The Right Stuff to Wear
Post by rickl on Dec 24, 2010, 4:58pm
A pretty neat article about the spacesuits kept in storage at the Smithsonian. Hat tip Transterrestrial Musings.
SUITLAND, Md. — Stashed in a Smithsonian storage building in this Washington suburb are some of the engineering wonders of the space race.
These marvels are far smaller than the towering rockets and streamlined spacecraft that took men into orbit and to the Moon. Far softer, too. They are the spacesuits that kept the astronauts alive beyond Earth.
Most of the National Air and Space Museum’s collection of about 300 spacesuits is here, laid out five high on steel racks in a climate-controlled room. Each is protected by a sheet of muslin, giving the room the eerie feel of a morgue or the final resting place of members of an odd space cult.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/21/science/21spacesuit.html?_r=1&ref=science
