Spacesuits: The Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum Collection |  | Author: Amanda Young
Creators: Mark Avino, Allan Needell, Thomas P. Stafford
Publisher: powerHouse Books
Category: Book
List Price: $29.95
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Rating:  9 reviews
Sales Rank: 49962
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 128
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2.5
Dimensions (in): 11.8 x 6.6 x 0.8
ISBN: 1576874982
Dewey Decimal Number: 629.4772074753
EAN: 9781576874981
ASIN: 1576874982
Publication Date: May 5, 2009
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 9
Professional review May 14, 2009
Lisa Young (Annandale, VA United States)
9 out of 9 found this review helpful
This book is a one of a kind with insight into the history, construction and space program using the history of the spacesuit as a timeline. The photographs taken by a professional at the National Air and Space Museum are pure artwork. Suits from all of the early manned space flights, as well as prototypes never seen before are displayed in this book. The author is an National expert on spacesuit history, construction and preservation. The book is more than a pictorial history- it is a museum gallery of exquisite photographs of the spacesuits in our National collections. This book is easy to read and gives details so experts in the field are also educated by the material in this book.
The Bible of Spacesuits May 29, 2009
Schwarz Guido (Watt, Switzerland)
8 out of 8 found this review helpful
This book is a must for every serious space collector and space enthusiast. The content is written with scientific perfection - but without an academic language. The photos and radiographic images are fantastic and never seen before. Also the part about how to preserve, store and display spacesuits is interesting. And there is a list with all suits of the NASA collection. I'd give six stars if it were possible.
Have suit will travel September 5, 2009
B. Pohnan (IL, USA)
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
"Spacesuits" easily ranks in the top five most interesting and illuminating "space" books that I have read in several decades. And the pictures are equally fascinating too!
A while back I had read that John Glenn's Mercury spacesuit had shrunk and is now very fragile. This didn't sound right. After all, common sense suggests that if these things are designed and built to withstand the rigors of outer space, they should last forever. Right?
Wrong!
Museum Specialist Amanda Young starts off this saga by providing nicely detailed, but not burdensome, descriptions of the various spacesuit types and different models thereof in the Smithsonian's Collection. If you believe that you know all there is to know about U.S. spacesuits (like I did), you're in for one very big surprise. There are so many variations, not just of the suits themselves, but of the helmets and gloves as well, that it's a wonder anyone could keep track of them. A detailed listing of the suits in the collection appears at the end of the book. It is about 10 pages long and the font size is not large.
But where this book and Ms. Young really shine is when she discusses the problems of preserving and displaying these priceless national treasures. Her prose is clear, concise, and devoid of the baggage one usually sees when the writer is attempting to impress the reader. It doesn't take long to realize that the author is someone for whom these suits are not abstract objects. One can easily tell that Young has touched, examined, probed, and hefted spacesuits all the way from Alan Shepard's Mercury suit to Tom Stafford's Apollo-Soyuz suit.
The deterioration of some of these suits is both devastating and disturbing. A picture on page 132 illustrates damage caused by an unnamed museum after they punched a metal rod through the boot of a spacesuit in order to put it on display! A comment about the pictures in this book, most are stunning. The crisp details and colors captured by Mark Avino are nothing short of breathtaking and his radiograph images that show the "insides" of the suits and gloves are surreal. Kudos to the publisher too, this book offers the most vivid, most colorful reproductions that I have seen since Joseph P. Allen's "Entering Space."
The one fault that this book exhibits, besides its oddball 6-3/4 by 12 inch size, is that the section on conservation, storage and display of these priceless artifacts is maddeningly short, only six pages. My curiosity screamed for more, more, more.
After reading this book, one can only be grateful that it was Amanda Young who picked up this "ball" and made preserving our country's spacesuits her passion.
Build, Sew, and GLUE a better Space Suit! August 3, 2009
M. Franta (Walnut, CA United States)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Building a Better Spacesuit
Rocketing to the Moon was a mission that involved tens of thousands of very intelligent and highly resourceful people. It also required the involvement of brave men who were required to show proof of bravery and nerves of steel. While all this was being measured and written down, somebody along the way was designing the ultimate space clothes. A spacesuit was required that would be airtight and custom- fitted to our astronauts. There was no style to adhere to; only functionality in the vacuum of space and the ability to withstand the extreme variations in temperature that occurs in space. What kind of people design space suits? Requirements for space suits are extremely rigorous --- since human life can exist only in the thinnest of atmospheric variance.
While a person wears a space suit, their body temperature has to remain constant in the vacuum of space. It has to receive oxygen, stay pressurized and keep the cold and heat out. The suit has to be an absolutely closed system so that nothing leaks out of it. It also has to be capable of allowing human waste to be excreted while the person is wearing it.
During the APOLLO era, it was essential that the space wardrobe consist of a fully contained suit, where the astronauts had to wear their oxygen supply on their backs, and the system was created to resemble a back pack. When Armstrong and Aldrin were out there on the surface of the moon, it was imperative that their space suits were strong enough to withstand sharp rocks while they walked about, and the extreme heat of direct sunlight, which was 275 degrees farenheight!
No one person can fully take credit for all this evolution of spacesuits; it all began with one man wanting to make a flight which required him to reach 40,000 feet and remain there alive, warm and comfortable until he reached his destination. It was in the 1930's when Wiley Post first donned his crude and primitive air suit. It resembled more a welder's outfit than a pilot's pressure suit, but it did the job. BF Goodrich jumped into the fray in designing air suits, which eventually evolved into the US Navy and US Air force taking the lead for these amazing spacesuits that NASA utilized for their space program.
Looking at this book, I was very impressed with the odd size of it. I wonder if it was designed to fit smartly into the pockets of Space Shuttle astronauts. Or perhaps the book would slide expertly into the pocket book of the glue-pot ladies who worked so precisely and with such dedication for the APOLLO program? Measuring 6 ¾ inches across and 12 inches down, this quality bound text is a must-have for all space flight aficionados. Opening the hard cover, I was surprised at the thickness of the paper used for publication. Like the spacesuits utilized by our US Space Program, nothing was skimped upon. No expense was spared. Only the best quality materials were used to construct this book, and I was also amazed by the stunning colors that I saw throughout the book!
I never considered just how many prototypes were involved in building the best space suit in the world. Looking at the early models felt like a wind blowing my hair back out of my face. The silver suits of the Mercury Program are a study in sixties technology! I was just a young girl in those early years of space exploration; I would see pictures of the Magnificent Seven Astronauts and I asked my mom to make me a spacesuit out of aluminum foil. I thought that's the material they were created out of, but when we tried to fashion a space suit for me, the aluminum foil crinkled, it itched really badly and tore quite easily. I learned then that those astronauts must have had a stronger grade of foil, but they had to learn to get used to the crinkliness of the fabric! I think every kid in America experimented with making their own space suits in that era.
Helmet technology is another aspect of space travel entirely. After reading the entire book, which doesn't take a whole lot of time, because it contains loads of wonderful colorful pictures, I learned a great deal of what considerations are paramount in developing helmets for the human head, (but I still crave much more detail.) I suppose having much more detail would be a threat to national security however, but this little book shines the light on a lot of what goes into making a spacesuit for our modern space astronauts and space tourists.
The first pressure suit was estimated to cost $75.00 and it wasn't safe in space.
Today, our most evolved spacesuit and helmet with boots is in the cost range of $2 million dollars a piece, but nowadays we reuse various components of the space suits, to save money. So, one suit doesn't run two million a piece, it can be refurbished and reused by another high-achiever.
Most all of the spacesuits ever sewn and worn are now being kept in a clean room at The Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington DC. On pages 128,9,30 & 31, one can take a gander at how these fragile suits are spending their days in captivity. They served a noble and grand purpose and now they have become national treasures; a testimony of man's greatest technological challenge. A special grant called, "Save America's Treasure's" provides the funding necessary to collect these endangered artifacts of our space history and to provide a protective environment for these fragile suits. Of the 200 + suits in the collection, only about 70 of the spacesuits are on display at any one time. This is because display conditions for theses suits must be controlled in respect to atmospheric humidity, natural light, warmth and risk for mold being embedded in the suits. Preservation of these rare suits is the all-consuming goal of the Space Museum today.
The big question is, where are all the missing spacesuits? I hear rumors that they are in the hands of the astronauts themselves, saving them for prosperity and all such good thoughts, but in reality, those suits should be handed over to the Smithsonian for safe-keeping. Each space suit is a history lesson; a tangible piece of our space travel and this belongs to everybody, not a wealthy private collector or black market guru.
I read this book several times and I have to award to it my highest recommendation. No one person will in their lifetime ever be able to see all these magnificent space suits in one location. They will live on inside of this elegant publication for all mankind to gaze upon and give wonder. I strongly recommend you buy this book and keep it on your prized bookshelf. It is a rare gem of a book and one feels very privileged to gaze on these marvelous space suits of our past and present.
Thought you knew about space suits? Read this! August 8, 2009
Lee Bishop (Seattle, WA area)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I bought this book at the gift shop of the Air & Space Museum in DC. Thumbing through it, I couldn't put it down. After going through the book much later, I feel I still made a good call buying it. I'm well read on historic military aviation flight gear and thought I knew a passing amount about space suits. Oh, how wrong I was. This book made it clear how little the public really understands about the garments that carried men to the Moon. One example is a mention of the helmets on the Apollo suits. I had no idea that the helmets you see in the photos from the Moon are, in fact, covers with visors that went over the real pressure helmets and were all left on the Moon.
I found the construction details fascinating. I never would have guessed that modern synthetics were used so much in the production of these suits, as well as the short lifespan intended. I was shocked to read how badly many of them have weathered the years since their use. The author does an admirable job explaining the fragile nature of these older suits and the problems with their preservation. The reader is left saddened at photographs of some components now completely dissolved and poorly preserved suits now permanently "flat" from lying on shelves for years. The book also has keen insight from Apollo 10 astronaut Tom Stafford, putting balance to what might have been dismissed as a simple artifact analysis.
The only issues I would take up with the book would be there was little on how the suits were to wear. The author described some suits as "comfortable," which I doubt would be agreed with by the men who wore them. The timeframes involved also kept the author from going further into the details of the suits themselves. Going from the 1930s to the end of the Apollo era, the author has no chance to really delve into these suits. While I understand the side focus on experimental suits, I would think that most of the readers would rather focus on the production suits and their use. I was very disappointed that later spacesuits (especially the Space Shuttle flight and EVA suits) were not addressed at all. Perhaps NASA has yet to give the Smithsonian any of these newer suits to be able to address them, which would explain their absence from the book. Hopefully someday a book covering later suits will come out with this quality. In the end, I was left with an even greater appreciation of the priceless space suits I had seen at the Air & Space Museum on several occasions previously. Not only for their historical nature, I now better understand their construction, use and how fortunate we are that they were turned over for preservation to these fine people.
While this book doesn't dissect each suit individually, it is an amazing overall study of space suits in what surely must be the most impressive achievement in human history. Their story deserved to be told and Amanda Young did an admirable job in this work.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 9
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