How SpaceX's New Spacesuit Solves What NASA's Lunar Suit Impossible!

How SpaceX's New Spacesuit Solves What NASA's Lunar Suit Impossible!
===
#alphatech
#techalpha
#spacex
#elonmusk
===
How SpaceX's New Spacesuit Solves What NASA's Lunar Suit Impossible!
SpaceX is developing what could be the most advanced lunar spacesuit ever built, its EVA suit.
Compared to Axiom Space’s AxEMU, the suit developed under NASA’s requirements, SpaceX’s design is often seen as more practical, more modern, and clearly ahead. It’s built to meet the toughest standards in human spaceflight, and it even breaks away from a design approach that has remained largely unchanged for over 50 years.
So what exactly makes SpaceX’s EVA suit stand out from Axiom’s AxEMU?
Let’s break it down in today’s episode of Alpha Tech.
How SpaceX's New Spacesuit Solves What NASA's Lunar Suit Impossible!
Back in the last century, when technology was far less advanced, the twelve astronauts who walked on the Moon during the Apollo missions all wore the same spacesuit, the A7L. It was often described as a kind of “mini tank,” and surprisingly, it was hand-sewn by a team of… underwear seamstresses.
The reason people compared it to a tank becomes clear once you picture what the suit was actually like. It was built from 13 to 21 layers of fabric, all carefully stitched together by hand. Once the suit was pressurized, it became incredibly stiff. Moving inside it was anything but easy. On top of that, astronauts also carried the PLSS life-support backpack, which weighed nearly 100 pounds on Earth. Altogether, the full suit system came in at roughly 180 to 250 pounds.
And despite all that thickness and weight, the suit still had serious limitations during real lunar missions. Harrison “Jack” Schmitt, the only professional geologist ever to walk on the Moon, was especially blunt about it.
How SpaceX's New Spacesuit Solves What NASA's Lunar Suit Impossible!
After returning to the lunar module, he suffered what he later described as “lunar dust hay fever.” The dust irritated his nose, his face swelled up, and his voice turned hoarse.
“It stuck to everything, increased friction, damaged the suit’s outer layers, and even jammed the joints,” he said.
Years later, even at the age of 90, Schmitt still looked back on that experience and said very plainly, “I don’t want to do that again. Physically, and from a suit-maintenance standpoint, that was probably the limit.”
And that’s exactly why, nearly fifty years later, we need a better generation of spacesuits. Something that can overcome the limitations of the old A7L design. Not just to prove that technology has moved forward, but also to give astronauts the comfort and protection they’ll need for the missions ahead.
===
Subcribe Alpha Tech: https://www.youtube.com/@alphatech4966/?sub_confirmation=1
===