When Neil Armstrong became the first person to walk on the Moon, forgoing his
Going into the near vacuum of space or the Moon requires a robust wardrobe. Without an airtight suit, the pressure around you would become so low that the boiling point of the fluids inside your body decreases to below that of your body temperature, and gas bubbles will begin to form inside you.
“Some degree of consciousness will probably be retained for 9 to 11 seconds. In rapid sequence thereafter, paralysis will be followed by generalized convulsions and paralysis once again,” NASA’s
“During this time, water vapor will form rapidly in the soft tissues and somewhat less rapidly in the venous blood. This evolution of water vapor will cause marked swelling of the body to perhaps twice its normal volume unless it is restrained by a pressure suit.”
Your blood would stop circulating, while gas and water vapor would flow slowly out of your airways, and the resulting moisture evaporation would cause your mouth and nose to freeze slightly before the rest of you.
This is all to say, if you delegate the task of creating an airtight suit, with the additional requirements that it must deliver oxygen to its user and closely control their temperature, you give it to the best manufacturer out there.
NASA invited a number of teams to compete for the task of creating spacesuits for the Apollo Moon mission. International Latex Corporation (ILC), better known by its consumer brand Playtex, was not among the chosen, but
After working around the clock for six weeks, they created a test suit worthy of submitting to NASA. Led by a
Neil Armstrong was a fan, likening the suit to a spacecraft.
“It turned out to be one of the most widely photographed spacecraft in history,” Armstrong later
“Equally responsible for its success was its characteristic of hiding from view its ugly occupant,” he added. “Its true beauty, however, was that it worked.”