How SpaceX Mastered Space Suits

This video is supported by Established Titles. 3 years ago, NASA unveiled its next generation spacesuit, designed to allow humans to walk on the Moon. But after this, everything went  quiet and the spacesuits were never seen again. It turned out, NASA was 20 months behind schedule and millions of dollars over budget with the program. So in order to get a new spacesuit developed in time for the upcoming  Artemis missions, NASA set up a competition and  invited other companies to design the best suit. At the time, SpaceX already had their own IVA suit, so you’d think partnering with NASA to make an EVA suit would be the next step. But surprisingly, SpaceX didn’t even put in a bid for this contract. It turned out, SpaceX had  already been working on an EVA suit for years and they wanted to go their own way with the development, like they did with their first suit. In this video we’re going to learn how SpaceX mastered their spacesuit design and the key breakthroughs that made it possible.  We’ll also be giving away this awesome Saturn 5 Lego set at the end of the video and  announcing the winner of the previous giveaway, so stick around till the end of the  video to find out how you can win! SpaceX began developing its first spacesuit all  the way back in 2015 when it hired Hollywood costume designer Jose Fernandez. After several  months of designing a suit that looked as sleek as possible, it was then up to the SpaceX engineers  to reverse engineer it and make it functional. To be clear, this isn’t the type of suit that an  astronaut would wear outside on a spacewalk. This suit is primarily for keeping astronauts  alive inside the spacecraft. But when you compare SpaceX’s suit to other pressure suits,  it looks much sleeker – how is this possible? To answer this, we need to look at  how spacesuits are normally designed. Spacesuits have traditionally been a one size fits  all type of thing, since they are very expensive to make. On the ISS, the EVA suit is modular. But  in general, nothing is made to fit and astronauts often get bruises and injuries after completing  a spacewalk. This is where SpaceX excelled. Each suit they make is completely custom-made to  fit the shape of each crew member. This has the obvious benefit of creating a much tighter  fit, but the benefits go much further than that. One of the biggest problems when it comes to  designing a spacesuit is mobility. When the suit is pressurized, it inflates like a giant  balloon, making it extremely rigid and stiff. When an astronaut tries to bend their joint,  the overall volume of the suit is reduced. Since the suit is completely sealed, the  air has nowhere to go – and so bending the joint compresses the air, creating  a lot of resistance for the astronaut. Spacesuit designers over the years have come up  with many different ways to tackle this problem. For larger joints like wrists and shoulders,  mechanical bearings are used to allow movement without changing the volume. For smaller joints  like the fingers, rubber pleats are placed all the way down the back – forcing the glove to bend in  an arc. This isn’t very natural, since our fingers don’t bend like that. Depending on your shape, the  joints in your suit may not align with the joints in your body. This could limit your range of  motion and require more force to bend each joint. Since each SpaceX suit is tailor-made, these  joints can be replaced with smaller ones that line up perfectly with the joints of each  astronaut. But even with a custom made suit, bending a sealed tube full  of air is very difficult. That’s why every joint on the SpaceX suit is  strengthened with these criss-cross tensioners, which help the astronaut bend the joint  inwards. Then the pressure of the suit naturally helps the astronaut extend the joint  back to its initial position. This is sort of similar to how a spider’s leg works. They only  have a muscle to flex their limbs inward – and so they rely on hydraulic pressure stored inside  their body to extend their limbs outward again. Another way to improve mobility is to  simply have less air in the suit itself. The Space Shuttle suit operated  at a pressure of 24 kilopascals, just a quarter of the pressure  we experience here on Earth. Lowering the pressure may help with mobility  – but it puts the astronaut at risk of getting decompression sickness. This is where the lower  pressure inside the suit causes nitrogen in the body to dissolve and form bubbles in the blood  vessels. Deep sea divers face the same problem when they come back up to the surface,  as they quickly go from a high pressure environment to a much lower pressure  environment. This can be a potentially fatal problem and many spacesuits require the  astronaut to do pre-breathing before suiting up. This involves breathing pure oxygen for  several hours before wearing the spacesuit, in order to get rid of all the nitrogen in the  bloodstream. SpaceX didn’t want to complicate the process so choosing a pressure for the suit  was a constant fight between safety and mobility. SpaceX’s suit had to meet NASA’s minimum  requirements of 40 kilopascals to avoid decompression sickness. This is quite  high compared to other spacesuits, so we can assume that SpaceX didn’t go much  higher than that. The air we breathe on Earth is a mixture of 21% oxygen and 78% nitrogen.  But since the pressure inside the suit is lower, the astronauts wouldn’t get a sufficient amount  of oxygen. Some suits tackle this by making the air inside the suit pure oxygen. The SpaceX  suits use a custom air mixture with a higher percentage of oxygen that can be varied  automatically by the onboard life support system. But it’s how this pressure is managed  that makes SpaceX’s suit even more impressive. Spacesuits typically have multiple  valves and pipes on the outside, to control the suits pressure and temperature.  SpaceX managed to combine all of these down into just one single port with a hole for air  circulation, a power and communications connector, and a port to quickly inflate the suit during an  emergency. An umbilical cord connects the suit directly into the astronaut’s seat, this is where  the real magic happens. Here there are a series of solenoid valves that automatically control  the pressure of the incoming air. A separate valve in the spacecraft allows chilled  nitrox to flow into the suits air duct, keeping the suit cool during reentry. The pressure  and temperature sensors inside the helmet feed the spacecraft with information, allowing  it to automate the process. This level of automation took away the need for astronauts  to manually adjust their suit pressure, allowing the designers to get rid of the  bulky valves on the outside of the suit. Not only did this make the suit much lighter than  the Space Shuttle suit – but it also made it much easier to put on. On the Space Shuttle suits,  the helmet, gloves and headset were all attached separately using bulky metal rings. On the SpaceX  suit, the gloves and helmet are already attached, and the headset is integrated into  the helmet. All of this means that an astronaut can suit up all by themselves in  just a few minutes. The Space Shuttle suit on the other hand took more than 20 minutes  and required help from several technicians. The SpaceX astronauts might not need any help in  this department, but maybe you need help buying Christmas gifts this year. You could make your  friend or loved one feel really special by making them a Lord or Lady this Christmas. Established  Titles is a fun and novel way to preserve the natural woodlands of Scotland while helping  global reforestation efforts. It’s based on a historic Scottish custom where landowners are  referred to as Lords or Ladies. Title packs give you one square foot of land on a private estate in  Scotland, with an official certificate and crest that contains your unique plot number. With this,  you can officially add Lord or Lady onto your name and have it on documents like credit cards,  passports and plane tickets. With every order, they plant a tree and work with charities like One  Tree Planted and Trees for the Future to support global reforestation. To get your Christmas gift,  visit establishedtitles.com/primalspace and use the code ‘primal space’ to get 10% off. The first  200 people to purchase a title pack using the link below will effectively be next to my plot, so  we can have our own little Primal Space land. And now for the moment you’ve all been waiting  for. The winner of this awesome Space Shuttle lego set is… Sarah Hambrick! Congratulations,  there is now a Space Shuttle on its way to your house. Sorry if you didn’t win, but don’t worry,  after such a great response on the last video, we want to do another giveaway. In the next  video we’ll be giving away this awesome Saturn 5 Lego set! All you have to do is sign up at  the link below and leave a comment about what you’re looking forward to most in the world  of spaceflight. We will announce the winner in next month’s video. Thank you very much for  watching and I’ll see you in the next video!