from 1970 and trying to make it meet modern safety standards. Yeah sure you could make modern components fit and with a lot of work meet the new standards, but it makes much more sense to just design a new car from the ground up that can accept new parts much better.
"We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that challange is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too." JFK sums it up 👍
Used to be that way. Now it's more like "We choose to go to the Moon eventually, at some point, maybe, and do some other things but not many, not because they are easy, but because they are profitable to old space contractors, because that pork is one that we are willing to trade for campaign contributions, one we are unwilling to give up, and one which we intend to give to boeing, and the others, too."
“Yes, you at the back.” “Thanks Bud. Now, call me old fashioned, but if we limit the crew to average height men, we’ll save a billion dollars right there.”
yes but space is a multi-national effort, and average heights vary wildly from country to country. So that's not really an option. Not to mention women exist lol
@@CanyonF Then use average height White people and slightly taller than average Asian people. It's not like their is a shortage of people wanting to be astronauts. Also, these are space suits for U.S. astronauts. Russian cosmonauts and Chinese astronauts can use their own space suits.
@@Minecraftian2345432 why would you use average white height? the US has more than just white people in it, and its been that way before it was even a country
This was a problem during trench warfare in WW1. If trench dug by Guards regiment (tall guys) then Bantam regiments (recruited from short guys once cannon fodder beginning to run out) couldn't shoot out. If trenches dug by Bantams, then Guards heads would stick out. Solution? Either go for slower-to-build large regulation-size trenches with firing steps. Or accept your quick trenches won't be multifunctional and able to accommodate all types of soldier.
That's because the private sector doesn't have a frack load of red tape to go through. Politicians always complain about results not knowing that they are the ones responsible for the slow developments.
@@Predator42ID and because they are leveraging decades of government funded research... LEO isn't groundbreaking anymore... and I'm not seeing any private enterprises jumping at the opportunity to launch autonomous rovers to Mars, probes to Jupiter, robots to asteroids, etc... But they will once there is the economic incentive in place and all the hardest technology problems have been solved. NASA's purpose (as with any large government investment in science and technology) is to fund cutting edge research that does is not economically viable (right now), paving the way for private enterprise.
This goes to show what a fabulous achievement it was in the 60s and 70s to put 12 people on the moon, bring them back, and to rescue the crew the one time it went wrong.
@@silveriorebelo8045 Really. I don't quite know why anyone believes it was fake. I think Moon landing deniers are just trying stir up a debate for fun. From 1968 to 1972 there were 9 trips to the Moon including 6 landings. 24 people went on those flights including 3 who went twice. I never heard of anyone trying to kill them to stop the truth coming out like in Capricorn 1.
It's a very temporary spacecraft that can't operate on its own, but I mean yeah, for a person to survive in space, their suit is going to pass all the tests that a spacecraft must pass.
Sounds to me like it's been a perfect storm of people with no talent for management being put in charge of costly projects, your generic government/private contractor corruption, and run of the mill incompetence. It should not cost this much, or take this much time to build an update to 50 year old tech.
For crying out loud... they invented, tested, and implemented literally EVERYTHING in less than 10 years in the sixties!! Why the eff is everyone dragging their feet today? (cough) (diversity and affirmative action hires)
Congress changes every couple of years, and changes what they want Nasa to do along with messing with their budget constantly. The US government is the perfect story for never getting anything done. They only got stuff done before because they were trying to show up their rivals in the USSR, without that motivation they barely want to give NASA two wooden nickels to rub together.
@@psygn0sis First off, you're an idiot if you think diversity or affirmative action have anything to do with it. Secondly, the moon is an incredibly hostile and unique environment that we didn't really understand in the 1960s. The problem of lunar dust is one that forces extremely difficult engineering challenges onto the designers of these suits, because they need to survive ongoing lunar habitation, not just a few hours of moonwalks. By the end of the original Apollo 13 flights, those space suits were nearing failure due to wear and tear from moondust. The dust cannot be allowed into a habitable environment due to being a breathing hazard and an electrical hazard, it can't be cleaned off the suits easily without causing additional wear. If any of it were easy or doable by a single contractor, they would already have done it. Turns out engineering is hard, and laypeople like you have no concept of how safety standards have changed in the last 60 years or how our space program has been forced to evolve due to budget cuts and loss of manufacturers.
@@psygn0sis The habit of American contractors to drag their feet for extra cash is not related to the diversity of their hires. It's not the minorities ruining your great aerospace industry, it's the executive class of that industry!
Very interesting, I've always been curious about these Space Suits, I suppose a lot of young people won't care about them, however, on July-20-1969 my best friend and I watched the Moon landing on television, I was 11 years old and remember it vividly, hopefully I'll be around for the next one, Thanks for Sharing, Good Day.
They are far from simple, though. That's always been one of the struggles. In sci fi people put space suits on and off like a set of coveralls, but in real life it takes forever and involves lots of moving parts, all very expensive and some of which are custom made for each user.
@@davidanttila9305 Those suits were made for short missions, they had poor flexibility, they were inconvenient to put on, etc etc. They worked for the Apollo missions, which were basically pathfinders, but they aren't out to just repeat what was done before.
You're right, the simple solution is the best solution. Which is why we should stop using those old suits, and create new suits that are easier to make and operate.
I think a neat topic to cover one day would be the Sofia flying telescope. A giant inferred telescope on the side of a 747. I appreciate the great content you produce. You've brought numerous topics to my attention that I've never heard of before. Always a great job, Paul.
At the KSC Museum there's an exhibit on spacesuit design evolution which is fascinating. I'd had no idea NASA had originally planned on using "hard" (armored) spacesuits instead of the "soft" designs ultimately used.
All the seamstresses on the Apollo suits were women. Gloves, boots, all the layers put together, inspected and tested rigorously. Skylab's shield that saved the station, the thermal blankets in the shuttle, also sewn and mission critical.
Ugh... it's bittersweet to see these Shuttle-era EMUs still in use. My job was to extend their lifespans from 15 to 25 years to support ISS assenbly... 25 years ago. I've moved on from NASA but I'm still passionate about EMUs. I'm glad to see their are still the workhorse of EVA but at the same time, I know they were developed in the late 70s. I think if I were an astronaut on EVA, I'd want something newer than 40 years old.
The original idea was that every state in the Union could say they had contributed to the Space Program, lending a sense of pride and unity when the Apollo program was underway. As Mom’s Spaghetti just pointed out, though, it was more to do with pork-barrelling from members of Congress.
Most aerospace companies don't make every single small component so they hire subcontractors that make these parts to provide them The fact that the suit requires parts from 27 subcontractors is anything but surprising, not sure why everyone is focusing on something so trivial
It's political. In order to get enough congressmen and senators to approve NASA's budget, they have to get some of the manufacturing money going to their state.
There are 50 states, and each state's congressmen want a piece of the pie. That's why NASA has centers in so many states instead of just putting it all at Cape Canaveral where it belongs.
Sadly, despite the development, there are very few suit concepts that can handle the lunar dust, which, for long term habitation, are probably the largest threat. A quick google will tell you how dangerous the dust actually is.
@@juliocamacho8354 The lunar dust was very abrasive and it stuck to everything so the astronauts boots and gloves were covered in it and it slowly ate away at the outer part of the suit which wasn't a big problem because they only stayed for about 3 days but if you were to stay longer with the same suit you would run into problems.
@@whiterottenrabbit Because people refusing to do things for themselves is not something that should be encouraged. The ones who require spoon feeding are the ones who do the least thinking. Do it yourself, be more than useless.
I wonder how what we see as the latest design - with a big sliding joint around the waist, and two similar joints at the top of each leg, will do with the lunar dust.
Hear me out, right? Remote-controlled humanoid drones. Think VR. They can stay inside their modules and do all of the work they need to with normal mobility.
I’d hate for that to be their sole means of exploration, but it would be PHENOMENAL for exploring lunar lava tubes! They could probably get Boston Dynamics onboard
As a business owner and tax payer, I am always shocked at how the governments of the world prove to completely disregard how hard we have to work for the dollars they piss away with no regard.
@@koolmckool7039 They said he couldn't put a rocket in orbit. Then they said he wouldn't be able to land one. Then they said he wouldn't be able to land on on a ship... you notice a pattern?? I think the hard work is already done.
@@Watchyourselvez You missed my point. To Russians, life is more expendable than here in the US. They're willing to accept more risks to the "greater good". Plus, they don't have a very good safety infrastructure. Remember, the Kursk submarine disaster?
@@TucsonDude If your economy collapsed like theirs did you would see the same thing happen to your subs as did happen with Kursk. Remember USS Thresher?
@@Watchyourselvez OK. I worked most of my life with the DoD and that was our perception. If you gave the Russians a billion dollars to build an aircraft, they'd spend it all on a top performance aircraft without regard for adequate training, parts availability, safety features, rescue equipment, etc. Am I wrong?
I know it is all about the money, but it seemed like NASA was able to get things done faster back in the 60's! Still waiting for the SLS to make its initial flight - whenever THAT will be!
Interesting problem to have, though with how tightly Congress is keeping their hands on the purse, it was unlikely they were going to make 2024 either way.
This is what happens when you employ 27 different companies to make a suit. Ridiculously inefficient. I hope SpaceX makes good on their offer to make their own suits
their own suit also sux, they make astronaut immobile during decontamination, which didn't happen in other suits. It have many problem because it made not by engineering, but by designers at first.
sounds like it would be easier to just recreate the apollo suits with re-sourced materials... but I guess they want to be able to do yoga stretches on the moon
One look at the virtual reality simulation stuff they were doing in the video explains why the suit is late. They are messing around making it as complex as possible, using methods that employ as many people as possible. Its a big make-work scheme, instead of solving practical problems with practical solutions they are messing around with virtual reality, endlessly trying to achieve perfection without real life iteration, requiring computer programmers and desk jockeys that can't do stuff like use a lathe. You can guarantee every problem needs a committee meeting.
@@Obvsaninternetexpert At some point the belief that SpaceX can do everything better, faster, cheaper is going to be exposed as nonsense. People used to think NASA was perfect, until people died. Once that halo gets tarnished the cynics will turn on SpaceX same as every other fallen hero.
@@jacksons1010 I think it’s company’s like them that make people realise nasa is a joke, and it always was, not the engineers, the bureaucrats making sure everything is as complicated and expensive as possible to justify needing more money, killing as many people as they like with zero consequences. Those same engineers given instructions to do things simply and cheaply for tax payers and we would have been on Mars by now
@@Obvsaninternetexpert You don't get taxpayer money without oversight, and oversight means bureaucracy. That's the sad reality. No bucks, no Buck Rogers. SpaceX only exists because of NASA contracts. Do away with government involvement and there is no SpaceX. All the talk of going to Mars still comes back to the will of the American people to fund it, and that funding has been lacking since Apollo. Every election brings a shift in priorities and that's what has held back NASA - and may well be the fate of Artemis as well. It will cost more and take longer than expected even with SpaceX - and people will be asking questions about where the money went. Is moon lander money funding the moon lander...or will it be used to develop Starship? If the moon lander is not done on time, does NASA give SpaceX more money or do the taxpayers pull out the rug and Artemis gets cancelled like so many other big-ticket programs?
@@jacksons1010 I don’t disagree ... nasa funding private space companies ... who are all using the same engineers who would otherwise be working at nasa... just seem to achieve so much more for the money .... sls is a prime example... Will nasa find it more..... 50/50... depends who’s in power at the time an how much America think they need some positive spin Will spacex be able to fund it themselves .... maybe... that company is gonna be worth a fortune soon
NASA loves the engineering - get the best regardless of cost - like saying we need a new earth to orbit system and doing the whole space shuttle thing instead of using and extending the working Saturn rocket. What a detour that was!
What if it’s broke? We walked on the moon and learned that those suits won’t hold up to sustained use. The Artemis mission is very different from Apollo; old and broke won’t cut it.
They must have been designing Mars suits, which should be able to work on the moon just fine. Elon mentioned on Twitter that they could ‘assist’ NASA with the suit problem if need be.
doubtful. Considering how big a blabbermouth Elon himself is, we'd have known about it. In fact i doubt SpaceX or any of Musk's other business ventures is currently working on anything for starship applications other then starship itself.
@@OnionChoppingNinja I don't know how you see Elon's enterprises but if you ask me, its all about engineering. They don't build a car or a rocket or a brain interface, they engineer it! So if someone could make a reliable space suit in 2 years, it would be Elon Enterprises. :-)
@@se_mat like making the Hyperloop work? Elon known how to hype things up...sometimes too much, even before his Engineer team figure out, how to make the thing work.
Space suits were necessary in the past due to size and weight constraints. Since NASA has chosen the Starship for moon landings, use a sealed rover and no expensive, fragile, prebeathing, stumbling, ladder climbing, personal sized, expensive suit is needed. Moon _walks_ are archaic from a time when people were the best robots we had, that day has past. Rovers are the next thing (work pods for space stations) with full pressure air, a bathroom, food, solar flare protection. Shielded arms that people can temporarily put their arms in to pick things up or better yet manipulators they can control can do anything a suited human can do. The only time people should walk on the surface of another planet is inside of a habitat.
The new suits look more like armor then spacesuits. Although this could be an advantage, a harder suit could be ran at a higher pressure and avoid the risk of decompression sickness (the bends).
Why does NASA have to reinvent the wheel every time it does something. NASA should take a good long look at how SpaceX does things. Maybe thay could learn a thing or two.
Yeah well let's instead focus on how the army spends 740 billion PER YEAR to achieve almost absolutely nothing useful. They are incredibly wasteful. That's 740 thousand million per year.
Thanks Morning Brew for my daily news perk - sign up for free here cen.yt/mbcuriousdroid2
Would you consider adding more resolutions to your content quality? a 1440p60 and a 4K option would be great.
at 2.56 please explain how that is possible? fake video? if anyone knows i would think it's you..
and no i'm not a space denier or anything like that, just curious..
Mit is developing a suit fyi ;)
news.mit.edu/2014/second-skin-spacesuits-0918
These 'spacesuits' should be called "EVA suits", right?
Sometimes they are simply called "EV suits"
The problem is the philosophy of design. They're acting like it has to be designed 100% perfect the first time. The problem with that is that no one is that smart, and there's going to be some flaw that you did not anticipate, and that's going to be the source the failure. So instead of spending billions trying to perfectly engineer at the first time spend tens of thousands of dollars to make one, tested, find out where it fails, then it'll rively repeat until you have a good design. Then you can spend a few million dollars on further refinements, and then continue testing.
This is what NASA has been doing for decade, they instead of iterative Lee testing, they simply try to design everything perfect the first time in the problem is there will always be a flaw or mistake or misunderstood principal that somebody missed. And if you build your entire device on an assumption that incorrect then you just made a massive failure.
Iterative Design & Testing prototyping is the way to go.
NASA just needs to add another couple of dozen more contractors and I am sure it will be ready by 2050.
*2100
"A couple of dozen more" ? why stop there? Divide the task list by the number of contractors and project time can be shortened in a linear manner by simply increasing the contractor count.
This is taken from NASA's "Guide to Project Management".
As long as Boeing isn't one of the contractors.
@@kokomo9764 Yes they screwed 3 other projects and cost the LIVES other 400 people!!!!!!!!
Yes, but by doing so it is training up an industry of contractors and high-tech workers who can take their very unique skillset and use it to design future human-spaceflight-related equipment.
One of NASA's main purposes is to try out different designs and integrate expensive technologies that private companies simply cannot afford to do.
Constantly trying to compare NASA to a private company is apples and oranges. They both have completely different mandates.
On one hand you have a government organization whose mission is to use taxpayer dollars help develop the space industry and develop the infrastructure and knowledge base that is too expensive and too risky for a private company to do by itself. A private company, on the other hand, is the end user of that taxpayer-funded research and development costs. NASA makes it possible for private companies to nucleate around the industry.
27 contractors? That's one way to make the simplest things complicated.
Almost all aerospace projects have tons of subcontractors
The fact that space reporters on Twitter choose to focus on unimportant details as this to blame expected development delays is frankly frustrating
Man, you're not kidding. Did they learn nothing from Apollo 13?!
@@brokensoap1717 Yes, and such arrangements is what caused Boeing's downturn.
Ben Rich, head of Skunk Works put it this way: The contract to build a warship in 1800 was three pages long. The contract to turn that same ship into a museum was three hundred pages long, not including subcontractors. There was even a full chapter of legalese on how they would paint the ship.
@@samsonsoturian6013 I'm not just talking about Boeing.
Literally all aerospace projects work like this because they pretty much have to.
Complex projects require thousands of components one company can't make by itself
@@brokensoap1717 yea, its kinda hard to imagine that any one company has the skill set for all the diverse technologies required in a space suit. If they were building a suit everyday for mass market, sure, then you’ll eventually get one space suit company. Or maybe several.
I worked at ILC for 11 years designing gloves and now on the Artemis suit and found your video very accurate and am continually amazed at the footage you are able to mine for your vids.
Close to the Johnson space center at NASA, Clear lake. Houston Texas ? If so you probably worked with my mother . She went to work at Rockwell International. Seamstress on space suites for the space shuttle.
You might know the Loyds then, Hayden their son works there now too.
2:44 FAKE
NASA: what’s taking so long?
27 contractors: we can’t find the 10mm
Nobody can. 13mm is also a runner
Haha 🤣!
@Maryo_Nicle7 Space X's suit isn't resistant to micro space debris has no life support apparatus other than a pressurizer. The suits can't even handle radiation from the sun. The reason? The suits were never designed for such missions.
@Maryo_Nicle7 I was thinking the very same thing!!!
@@bennichols561 yup.
An interesting issue with the next gen suits I heard: Moondust is as sharp as glass. The Apollo suits were only used for a few hours, but were almost shredded by the end. The Artemis suits will be used for weeks; their durability needs to be upgraded massively.
That's why I'm surprised that they haven't ditched the idea of walking on the moon and gone with enclosed vehicles instead. I guess it's too early to build a tunnel from a lander to a rover.
@@kentslocum there are various ways to avoid the lunar dust, for example by charging the suit electromagnetically so that it repells the dust. Even tho this exact concept might not be used, some other Form of protection is used and im sure NASA is well aware of the danger
@tilllukasvonlupke7800 they are aware of the danger. Dust is the #1 thing slowing down the suits.
Maybe they can just borrow the old ones from the Smithsonian…
Yeah, the went on the moon and now cannot build a spacesuit. Yeah. Sure
@@bzpwhx Do one you muppet
@@bzpwhx who said they can't? New requirements demands new technology which must be proved
@@gcisbani I agree, still that's not the only issue they are facing from the lunar landing. Starting from radiations to cpu tech, but overall yeah we can safely assume that they are not hiding anything....
@@nguyendailam6703 I'm a space engineer dumbass continue to play with your PlayStation
RIP Dr. Olson of Georgia Institute of Technology - one of the designers of shuttle space suit.
F
I really fail to understand how the spacesuit development threatens to delay the project when the launch vehicle has yet to fly and an all-new lunar lander hasn't even been fully designed yet!
Just that we know now that the suit is delayed. Likely the lunar lander will be delayed as well but we don’t know it yet. So maybe they will sync up anyways.
@@TheBooban There is no way a brand new lunar landing spacecraft will be designed, built, tested and ready to fly by 2024. That deadline, changed for no reason other than a politician's ego, was never going to be met anyway!
@@markmaz56 You say that, but Obama and even G.W Bush talked about space programs in the exact same way. Pretending it is somehow Trump's fault for wanting to kick the project back into proper development is just dumb. The last four presidents wanted the exact same.
@@PHeMoX Previous administrations and NASA set a 2028 target for a lunar landing. Consequently, all funding was based on this timeline. Trump changed it to 2024, for no other reason than his belief he would still be in office and take all the glory, but the funding didn't change to reflect this VASTLY accelerated deadline. There is NO ONE who knows anything about space who considered the 2024 deadline to be "proper development!"
@Sig Bauer Corrected to 2024.
One problem that engineers are trying to tackle: lunar regolith ("dust") was found to be a much more serious environmental factor than expected during the Apollo missions. When it got into seals on airlocks and space suits, it created leaks. It is about as healthy when inhaled as asbestos...so the new ones are being designed with the philosophy that humans shall never come into direct contact with the regolith, and that of course complicates things. A lot.
If lunar regolith becomes a big enough problem during the Artemis missions, they might abandon the idea of a permanent lunar outpost entirely. Mars might be further away (MUCH further), but at least it's not quite as hostile. Well, except for the dust storms. And radiation hazard, since Mars has no appreciable magnetosphere.
...Exploring space is bloody difficult.
@@Cailus3542 Martian soil isn't much better. It contains copious amounts of perchlorates, which are used to make pesticides here on Earth. I don't know if it has been examined for abrasiveness, but if it's as abrasive as lunar regolith, it's likely to be just as problematic 🤔
Am I the only one that considers the "old" suit to look more modern and way more comfortable than the future suit?
I agree...body position in the new suit looked unnatural.
The new suit provides more mobility with arms and legs. In the old suit that went to the moon the astronauts had to hop around. Now they are able to normally walk. And it is much safer and stable if you fall. But i agree, the old suit looks way more modern.
Im sure the new suit will be more comfortable and capable, but damn if its not ugly as hell. Old suits looked way better. Im sure if SpaceX gets into the suit game they'll work on the looks.
Yeah? A bit of a fashion over function type of guy, huh?
@@dnomyarnostaw They seem to have encountered issues with both..
Makes you wonder how anything ever gets done at all.
Slowly it gets done as everyone still shows up to work and does their jobs.
There's a similar story with the Pentagon where there are so many departments that no one can keep track of them all. A bunch of briefings that could just be an email since they don't allow questions, only these briefings are on the other side of a building the size of a small town. The unclassified parts of the building have neither cell service nor wifi in spite both being needed and allowed. An abundance of superfluous offices exist that must approve certain things and file reports but one wonders why the office was created in the first place. Like the Leathality Branch, or an Air Force liaison office to army R&D.
It's clear with nasa the politics involved ends up costing 10 or 20 times more to solve a problem than private companies like space x.
Recent history has proven nothing gets done without SpaceX
@@TheBooban that shows the limits of your reading
The problem is the philosophy of design. They're acting like it has to be designed 100% perfect the first time. The problem with that is that no one is that smart, and there's going to be some flaw that you did not anticipate, and that's going to be the source the failure. So instead of spending billions trying to perfectly engineer at the first time spend tens of thousands of dollars to make one, tested, find out where it fails, then it'll rively repeat until you have a good design. Then you can spend a few million dollars on further refinements, and then continue testing.
This is what NASA has been doing for decade, they instead of iterative Lee testing, they simply try to design everything perfect the first time in the problem is there will always be a flaw or mistake or misunderstood principal that somebody missed. And if you build your entire device on an assumption that incorrect then you just made a massive failure.
Iterative Design & Testing prototyping is the way to go.
1960's: "We've never done this before. Let's make it happen!"
2020's: "This is too hard... And we can't possibly meet that deadline."
1960’s: “We have almost 50 billion dollars to work with. Let’s do it!”
2020’s: “We barely have 20 billion to land on the moon and do everything else. How are we going to do this”
It was a close run thing in the 60s too. Part of the problem is that aside from advanced prototypes NASA hasn't ordered new suits for over a generation so there's not the same level of infrastructure and expertise. The Russian Orlan suits by comparison are replaced every few years.
I think the Orion flight suit is pretty much ready to go, being a much less ambitious modification of existing designs and it is intended to function during EVA with an umbilical much like the Gemini suits or the modified Apollo suits used for Skylab. So if all else fails they've got that for emergency EVAs.
If you look at what our universities are teaching, what do you expect...sad.
@@timaz1066 the universities are better than ever.
"If you've ever worn a stiff pair of gloves..."
OJ Simpson: 👀👀👀
I wonder how the search for the real killer is going these days.
if the gloves are too short, you must abort
LOL this comment made my day
@@alexroselle If the gloves don't fit, you must aquit
@@tauceti8341 Come one man, really? :)
this just makes respect the old generation more, how they made and figured everything out long ago
They didn't.. It's fake everything..
@@meljahic3624 even space walks?
Yep, old stuff is fascinating
@@meljahic3624 the only thing fake is you
@@meljahic3624 feel free to provide your evidence for this or just shut up and stop embarrassing your parents
In addition to the two basic kinds of EVA spacesuit covered here, there are also IVA suits. IVA suits are only used for the riskier parts of the flight, and are only meant to keep the astronaut alive if the spacecraft has a leak
Is that what Musk is using for his manned launches now?
@@Caseytify For the riskier parts yes, the rest of the time the DragonV2 is a shirt and sleeves environment like the ISS
@@Caseytify Musk space suit can pressurize, but it needs the Crew Dragon capsule to provide the life support system for the astronauts to survive. The space suits that go on the moon and do space walks need to carry their own life support system so the suits are like a mini space ship.
So then what is the point if the EVA then?
Can you do a video on the Orlan suit and maybe the differences with the US suit?
I wish the video actually explained WHY it's taking so long to replace the EMU.
Some questions:
1. Why has NASA been using the same design for decades? Reliability? Priorities for other r&d?
2. Why is the xEMU taking so long to complete its development? Cost? Technical difficulties?
Why not more incremental design updates?
He did mention cost cutting. NASA gets its yearly budget from Congress and Congress changes every 2 years. It must be frustrating as heck for NASA.
Basically, every government wants a different thing from Nasa, so they're always updating other things. Besides the Pandemic
It's NASA, that the real reason for the delays. The last 10 years is been all about securing jobs by various state officals and not about getting on to do the jobs that are needed. Look how far SpaceX has come in the last 10 years then look at how long it's taking NASA for the SLS/Artemis programs. There is no drive in NASA to achieve anything in Manned Flight. I know the federal funding has been short but again look at SpaceX doing more for less dollars
1. It works well enough for the ISS, and has been up there the whole time.
2. Mismanagement and politics. You see they refuse to copy old designs because they weren't specifically built for girl anatomy and don't have fancy computers hooked up. Also, you see they have 27 contractors, which I don't know why some governments and corporation keep doing that, because it makes the simplest things complicated. If one group changes something, then it must be approved by all the others. Which means if the change effects anyone else several departments will also submit their own changes. Repeat. Also since no one group is married to the project there's no incentive to finish on time or on budget.
"OK guys, we will start with a refrigerator...."
@SnoopyDoo I'm curious what's it like to be tipsy in microgravity?
The reason they're unable to "replace" the old spacesuits is because they never went to moon so they haven't been used on moon, so basically they're developing a real one that works from scratch.
If the suits were good enough for the Apollo program then why don't they just use the same designs but with 21st century materials?????.
Not very durable on the moon, the first moon suit's layers hot rather worn-down
Is it me or does there need to be a cleaning house at NASA who clearly isn't up to the next gen demands of a return to proper space travel. Both in terms of personnel and the governance structures which clearly need to be significantly improved.
Seriously. They're just CRAAWWWLLINNNGG.
NASA should stick to what they're good at: working with JPL and others to develop technologies and satellites.
How to fix NASA in three easy steps.
1. Fire all diversity and affirmative action hires
2. Focus on the mission of space exploration, not 'climate change' or 'equity'
3. Cut the bureaucracy by 75% across the board, starting with 'diversity and inclusion' programs
Once the rot has been cut out, NASA should be back on track. Although I'm not sure it matters at this point, as the country is more than likely to collapse in the next five years.
It's often less about NASA, and more about the politics. Sometimes, they can't change contracts because some senator has promised XYZ to some contractor and won't fund changes, or else some other committee gets all fickle about what they think they should pay for vs what they won't. The whole space shuttle mess was almost 100% about politics, for example.
And yes, add that to the typical government agency overhead and attitude, and you get a lot of things like this.
It's easy to point to NASA, though, and say they need to be cleaned out, when in reality, the problems are largely external. I'd say to just go with companies then, but companies won't do research or work unless it leads to some sort of tangible short-term business. So things like moon/mars are a tough sell, as are telescopes, and support for the space station, exploration and colony setup, etc. Businesses and politicians both tend to think very short term instead of long term.
Oh big time! NASA has become just another bloated, inefficient government bureaucracy. Gone are the days of innovation and daring which put us on the Moon in the first place. Now, companies like SpaceX are the ones doing big and bold thing while NASA sits around with them thumbs up their asses.
As someone who worked as a NASA contractor, the issues are bureaucratic, and largely on the side of the contractors. Bad contracts with bad incentives (Lockheed and Boeing have contracts they can make more money from by causing delays). There's certainly internal management issues on the civil servant side as well. I wouldn't say that lack of talent is an issue, although it could be argued that there is some bloat in the form of unnecessary management structures that inevitably arise in a 60 year old organization.
$150,000,000 per year to "service" the 11 PLSS's?
When it comes to our tax money, people sure love to pad the bill a bit.
Looks at it...
Was it working last time we checked... Yep!
Has anyone used it.... Nope!
Alright, $150 million, please.
Must include launch costs to get service parts to space...
thank you.
I'm sure there's plenty of bloat and pork in there, but it's not like you can just go down to Walmart for spare parts. Each manufacturer needs to keep tooling and training and etc to make a handful of parts that no-one else uses made with decades old tech that doesn't exist anymore. Economies of scale also hits HARD here. Any remotely complex piece of equipment has a multimillion dollar maintainance program, but when there are millions of users, the cost can be spread around.
I am sure the fact that most of the maintenance has to be done on the ISS, with parts and suits launched and returned, adds just a bit to that cost.
Ductape is the solution, you can definately make spacesuits from that stuff
Astronaut's secret weapon - duct tape.
There was actually an interesting video, I think by Scott Manley, about the practicality of improvising a space suit out of duct tape.
Have you seen the end of season 2 on 'For all Mankind' ?
Especially the Gorilla kind. That shit's ridiculous!
The Apollo Program was THE single most advanced, thorough, and successful thing the mankind has ever done. ALL people who left low Earth orbit returned home alive and healthy! Totally awesome.
Yes, but it was also a titanic gamble. The Apollo missions took insane risks and persevered through the exceptional hard work, rigorous professionalism and brilliance of the people involved. The Apollo ships themselves were as barebones as you can get. It wouldn't have taken much to lose an entire Apollo crew, and Apollo 13 nearly was lost.
@@Cailus3542 Yes. But the mere fact that nothing like the Apollo Program has ever been replicated shows how incredible those results were 50 years ago, in technological stone age. For example, I don't think the actual probability of a safe voyage to the Moon and back has increased dramatically, despite numerous improvements in all areas. The environment out there is still as deadly as it used to be.
This is awesome we are getting a CD vid every week whoop whoop.
Are you a juggalo that enjoys science? That's a unique combo if so. Good for you!
Fascinating.
Let's be honest though, these suits will be ready before SLS...
SLS is fully stacked in the VAB, due to launch roughly 4 months from now
Even the suit delays pale in comparison to the delays HLS has/will have
Cause none of them would be ready by 2030. Starship will be ready before SLS.
@@thinkbank8709 debatable
I'd be surprised if they get a functional cargo starship to orbit before 2023.
Maybe SN20 could launch before Artemis 1, but even that sounds extremely iffy.
And even if that works, and that's a very bif if, perfectly its far from a functional vehicle that can take payloads to orbit.
SpaceX will build a hotel on the moon complete with a garage full of moon Teslas so that NASA will have it easy when they finally get to the moon.
@@brokensoap1717 It’s looking more and more like the case. SpaceX are planning on putting starship in orbit before the end of the year, and for the most part the starship program has stayed in schedule.
SLS on the other hand was supposed to fly for the first time in 2016 and has been delayed 7 times since. It’s also being developed by Boeing who have proven with Starliner they absolutely cannot be trusted to deliver on time.
SpaceX seem more energized and eager to get Starship operational as quickly and cheaply as possible. Boeing on the other hand have proven they can only be trust to milk as much money from the project as possible, which is why SLS has so far cost almost $20 billion for mostly repurposed tech from the shuttle era.
I have my money on Starship and SpaceX
The new hard shell suit looks more awkward & bulky than the original one.
Bulky, yes, but the Newtsuit-style articulation is leagues ahead when it comes to flexibility in a pressure differential environment. It's a little more difficult with the high pressure being on the "wrong" side of the suit (compared to deep-sea diving), but the constant volume means the user never has to waste energy compressing air just to walk or raise an arm.
Yep.. and if Bozo - oops, Bezos - gets his way, they'll have to climb up and down a 30' ladder multiple times in those suits, sometimes carrying gear and/or samples, without falling and killing themselves. At least Starship, despite being taller, will have an elevator for them to use. MUCH safer!
@@Garryck-1 you Elon fan boys are a cult. Why are you taking sides in a dick measuring contest between billionaires?
@@manstonhisk667 why aren't we allowed to have opinions on space hardware? Just because they're expensive?
@@manstonhisk667 - I'm not a fanboi. Some of Elon's ideas are laughable. Hypertube, for instance. But even I can spot the difference between someone driven by a vision of the future, and someone driven by devotion to the bottom line. Who doesn't give a damn if he holds progress up, so long as he gets more money out of it. And besides, as I pointed out, Starship's system is clearly a lot safer than struggling up and down a LONG ladder in a bulky EVA suit.
in the public sector, why get something done on time when you can take four times longer and charge ten times more?
yeah that's sad but true especially when you look at nasa's past achievements, nasa are becoming a joke.
Private contractors milking the cash cow.
@@alanargent5422 If government is the only customer, "private" is hardly the right word
Strange china doesn’t have this problem.
Maybe military contractors ripping off the public sector is the real problem
@@MozTS it's the same reason pot holes never get fixed in cities. Give Unions a blank check and no time line for a state funded job and they never finish it on time or on budget.
As for China, nothing the CCP says holds water, especially financial reports.
"Fortunatelly", Jeff Bezos is investing a lot of money and effort to delay the Artemis program, so they may still make it in time.
NASA: We need a spacesuit for Artemis
Blue Origin: Artemis suit? You got it!
He wants to do it himself, not delay the program.
By stopping SpaceX, who have offered to create a suit themselves within the allotted time.
@@dansands8140 the program is delayed until the suit is settled.
@@samsonsoturian6013 That's alright, SpaceX will just go to the moon without NASA.
NASA could learn from what Musk said: "Our engineers' first priority should be to eliminate the need for the component they're working on." The NASA approach often has this backward, with all due respect.
Musk don't have congress men/women forcing him to hire contractors from their states.
fyi...everything that Space-X is doing has been done successfully before...20+ years ago... well documented, vids starting to show up.... and in essence, Space-X is a multi-billion dollar taxpayer funded training program!
@@chpsilva don't bet on that!
9:02 The ASAP recommends to replace the suits ASAP, what a surprise ;)
I chuckled
They got the original EMU made for less than half the price they are currently at (when adjusted for inflation). It goes to show the cost of bureaucracy these days, I'm surprised anything gets done at all.
Bureaucracy or increased safety requirements? A 1970s car is much less safe than a modern one.
What do you call a horse designed by a committee? A camel.
So how did they develop and then use operationally the Apollo spacesuits 52-53 years ago for use in 1969 for the first luna mission, but today we're struggling something fierce?
Everyone : let's go to the moon!!
NASA: but I've got nothing to wear if we go there
I need liquid-cooled underwear for eight months per year where I live.
In Canada you need liquid-cooled underwear for 6 months of the year and liquid-heated underwear for the other 6 months. If they ever get these suits working, maybe I'll mortgage the house and buy a suit.
@@Darenz-cg9zg I have heard about your problems, I bet you find it funny to hear of the Climate Alarmists panicking about a 2 degree warming by the end of the century!
@@Darenz-cg9zg even if its average its still nothing, for there to be very high heat in places it means no warming in others. the warmest it gets in antactica is -12 degrees, so it will still be below freezing. Nothing to fear.
Also, it has been discovered that the scientists have not factored in the sun properly, so their models are wrong.
If you look at recnet vids on Suspicious Observers chanel they mention it.
Some other weather scientists are in the process of suing the IPCC right now
@@utubeape oceans are warming up and tropical storms and hurricanes are getting stronger and more frequent.. Yep nothing to worry about lol climate change is real whether you deny it or not
@@THIS---GUY the effects you mention are to do with the earths magnetic field weakening due to the sun, the jet streams are changing location, this is causing the storms to appear. the magnetic poles are moving too, the south pole is now in the sea around antarctica. This is similar to what happened about 400 years ago and is well recorded in history, we are entering a cooler period. Climate is changing, but it is the sun that is responsible not mankind
Thank you Paul I enjoyed this very much. You are producing high quality any time.
Thank you. I have always been interested in those space suits. However, I did not know they were so critical for space missions.
Rhetorical question here, and I'm not trying to be a jerk or anything like that. How could they not be anything but the most critical piece of equipment for space missions though? Particularly extra-vehicular activities (EVAs'), which include spacewalks. EMU's are basically the smallest human rated spacecraft. Can't survive in space, or on a planet/planetoid devoid of an earth-like atmosphere, magnetosphere, etc. without one. I totally understand your amazement though. I'm kind of a nerd about this stuff and the amount of engineering and problem solving that goes into something like an EMU never ceases to amaze me. Especially it being created during that time period. Just wow.
@@xenophagia Because most space missions including MARS missions do not require a person.
Fun fact : in order to be able to move dextrously in a vacuum, EMUs have an atmosphere of 100% oxygen at 30% pressure. In order to not blow up internal organs at such pressures, astronauts MUST perform an hour of 100% oxygen breathing prior to putting the suit on...
Every. Time. You see someone EVAing, they had to sit for one hour beforehand, bored out of their minds for a 1/2 hour of activity !
Well, they could have watched Curious Droid videos, surely? That would have passed the time. And maybe given the ISS crews some shirt ideas.
Great vid! I always thought the suits were almost as impressive as the spacecraft.
Oh trust me I’ve been subscribed for a few years because of your amazing content. I gave you a thumbs up though.
@@colinsouthern So you subscribed and unsubscribed? ;-p
There’s a reason why this design is so old. NASA has already been through all of this and the final brilliant design from Playtex has reached its conclusion. The basic function of a firearm hasn’t changed in 100 years. It reached its conclusion (brass, projectile, powder, cap, etc). New materials, new manufacturing techniques and small changes are fine for the suit, but the reasons for a complete replacement sound flimsy at best imo.
>but the reasons for a complete replacement sound flimsy at best imo.
Not really. Advancements in tech have made many old electronics and hardware components obsolete. The design is there but it requires parts so out of date nobody can make them. Thus it makes more sense to design a new suit that might not be much more advanced but can use all the modern components and include a bunch of incremental improvements and compatibilities. Imagine taking a car from 1970 and trying to make it meet modern safety standards. Yeah sure you could make modern components fit and with a lot of work meet the new standards, but it makes much more sense to just design a new car from the ground up that can accept new parts much better.
"We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that challange is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too." JFK sums it up 👍
Used to be that way. Now it's more like "We choose to go to the Moon eventually, at some point, maybe, and do some other things but not many, not because they are easy, but because they are profitable to old space contractors, because that pork is one that we are willing to trade for campaign contributions, one we are unwilling to give up, and one which we intend to give to boeing, and the others, too."
Super fascinating!
After watching any video of yours Curious Droid, i feel a bit smarter. Thanks!
“Yes, you at the back.”
“Thanks Bud. Now, call me old fashioned, but if we limit the crew to average height men, we’ll save a billion dollars right there.”
yes but space is a multi-national effort, and average heights vary wildly from country to country. So that's not really an option. Not to mention women exist lol
@@CanyonF just use tall women, duh.
@@CanyonF Then use average height White people and slightly taller than average Asian people. It's not like their is a shortage of people wanting to be astronauts. Also, these are space suits for U.S. astronauts. Russian cosmonauts and Chinese astronauts can use their own space suits.
@@Minecraftian2345432 why would you use average white height? the US has more than just white people in it, and its been that way before it was even a country
This was a problem during trench warfare in WW1. If trench dug by Guards regiment (tall guys) then Bantam regiments (recruited from short guys once cannon fodder beginning to run out) couldn't shoot out. If trenches dug by Bantams, then Guards heads would stick out.
Solution? Either go for slower-to-build large regulation-size trenches with firing steps. Or accept your quick trenches won't be multifunctional and able to accommodate all types of soldier.
Unfortunately with the commercial programs running so fast NASA looks pathetically slow.
That's because the private sector doesn't have a frack load of red tape to go through. Politicians always complain about results not knowing that they are the ones responsible for the slow developments.
@@Predator42ID and because they are leveraging decades of government funded research... LEO isn't groundbreaking anymore... and I'm not seeing any private enterprises jumping at the opportunity to launch autonomous rovers to Mars, probes to Jupiter, robots to asteroids, etc... But they will once there is the economic incentive in place and all the hardest technology problems have been solved. NASA's purpose (as with any large government investment in science and technology) is to fund cutting edge research that does is not economically viable (right now), paving the way for private enterprise.
@@u0000-u2x I feel that suits should no longer be cutting edge and should of been incrementally improved to an amazing level by now
This goes to show what a fabulous achievement it was in the 60s and 70s to put 12 people on the moon, bring them back, and to rescue the crew the one time it went wrong.
the USA never send a human mission to the Moon... it's clear since many years ago despite the believers becoming ever more gullible...
Yes, this time they are going back to rescue the cameraman.
@@silveriorebelo8045 Really. I don't quite know why anyone believes it was fake. I think Moon landing deniers are just trying stir up a debate for fun. From 1968 to 1972 there were 9 trips to the Moon including 6 landings. 24 people went on those flights including 3 who went twice. I never heard of anyone trying to kill them to stop the truth coming out like in Capricorn 1.
@@x-creator4460 They went to space good person.
When you consider that the space suit is actually a space _craft_ just...wow
It's a very temporary spacecraft that can't operate on its own, but I mean yeah, for a person to survive in space, their suit is going to pass all the tests that a spacecraft must pass.
@@RidinDirtyRollinBurnouts Aren't all spacecraft temporary. 🤔
@@dehman8174 To a degree, also depending on how long of a timescale you use.
1968: No problem
2021: Somebody call someone from 1968!!
God bless you Pablo! much love and thank you for such amazing in depth content
Sounds to me like it's been a perfect storm of people with no talent for management being put in charge of costly projects, your generic government/private contractor corruption, and run of the mill incompetence.
It should not cost this much, or take this much time to build an update to 50 year old tech.
For crying out loud... they invented, tested, and implemented literally EVERYTHING in less than 10 years in the sixties!!
Why the eff is everyone dragging their feet today? (cough) (diversity and affirmative action hires)
Congress changes every couple of years, and changes what they want Nasa to do along with messing with their budget constantly. The US government is the perfect story for never getting anything done. They only got stuff done before because they were trying to show up their rivals in the USSR, without that motivation they barely want to give NASA two wooden nickels to rub together.
@@psygn0sis First off, you're an idiot if you think diversity or affirmative action have anything to do with it. Secondly, the moon is an incredibly hostile and unique environment that we didn't really understand in the 1960s. The problem of lunar dust is one that forces extremely difficult engineering challenges onto the designers of these suits, because they need to survive ongoing lunar habitation, not just a few hours of moonwalks. By the end of the original Apollo 13 flights, those space suits were nearing failure due to wear and tear from moondust. The dust cannot be allowed into a habitable environment due to being a breathing hazard and an electrical hazard, it can't be cleaned off the suits easily without causing additional wear. If any of it were easy or doable by a single contractor, they would already have done it. Turns out engineering is hard, and laypeople like you have no concept of how safety standards have changed in the last 60 years or how our space program has been forced to evolve due to budget cuts and loss of manufacturers.
@@psygn0sis The habit of American contractors to drag their feet for extra cash is not related to the diversity of their hires. It's not the minorities ruining your great aerospace industry, it's the executive class of that industry!
Very interesting, I've always been curious about these Space Suits, I suppose a lot of young people won't care about them, however, on July-20-1969 my best friend and I watched the Moon landing on television, I was 11 years old and remember it vividly, hopefully I'll be around for the next one, Thanks for Sharing, Good Day.
👌🏼👌🏼
Damn. So sad.
Those old Space suits are proof that sometimes and always the simple solution is the best solution!
They are far from simple, though. That's always been one of the struggles. In sci fi people put space suits on and off like a set of coveralls, but in real life it takes forever and involves lots of moving parts, all very expensive and some of which are custom made for each user.
@@RCAvhstape I'm just saying in comparison to these other new made to look good first and not functional first and look good never!
@@davidanttila9305 Those suits were made for short missions, they had poor flexibility, they were inconvenient to put on, etc etc. They worked for the Apollo missions, which were basically pathfinders, but they aren't out to just repeat what was done before.
You're right, the simple solution is the best solution.
Which is why we should stop using those old suits, and create new suits that are easier to make and operate.
wow that self regulating water evaporation temp control looks like such a cool idea
Yeah what an amazing invention! I was really impressed by that.
Congrats on reaching 1M subscribers Paul! A very well-deserved milestone!
love ya Curious Droid, keep up the good work!
That is all.
Ok, THIS is what is wrong with big government! Spending a billion dollars and still not having a suit.
its the 27 contractors thats the problem...
We are confident the spacesuit program will be a success for lobbyists, no matter how many astronaut deaths may result from the design.
I think a neat topic to cover one day would be the Sofia flying telescope. A giant inferred telescope on the side of a 747. I appreciate the great content you produce. You've brought numerous topics to my attention that I've never heard of before. Always a great job, Paul.
At the KSC Museum there's an exhibit on spacesuit design evolution which is fascinating. I'd had no idea NASA had originally planned on using "hard" (armored) spacesuits instead of the "soft" designs ultimately used.
Thank you very much for your always interesting, carefully researched and didactically explained videos Mr Droid.
Love the oldish ladys, they must of been the top notch seamstres's around.
That's the power of having a strong industrial base. That won us the second world war, the Lend-Lease Program. Sigh, times change.
All the seamstresses on the Apollo suits were women. Gloves, boots, all the layers put together, inspected and tested rigorously. Skylab's shield that saved the station, the thermal blankets in the shuttle, also sewn and mission critical.
Sounds madness pick two contractors and first one to bring me a fully working one in spec wins the $$$
Or just ask SpaceX to sort it out. Who else can solve engineering problems so quickly?
Wait… was that a PLUG at the punchline to the advert?! Because if it was - that was BRILLIANT!
Ugh... it's bittersweet to see these Shuttle-era EMUs still in use. My job was to extend their lifespans from 15 to 25 years to support ISS assenbly... 25 years ago. I've moved on from NASA but I'm still passionate about EMUs. I'm glad to see their are still the workhorse of EVA but at the same time, I know they were developed in the late 70s. I think if I were an astronaut on EVA, I'd want something newer than 40 years old.
Why does government agencies hire 100 different contractors for one project? What could go wrong? 💰 ⏲️
The original idea was that every state in the Union could say they had contributed to the Space Program, lending a sense of pride and unity when the Apollo program was underway. As Mom’s Spaghetti just pointed out, though, it was more to do with pork-barrelling from members of Congress.
Well, you need several contractors to manage the other contractors and it sort of feeds on itself.
Most aerospace companies don't make every single small component so they hire subcontractors that make these parts to provide them
The fact that the suit requires parts from 27 subcontractors is anything but surprising, not sure why everyone is focusing on something so trivial
It's political. In order to get enough congressmen and senators to approve NASA's budget, they have to get some of the manufacturing money going to their state.
There are 50 states, and each state's congressmen want a piece of the pie. That's why NASA has centers in so many states instead of just putting it all at Cape Canaveral where it belongs.
Sounds like a lot of money, however, it's just enough to pay for the USA military for 13 hours.
Always fascinating. Too bad the real universe isn't like Star Trek where they're usually beaming down to the planet in their shirtsleeves.
If they're red shirt sleeves they don't beam back ☠😃
@@beefsuprem0241 Unless you're Scotty.
@@TucsonDude of course laddy
Another interesting video Paul 👏 Loving the snazzy threads as usual fella 👍
@Curious Droid: 👍👍Thank you SO much, for not using the 4:3 blurry background effect! 👌👌
Sadly, despite the development, there are very few suit concepts that can handle the lunar dust, which, for long term habitation, are probably the largest threat. A quick google will tell you how dangerous the dust actually is.
How did the lunar dust affect the Apollo moon crews?
@@juliocamacho8354
The lunar dust was very abrasive and it stuck to everything so the astronauts boots and gloves were covered in it and it slowly ate away at the outer part of the suit which wasn't a big problem because they only stayed for about 3 days but if you were to stay longer with the same suit you would run into problems.
How about giving a link to the exact source, instead having people find all sorts of crap?
@@whiterottenrabbit Because people refusing to do things for themselves is not something that should be encouraged. The ones who require spoon feeding are the ones who do the least thinking. Do it yourself, be more than useless.
I wonder how what we see as the latest design - with a big sliding joint around the waist, and two similar joints at the top of each leg, will do with the lunar dust.
Hear me out, right? Remote-controlled humanoid drones. Think VR. They can stay inside their modules and do all of the work they need to with normal mobility.
I’d hate for that to be their sole means of exploration, but it would be PHENOMENAL for exploring lunar lava tubes! They could probably get Boston Dynamics onboard
Nasa: Ah i don´t think we will make the 2024 deadline on the suits.
Bezos: No problem i got you
*sues NASA to delay Artemis lunar lander*
Imagine a foot itch on a space walk.
Thanks for the new video, Professor Lord Varys!
This was a really interesting video! Gosh I love learning so much.
your tattoos look sick. I wish I could see them up closer
@@94nolo they are mostly space themed hehe :P maybe I need an astronaut tattoo next
I just love how this guy in the video Look "Brownish" throughout the video 😝 maybe some thing went wrong while editing or color grading the video lol
@@Ruby-xk8kn holy crap that would be awesome
@@94nolo go get a drink of water
As a business owner and tax payer, I am always shocked at how the governments of the world prove to completely disregard how hard we have to work for the dollars they piss away with no regard.
Maybe, you should start making space suits as a business startup. Save us all millions of dollars.
@@TucsonDude wouldn’t quit your day job either if that’s was your best
SpaceX will most likely end up making their own in my opinion.
Yea spacex is great check ot the common sense skeptic for spacex videos really like him
I think you're right, and at this rate maybe doing their own moon mission in 2024!
Nope
@@chrisreaney1980 Elon will never be able to do it.
@@koolmckool7039 They said he couldn't put a rocket in orbit. Then they said he wouldn't be able to land one. Then they said he wouldn't be able to land on on a ship... you notice a pattern?? I think the hard work is already done.
I thought we would have had a HUD on the visor by now
If contractors are paid for their time not the results, then completion for them would mean failure.
And now the Soviet/Russian space suits! Love this channel. Thank you!
I wouldn't wear one. The Soviets considered you a hero if you DIED in space. Not so much with the American point of view.
@@TucsonDude Just imagine being called a hero by a whole nation for trying to do something incredible. You wouldn't wear one but I would
@@Watchyourselvez You missed my point. To Russians, life is more expendable than here in the US. They're willing to accept more risks to the "greater good". Plus, they don't have a very good safety infrastructure. Remember, the Kursk submarine disaster?
@@TucsonDude If your economy collapsed like theirs did you would see the same thing happen to your subs as did happen with Kursk. Remember USS Thresher?
@@Watchyourselvez OK. I worked most of my life with the DoD and that was our perception. If you gave the Russians a billion dollars to build an aircraft, they'd spend it all on a top performance aircraft without regard for adequate training, parts availability, safety features, rescue equipment, etc. Am I wrong?
So we've walked on the moon already, several times, but now, with supposedly superior technology, we can't anymore. Got it.
It’s not that we can’t, it that’s the “superior technology” isn’t proven yet. Time and money, sir.
@@jacksons1010 We always have to prove we can walk before we can run.
I know it is all about the money, but it seemed like NASA was able to get things done faster back in the 60's!
Still waiting for the SLS to make its initial flight - whenever THAT will be!
back then nasa had a lot more employees, less private contractors and less politics involved.
@@PhantomBlank Aye, they also had a higher budget.
Great content as usual my man!
"If it ain't broke, don't fix it" - Use the old Apollo spacesuits, they worked just fine for several missions.
You obviously weren't listening to thr actual video.
Incredible Engineering. Great Stuff!
Interesting problem to have, though with how tightly Congress is keeping their hands on the purse, it was unlikely they were going to make 2024 either way.
Maybe we could sell the 3 billion dollars of hardware we left in Afghanistan last week to fund it!!!
Because they want to keep that money for themselves.
What's this... another vote to increase our salaries?
Which congress is this? Can't be the US congress given the way they're spending money.
This is what happens when you employ 27 different companies to make a suit. Ridiculously inefficient. I hope SpaceX makes good on their offer to make their own suits
their own suit also sux, they make astronaut immobile during decontamination, which didn't happen in other suits. It have many problem because it made not by engineering, but by designers at first.
2:54 damn... the void
I think I would feel claustrophobic inside these space suits
sounds like it would be easier to just recreate the apollo suits with re-sourced materials... but I guess they want to be able to do yoga stretches on the moon
One look at the virtual reality simulation stuff they were doing in the video explains why the suit is late. They are messing around making it as complex as possible, using methods that employ as many people as possible. Its a big make-work scheme, instead of solving practical problems with practical solutions they are messing around with virtual reality, endlessly trying to achieve perfection without real life iteration, requiring computer programmers and desk jockeys that can't do stuff like use a lathe. You can guarantee every problem needs a committee meeting.
I bet spacex will just be like.... surprise... we made our own.... they cost 100 grand each
@@Obvsaninternetexpert At some point the belief that SpaceX can do everything better, faster, cheaper is going to be exposed as nonsense. People used to think NASA was perfect, until people died. Once that halo gets tarnished the cynics will turn on SpaceX same as every other fallen hero.
@@jacksons1010 I think it’s company’s like them that make people realise nasa is a joke, and it always was, not the engineers, the bureaucrats making sure everything is as complicated and expensive as possible to justify needing more money, killing as many people as they like with zero consequences.
Those same engineers given instructions to do things simply and cheaply for tax payers and we would have been on Mars by now
@@Obvsaninternetexpert You don't get taxpayer money without oversight, and oversight means bureaucracy. That's the sad reality. No bucks, no Buck Rogers. SpaceX only exists because of NASA contracts. Do away with government involvement and there is no SpaceX. All the talk of going to Mars still comes back to the will of the American people to fund it, and that funding has been lacking since Apollo. Every election brings a shift in priorities and that's what has held back NASA - and may well be the fate of Artemis as well. It will cost more and take longer than expected even with SpaceX - and people will be asking questions about where the money went. Is moon lander money funding the moon lander...or will it be used to develop Starship? If the moon lander is not done on time, does NASA give SpaceX more money or do the taxpayers pull out the rug and Artemis gets cancelled like so many other big-ticket programs?
@@jacksons1010 I don’t disagree ... nasa funding private space companies ... who are all using the same engineers who would otherwise be working at nasa... just seem to achieve so much more for the money .... sls is a prime example...
Will nasa find it more..... 50/50... depends who’s in power at the time an how much America think they need some positive spin
Will spacex be able to fund it themselves .... maybe... that company is gonna be worth a fortune soon
If it ain't broke, don't fix it but improve it. Unless you're NASA apparently.
Or a politician. A lot of fools would recoil at the idea of using legacy equipment, but that's the pace space moves at.
NASA loves the engineering - get the best regardless of cost - like saying we need a new earth to orbit system and doing the whole space shuttle thing instead of using and extending the working Saturn rocket. What a detour that was!
What if it’s broke? We walked on the moon and learned that those suits won’t hold up to sustained use. The Artemis mission is very different from Apollo; old and broke won’t cut it.
I wonder if SpaceX is seeing the delays and already quietly designing their own EVA suit to not put the Moon missions in jeopardy.
They must have been designing Mars suits, which should be able to work on the moon just fine. Elon mentioned on Twitter that they could ‘assist’ NASA with the suit problem if need be.
doubtful. Considering how big a blabbermouth Elon himself is, we'd have known about it.
In fact i doubt SpaceX or any of Musk's other business ventures is currently working on anything for starship applications other then starship itself.
@@OnionChoppingNinja I don't know how you see Elon's enterprises but if you ask me, its all about engineering. They don't build a car or a rocket or a brain interface, they engineer it! So if someone could make a reliable space suit in 2 years, it would be Elon Enterprises. :-)
@@OnionChoppingNinja Dude openly said on twitter that spacex could do it if asked to.
@@se_mat like making the Hyperloop work? Elon known how to hype things up...sometimes too much, even before his Engineer team figure out, how to make the thing work.
Space suits were necessary in the past due to size and weight constraints. Since NASA has chosen the Starship for moon landings, use a sealed rover and no expensive, fragile, prebeathing, stumbling, ladder climbing, personal sized, expensive suit is needed. Moon _walks_ are archaic from a time when people were the best robots we had, that day has past. Rovers are the next thing (work pods for space stations) with full pressure air, a bathroom, food, solar flare protection. Shielded arms that people can temporarily put their arms in to pick things up or better yet manipulators they can control can do anything a suited human can do. The only time people should walk on the surface of another planet is inside of a habitat.
I agree. That is a more practical way to move around on another planet.
The new suits look more like armor then spacesuits. Although this could be an advantage, a harder suit could be ran at a higher pressure and avoid the risk of decompression sickness (the bends).
Why does NASA have to reinvent the wheel every time it does something. NASA should take a good long look at how SpaceX does things. Maybe thay could learn a thing or two.
Yep, it's a Government project alright
A 2x3 foot box that costs billions to develop and hundreds of millions PER YEAR just to maintain. Just... wow.
Yeah well let's instead focus on how the army spends 740 billion PER YEAR to achieve almost absolutely nothing useful. They are incredibly wasteful. That's 740 thousand million per year.
@@jaky3 Why can't we criticize both?
What an excellent overview of the entire history of the suit and how they got to where they are! 11/10