The Spacesuit Unpicked

COMMENT BOOKS & ARTS

TECHNOLOGY full-pressure suits and the experiments of early aeromedical researchers. But he also weaves in Christian Dior’s New Look. Dior’s extravagant dresses of 1947 electri- The spacesuit unpicked fied the postwar world with their full skirts that, in contrast to those made during war- Margaret Weitekamp reflects on how fashion time fabric rationing, used many yards of influenced astronautical attire for the Apollo missions. fabric. ‘New Look’ became shorthand for describing sweeping changes in fields as diverse as plastics, criminal justice, roads and hen Neil Armstrong took “one in engineering, archi- politics. De Monchaux unites these diverse small step” on to the Moon’s tecture and design. topics through his analysis of the ‘new look’ surface in 1969, his soft, white, Systems thinking in defence planning, a concept that drove Wlayered spacesuit insulated, cooled, pressur- considers humans as changes in postwar agencies such as NASA. ized and protected his body. But it was not one factor in a broad It is at the core of the story, however, that what many people had thought he would engineering schema Spacesuit gets most interesting — and most be wearing. Most engineers imagined lunar rather than dealing controversial. Those who know the history of landing suits as hard, man-shaped, jointed with humanity’s com- NASA’s spacesuit contracts will bristle at de shells containing pressurized environments plexity and variability, Monchaux’s conflation of the ILC and Play- — essentially, individual ambulatory space- de Monchaux argues. Spacesuit: tex, maker of bras and girdles. In 1947, the craft. The iconic suit, known as the A7L and He contends that such Fashioning Apollo materials company ILC split into four divi- designed by the International Latex Corpora- abstract thinking is NICHOLAS DE sions. One was Playtex. But it was another tion (ILC) then in Dover, Delaware, accom- not adaptable enough MONCHAUX division that, in 1962, became a subcontrac- plished the same task with carefully stitched to master the realities MIT Press: 2011. tor to Connecticut-based Hamilton Standard layers of innovative materials. Synthetic, of human life, at any 250 pp. $34.95 on a project to create a lunar space suit. rubberized or reinforced, each was chosen scale. Instead, he sug- That the book pays little attention to other to impart flexibility, strength, insulation or gests that the Apollo spacesuit offers a model aerospace corporations working on space- protection without excessive weight or bulk. for creating complex, responsive designs for suits, including Hamilton Standard and Using the 21 layers of the A7L as his inspi- other human environments, such as cities on the David Clark Company of Worcester, ration, in the same number of chapters, Earth — “our only enduring spaceship”. Massachusetts, will also irk some readers. architect Nicholas De Monchaux considers Unlike many other books on the space With much personal and corporate pride the social, cultural and political contexts of race, Spacesuit connects the technical story still tied up with the production of these the iconic suit. He sees with the broader history of the period, link- famous suits, Spacesuit will be seen as tak- the hand-crafted gar- NATURE.COM ing fashion with the military-industrial ing sides. But de Monchaux’s book is not ment as an essential For more on complex. De Monchaux includes the intended to be the authoritative history of counterpoint to today’s conserving NASA’s expected histories of high-altitude balloon- spacesuit contracts. For that, see Kenneth prevailing emphasis on spacesuits: ing and its perils (including hypoxia and Thomas and Harold McMann’s US Space- systems, so common go.nature.com/kdsdm1 the bends), the development of partial- and suits (Praxis, 2005), which excels in details but lacks readability. De Monchaux has an ear for a good story and affection for the historical characters. In 1967, after the Apollo 1 cabin fire that killed three astronauts, NASA revisited its spacesuit contracts. In response to the new call for pro- posals, the ILC’s soft suit design won a fierce competition to be the Apollo programme’s

Moon-walking suit. De Monchaux frames CENTER SPACE NASA/KENNEDY it as a David versus Goliath story, in which the “hard-knocks” engineers of the upstart ILC dug deep to outperform the aerospace behemoths. Through trials that included playing American football in the suit, the ILC garment’s flexibility, compactness and dura- bility won the day. Spacesuit offers a broad and creative appraisal of that suit’s many contexts, encouraging readers to consider technology as design, shaped by the circum- stances of its time, unfailingly and elegantly layered and crafted to serve a purpose. ■

Margaret A. Weitekamp is curator of the social and cultural dimensions of spaceflight at the National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC, USA. Buzz Aldrin (left, just seen), Michael Collins and Neil Armstrong wore hand-stitched A7L suits for Apollo 11. e-mail: [email protected]