The
spacesuit that Ed White wore 42 years ago this week during the first American
spacewalk is on display at the National Air and Space
Museum in Washington, DC.
Within the
same building, visitors can see the spacesuits that Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin wore during the first moonwalk.
Indeed, all
31 spacesuits worn by astronauts while either space- or moon-walking during the
Gemini, Apollo and Skylab programs are now owned by the Smithsonian and are
either on exhibit, on loan or being preserved for study by researchers and
historians.
If you
wanted however, to see a flown spacesuit worn on any of the prior 77 space
shuttle extravehicular activities (EVAs, a.k.a.
spacewalks) or any of the 53 EVAs made with American
spacesuits out of the International Space Station, you would have to look
somewhere else than in a museum.
There aren't any on exhibit today and if NASA's plans for the
shuttle-era spacesuits hold true, there may be none remaining for the museums
to preserve, let alone display.
A few
sizes fits many
Like the
space shuttle on which they fly, modern NASA spacesuits or extravehicular
mobility units, EMUs were designed to be reusable.
Whereas Gemini, Apollo and Skylab astronauts wore suits that were sized to the
individual, shuttle spacewalkers wear 'off the rack' suits that are available
in just a few sizes.
Furthermore,
they are mix and match; shuttle astronauts don suits that are assembled from
separate upper and lower components, in addition to the helmet, boots and
gloves, as well as the portable
life support system (PLSS pronounced 'pliss')
worn on their back. Each of the parts may have different flight histories, as
they were flown in different configurations to compensate for different-sized
astronauts.
So for
example, the EMU worn by Kathy Sullivan on the first American
female EVA in 1984 may have later been divided and flown again as
components of any number of other astronauts' spacesuits. It doesn't exist any
longer as a complete spacesuit and NASA's records only track the parts by the
missions on which they flew rather than by which
astronaut wore them.
Even so,
museum curators had hoped that when NASA no longer needed all the flown
components, that through their own research they could piece together
individual spacesuits. That of course assumed that NASA would retire the
spacesuit parts such that the museums could obtain them.
Six of
one, half a dozen of another
What if you
were to try to assemble as many spacesuits as possible from all the different
flight components? How many would be there be?
"We
have lots of components and a lot of [them] are sized. So the way we answer
that question from our internal bookkeeping is 12 and that's really 12 life
support systems," explained Stephen Doering, who
heads NASA's spacewalk activities office, in an interview with collectSPACE.com.
"The limiting factor for a functioning spacesuit would be the PLSS backpack."
In fact,
throughout the shuttle program there have been a total of 16 backpacks. Two
were destroyed in 1986 when Challenger broke apart, but were later replaced.
Two more were lost in 2003 on-board Columbia.
Beyond the PLSS,
the hard upper torso (HUT) would be the next component in limited supply, said Doering.
"The
limiting factor from a display perspective... is the pressure garment, the
gloves, the legs, the arms, the hard upper torso, for which it is not really
possible to give you a count," said Doering.
According
to Doering, there exists a possible 13th PLSS.
"We have one qualification unit that's not flight ready, it's called Class
II. And that's the only one out there."
Continue reading on
collectSPACE.com to learn why a fiery fate awaits the shuttle spacesuits.
Copyright 2007 collectSPACE.com. All rights reserved.
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