Elon Musk's SpaceX has already managed to define the esthetic of twenty first century human
space flight with their crew Dragon space suits. It's a certified iconic look.
But these shining white star men and women are only the beginning for SpaceX.
What we are looking at isn't even really a space suit, not yet at
least. This is the space race. So what's the deal with these SpaceX
suits? They almost look too cool to actually be functional, but that's not
the case. These are the most advanced flight suits in the world, and
they are spectacularly effective at allowing people to comfortably travel through space, but they
are still not space suits. These SpaceX crew Dragon astronauts are wearing what's technically
referred to as an IVA suit or intra vehicular activity. This is opposed to
the EVA suit or extra vehicular activity that you see people to actually float around
in outer space. So we need to understand IVA first before we can get
into future potential for SpaceX EVA suits. The IVA can also be referred to
as a flight suit because it's only worn while in the process of launching or
landing the vehicle, or you can call it a pressure suit because that's the
most important job that this equipment does. It keeps the astronaut pressurized in the
event of a catastrophic failure. In a perfect world, you wouldn't need to
wear this suit at all, because the Dragon capsule is already pressurized and has
all of the life support function that you need. But if that ever stopped
being the case in midflight, then the crew would be in bad trouble very
quickly. In nineteen seventy one, the Soviet Union lost a crew of three
men on the so US eleven mission after their capsule depressurized on the return to
Earth. This was due to a valve that was damaged at stage separation,
and the crew suffocated within one minute of the pressure. It was a rough
way to go, so even today, no matter how much we might trust
our vehicle and its technology, we suit up. Once the ship is coasting
in orbit, it's as safe as it's going to get, so astronauts can
go suit off, but during ascent and descent maneuvers we expect anything that can
go wrong will go wrong. The modern IVA suit has three main jobs,
providing fresh air, maintaining temperature, and maintaining pressure. It can keep a
person alive in the vacuum of space, but again that's only for a worst
case scenario. When SpaceX was developing their Dragon capsule, they knew that the
end goal for this vehicle was going to be human space flight, which meant
that a pressure suit was going to be necessary at some point, and Elon
Musk wanted to make sure that the astronauts who flew SpaceX would leave a lasting
impression on the world. So Elon actually hired a Hollywood costume designer named Jose
Fernandez, who has a long resume of making superhero outfits for high budget Marvel
and DC films. Jose didn't know anything about human space flight. He hadn't
even heard of SpaceX or Elon Musk until they hired him. Elon wanted Jose
to create the tuxedo of flight suits, something that everyone would look their absolute
best in. It had to give the astronaut a sleek and well defined figure,
like a superhero. This is in contrast to the old Space Shuttle flight
suits that made everyone who wore them look like a walking pumpkin. So the
design of the SpaceX suit came first, and then Elon had enough faith in
his technical crew that they would be able to reverse engineer it into a fully
functional iv A suit that would be approved by NASA. That's why every crew
that has ever flown a Dragon capsule has looked like they are about to walk
onto a movie set. They all look perfect, and that's largely due to
the fact that, just like a tuxedo, every SpaceX suit is tailored for
the individual astronaut. The suits are all fabricated in the SpaceX Hawthorne, California
headquarters, alongside the Falcon rockets and Merlin engines. This might seem like pure
vanity, but the precise fit also has a function to it. By aligning
the joints of the suit precisely with the physical joints of the human body in
places like these shoulders, elbows, and knees, it gives the astronaut much
greater range of motion and control when the suit is pressurized. Just try and
imagine for a second what it would be like to wear air tight clothing.
It's like walking around in an inflated balloon suit. The bigger the bag year
the fit, the less you're going to be able to actually move around.
Then SpaceX engineers were able to achieve that sleek, minimalist look by eliminating all
of the exterior valves and hoses that you would typically see on this type of
pressure suit. Even looking at another modern suit design like the one Chinese tyconots
wear on their trips to the Tiangong Space Station, you can see the big
main valve in the center of the chest, then further down the torso.
On the right they have external wires and electronics. On the left is a
hose attachment and that connects into the life support box that they have to carry
with them in their hand. So how did SpaceX avoid all of that hardware?
Well, the first thing that they did was design the suit to be
fully integrated with the systems of the Dragon capsule. So when the crew takes
their seats inside the capsule, they simply attach an umbilical cable from the chair
to a port on the thigh of their suit. This one connection supplies power,
air, and a pressure ant line into the suit. Astronauts breathe a
custom mixture of oxygen and nitrogen that is managed by dragons onboard computer. You
don't want too much nitrogen because it can form bubbles in the blood during pressure
changes. The air mixture is chilled to maintain a comfortable temperature for the astronaut
even during high heat reentries. The astronaut's helmet has built in sensors that monitor
pressure and temperature. These data into the automated computer, so there's no need
for manual adjustment by the astronaut. That eliminates the need for any external valves
on the suit, and by eliminating all of this excess hardware, SpaceX not
only makes their suit better looking, they also make it much easier for the
crew to put on and take off. The old style flight suits came in
multiple segments that had to be fitted together, and it took several people to
help get an astronaut suited up. That's not so badgering the preflight operation on
Earth, but they have to get back into those suits before leaving the ISS,
and that means doing it all in zero gravity, with gloves and helmets
and stuff floating around everywhere. The SpaceX suit is a much more simplified procedure.
It's a single piece jumpsuit kind of design, so the astronaut goes in
through the pants that open up along a zippered inseam. Then they just kind
of stand up into the suit, step into the boots, and then zip
the pants back up and they're good to go. There are more zippers along
the four sections so that the astronaut can quickly slip their real hand out of
the glove to do more precise work. Though, the SpaceX gloves do offer
a lot of dexterity, and they allow the crew to use the iPad style
touchscreen controls on board the Dragon. So these are fantastic suits and they are
perfect for the job they were intended for. But SpaceX needs to push their
capability even further. It's time to leave the capsule if you dare. We're
not talking about Major Tom here. The person stepping through the door of the
Dragon capsule into the void of outer space is going to be Jared Isaacman.
You might remember him as the leader of the inspiration for Crew, the one
they made the Netflix show about. Jared has a big plan for his next
SpaceX flight. It's called Polaris Down, and it's going to push the SpaceX
Dragon capsule and its systems to the absolute limit. The goal for Polaris Down
is to reach the highest Earth orbit ever flown, reaching out to the Van
Allen radiation Belt that exists on the border of Earth's magnetic field. At an
altitude of seven hundred kilometers above sea level, the crew will conduct a spacewalk.
They're going extra vehicular. According to Isaacman, SpaceX is developing an EVA
suit that will be an upgraded version of their current IVA suit. That's why
we had to explain the IVA first, because this new SpaceX suit is just
a beefed up version of what they already have. Now, this is an
important step to take because just like the IVA suit was crucial to the development
of the Dragon vehicle, an EVA suit is going to be just as important
to Starship. If SpaceX is going to follow through with Elon's whole Mars City
end game, then they are going to need a lot of space suits,
and those need to be capable and sturdy enough to keep people alive in some
very extreme conditions. So Polaris don is going to serve as a halfway points,
an opportunity to use their existing suit design to test some expanded capabilities.
If you look at the render from Polaris Down, it shows the existing Starman's
suit floating outside of the Dragon capsule with the umbilical line attached. Now,
this is a pretty basic concept art and it's not fully indicative of what the
SpaceX EVA suit will actually look like. What this does seem to indicate is
that the umbilical connection will carry over from the IVA to EVA operation, and
that does make a lot of sense for now. If we look at the
typical astronaut performing a spacewalk at the ISS, they wear their life support system
on their back, and that allows them to cover a lot of ground and
maneuver freely around the exterior of the station. That's not necessary for Polaris down
and it's going to add a lot of extra bulk to the EVA suit.
We can imagine that the Polarist Don spacewalk will have a lot more in common
with NASA's Project Gemini from the early nineteen sixties. These were the first missions
where astronauts left the capsule and floated freely in outer space. Those first EVAs
were supported by an umbilical connection to the spacecraft. The cord was made from
an external layer of gold coated nylon with silicone rubber hose inside. The umbilical
had a tensile strength of three hundred and fifty pounds, and there was an
additional nylon tether line that had a strength of one thousand pounds, so obviously
SpaceX would need to make their existing umbilical connection a lot stronger and more secure,
but the concept of using this to support a spacewalk is totally sound.
Another major factor that needs to be considered on a spacewalk is how the astronaut
is going to maneuver in a vacuum. On most Iss spacewalks, the astronauts
have used a system of tethers and help from the robotic Canada Arm to maneuver
around the exterior of the station, and they also have use of a space
jetpack that fires nitrogen gas thrusters to fly around. Polaris Done won't have a
robotic arm to help them out, and the jet pack seems a bit bulky
and overkill for the mission. Going back to Project Gemini, you'll notice the
astronaut holding a weird contraption in their hand that is actually an air pressure gun
that they used to maneuver around, and it seems like the kind of thing
that SpaceX might be able to develop for Polaris Don, something that they could
easily make a lot smaller for the modern day. You can imagine that Iron
Man style hand thrusters would be pretty effective for this kind of thing. The
most important thing that SpaceX needs to consider with their new EVA suit design is
going to be radiation protection. Because Polaris Down is intending to conduct their spacewalk
at such an extreme altitude of seven hundred kilometers, they are going to be
in close proximity to the inner reaches of the Van Allen radiation belt, so
their exposure to cosmic radiation is going to be a lot higher than what is
experienced at the ISS Down at around four hundred kilometers altitude. So going outside
the capsule, even for a short time in those conditions could be physically dangerous
to an astronaut if they aren't well protected. The current IVA suit likely doesn't
have any radiation shielding at all, because you wouldn't need it you're already inside
a shielded spaceship, but there are opportunities for SpaceX to incorporate effective radiation protection
into their existing suit design. If you want the best possible material for blocking
cosmic rays, it needs to contain a lot of hydrogen atoms, so a
good candidate would be a plastic polymer called polyethylene. This material can be woven
into a matrix of threads that could then become a protective layer inside the shell
of an EVA suit. This wouldn't add very much bulk to the design,
but it would offer a lot more protection from the elements. Based on what
SpaceX is able to learn from this first EVA test on Polaris Don, they're
going to be able to move on to the next step of developing a dedicated
extra vehicular activity suit, which will then feed into their ultimate goal of yading
an interplanetary activity suit that future settlers will use to colonize Mars.