in less than five years and

astronaut will be stepping on the moon to conduct man's first real exploration of our oldest satellite. it will have been a long voyage carrying him far from his native land planet earth, into a strange and airless world to survive, he must carry with him a bit of his environment. i'll bioengineer ears or designing a spacesuit that will astronauts on a roundtrip lunar is our story today. i'm science reporter.

hello john french life science reporter speaking to you from. the moon or at least a reasonable facsimile thereof actually, that simulated lunar landscape and this mock up of the lunar excursion module at the manned spacecraft center in houston, texas, where engineers for the national aeronautics and space administration are testing and evaluating the of the apollo spacesuit, actually encapsulating a man into a suit that protect him from his environment the same time gives him adequate life support. there's no very novel idea. deep sea divers have depended on just such a solution for their into hostile ocean depths.

for decades. but as it applied to going up of going down by engineering got a much later start. it wasn't until world war two when airplanes began nosing to an area of 20,000 feet. the man found he was stretching beyond his natural breathing oxygen systems had to be devised. and after many years later, then flying high speed military planes and ever higher altitudes required. am-t and decompression protected system. but today as we move the space age, these new problems relatively tame when they're measured against the support systems that man will for lunar explorer and to find out about systems that will be used to protect men on the moon. we talked to mr. matthew assistant chief of the systems development branch here at manned spacecraft center. john, before i show you apollo suits, i think you ought to see a couple of our earlier models.

well, here have the al shepard's suit. this is the mercury suit. some of the interesting things about this suit are note that that there aren't any movable joints in this. no hard joints, no steel rings or anything. all mobility is achieved by very clever tailoring. you can see artificial brake that have been sewn into the suit. really. and of course, this entire suit is simply about a bladder and that the restraining gap on the outside is what allows us to have mobility not in the elbow that we have no special joints simply through the use of this unique directional restraint we're able to get a certain amount of mobility in the elbow. i mean, if you didn't that you just sort of be out like a balloon. exactly. he would inflate and be almost rigid he just about couldn't move at all. this green bottle is interesting. this is the way originally sealed our helmet. the visors. do this.

the moves up and down and by inflating a seal that around the periphery of it we achieve a quite an excellent of the entire suit. was this a really significant step forward in suits or not? really, because this suit was is really based on a developmental item that came from the navy as it stands is very similar to the mach navy suit, which is used in conventional high altitude aircraft with some minor modification in the in the hand. we've added different kind of a primary strength in here, but generally the suit doesn't differ significantly from the department of defense model at the moment. he's simply being ventilated by a ventilator here which keeps him cool until he would attached up to the spacecraft itself. mm hmm. what about the next step? well, the next step after the german after the mercury suit is

the gemini. here we have all this looks familiar. this is a suit very similar to in fact, identical to this was won by white in. his extravehicular excursion. this suit is covered with a material called nomex, a very high temperature nylon, which will withstand very high temperatures. about 700 degrees. that because of the sun shining on it out in space. yes. although and these circumstances, this is primarily used in case the itself got hot on the outside and he wouldn't be burnt, although it would protect the material underneath. remember, the temperature outside can up to about 250 degrees. well, now this actually had to support life for him out there in space with nothing but an umbilical cord. that's right. under the under white's flight or in white flight, he his oxygen through this port through

a long umbilical. and it was simply ventilated through him. part of the flow rate of the oxygen came down over his visor right here. and also, it might be interesting to note that he very low flow rates because didn't do that much work. he worked hard, but not much harder than he would normally either. inside the spacecraft, for that matter, on earth. hmm. the suit itself was equipped with. glove, lights. i don't know if this. yes. we haven't shown here which allow the men inside the spacecraft when he was inside the spacecraft to scan his instruments without destroying dock when he was so on the dock side of the earth. well now what kind of a suit they wear on the way to the moon on? the way to the moon, inside the cabin? they probably need a suit at all. let me come over here and show you what they will be wearing.

here's our concern where garments are really long. well, that's just what it is. it's a modified set of long underwear used as a carrier for the electronic equipment, for the signals that come out of the biosense. is one of them is hanging out now. this is stuck right against the skin on the inside. see. well, this is all i on and something that don will have on inside command module. there's no reason for. so remember the main reason for so this protect the man again low pressure's very low pressure's and at the same time in the event of returning to the earth, they would have to have environments of protection against the earth. environment, possible environment in an emergency. but normally normal conditions, we don't them to wear a suit, a true shirt environment is what we expect to achieve. then once they do get to the

moon though, can they wear something that that's something else? again, there's a whole series problems associated with the very hostile environment of the moon for instance, we have to protect the man against the thermal loads that he will encounter in working very hard on the moon's surface. we have to protect them against. the micrometeorites which a constant source of potential danger and also the secondary. these are the splashes of rocks that come up when a single meteoroid would hit the ground. let's take close to the astronaut. we have to protect the man against the infrared and the ultraviolet radiations which are not at all reduced by the lack the atmosphere, the moon. we have to protect the man against the very hot and very cold temperatures associated with the surface of the moon. there are a whole series of them we have to provide the man with

a self-contained life support system. this life support system would include a whole series of items that we can discuss later in which i can demonstrate to you quite easily. what are you going solve, all these problems? well, it's interesting here. have an indication of our. here. i have a mannequin dressed, a liquid cooling garment. if you'll note the inside this garment has is covered with small tubules. these little tubules are filled with they are actually filled prior to flight. and by conduction by causing a flow of water through the main branch and returning it from this secondary branch. we have the ability to pick up heat directly from the skin, which keeps the man's temperature skin temperature down and therefore stops him from. why can't we just use regular air conditioning, which normally you do normally do, are simply

blowing cold, dry air the skin. and if it's supposed to pick up all the perspiration with this work but on the surface, we expect the man to work very hard, extremely hard, almost twice the rate that he works on the surface of the earth as a result of his rate is so high and his production of perspiration great that we can't possibly pick all up by the rate and the amount of gas available in the portable support system. so when now that the where this thing over that or i know this is one immediately over a very late of skivvies are a light set of underwear and directly under the pressure garment assembly which have over here. oh can we see that i'll get rid of this for him. thank. well this does look quite a bit different from that germany suit that we saw.

it is this is a one of our earlier models of the apollo suit, not the joints particularly. this is a demonstration of constant volume, joint which was submitted us by one of the contractors who ultimately won the contract for the moon suit. mm hmm. what do you mean by a constant volume joint? well, this under design or in this design, the man can move. and when he moves, he does not disturb the column of air, so that the internal pressure remains constant. we have been trying to squeeze air when he exactly if indeed squeezed air, the force and work associated with doing that would almost prevent him from making any sort of motion. there's a great deal of work anyway and we want to keep this to a minimum to make normal motion. he's not pressurized this time again being ventilated simply to keep cool. could we see the actual apollo

through? yeah. let's take a look at the suit now. it seems to me he's walking a little more stiffly than the other. well, this man is pressurized now. he has 3.7 inside. that is a little over and a half pound differential pressure in suit. it's slightly inflated, a little more the previous suit, right. surely. but you can see that there is a considerable pressure associated with it for mode of operation the gases are ventilate and the incoming back gases come in here go up to his helmet, then pass over the front to, stop it from fogging and a portion of the gases, rest of the gases go down to the extremities, to his fingers and to his toes and then come back a collected and come back through here. when the astronauts leave the lab for their exploration of the lunar surface, they all strap on

one of the most important parts of the extravehicular mobility unit, the portable life support system pulsars to. learn about this unusual backpack. we visited the hamilton standard division of united aircraft in windsor locks, where the plane says this manufactured. we talked with mr. lang, project manager, systems engineering here and at spacelab. i'd like to show you a full scale mockup of our portable life support or backpack. this one used in conjunction with a pressure garment or a spacesuit, gives a man all the required essentials for life support. as a matter of fact, it has everything that a spacecraft would have, with the exception of a propulsion system, you don't have any rockets. we use our legs for the propulsion. when a man wants to put this on in the vehicle, he disconnects the oxygen supply that goes to the suit that's going and coming from the dope. he disconnects the water that goes to the liquid cooled garment in back and this an emergency oxygen system that goes into the helmet and then electrical and vehicle and then

to put on this backpack he faces it in this fashion turns around the pressure sudan and then puts can actually go to the proper connectors on his suit and it just has a hard up it's always just puts on a harness it weighs about 65 earth pounds. it's pretty heavy. animal and it's only about 1112 power, right? because of the reduced gravity. now, as a life support system, it contains all the basic ingredients for life support. chief among these be the supply and regulation high pressure oxygen to the suit. this oxygen bottle sitting right here contains one a little bit over one pound of oxygen. it's at 850 psi and. it's regulated down to super of about one quarter of what the pressure is in this room that's really uncomfortable. now, it wouldn't be because it's pure oxygen and as far as a man is concerned, his lungs see the same of oxygen as they do on earth right now, as the oxygen goes to the pressure suits and picks up carbon dioxide, it brings it back to the umbilicals, to the backpack, and a backpack must be moved that

carbon dioxide. otherwise be lethal to the man. really? what have to do then is use a chemical absorption bed. we have a contaminant removal cartridge that removes odors and carbon dioxide. best to show you then a cartridge which is a replacement. replaceable. we use one of these with each mission. it contains hydroxide and activated charcoal and it's completely consumed. at the end of a mission or something like an oil filter. the acid is it, incidentally it gives off heat during this process and it adds heat to the system. and i should add that that to be effective, the fact that it's sitting here by itself doesn't do us any good. we have to come up with a technique getting the co2 laden oxygen from the helmet to the backpack first. and for this reason, we use a fan and a fan. is this gadget right over here that i see, that is a fan. and the fan is powered by an motor. we also a pump to push the liquid cooling, the water to the liquid cooling garment and back

the pump sits at this point and it is also powered by an electric motor. that's right. to send the water over there and bring it back. how do you cool the water once it's inside? backpack. no one has picked up about eight degrees when it goes through the liquid garment and the oxygen is coming out of a body temperature. and it has a lot of moisture in it. and this is all in this box right here, which is sublimate it now, a sublimate as best described by referring back to the to the big snow banks, maine, that seem to disappear, even though temperature never goes above 32 degrees. they what happens here is that the snow goes directly from ice phase to gas phase and it never melts in between the principle of operation here is exactly the same. what we do then, is we? and let me show you, by the way, this is a sublimate and a complete and sublimate that the oxygen from the suit comes in through here and leaves here. the water comes in from here and leaves here the water that we

are turning into ice to sublime is coming in from here to here from a reservoir. and what it does, it becomes an ice layer in the layers and here becomes ice. and to enable to go from ice to get it must pull heat away from its around this. it cools this whole assembly down to almost 32 degrees. fact, the ice is at 32 degrees and in so doing, the oxygen and the water go through here are cooled down to the levels that we have to have. oh, it's very interesting what we have other things that are there in this backpack that i'm not lives support elements per se. a chief among. these are communication. we have a communication subsystem which sits right on top of the and is cooled by it. this is the antenna and this is the connection so that he can talk back to the lander. exactly. he can talk back to the lamb or he could talk to the earth via the left and radio station. that is complete transmitter and receiver. i would like to show you a component that this is the

communication system is really small. it's very small and very compact and has in addition to voice, it has seven channels of information are continuously telling me if man so desires he can shut off the telemetry. it monitors the performance and gives us an ekg electrocardiogram. now, just thinking that all these things seem to run on electricity, how do you power all of it? well, how are the electric motors and the communication system with a battery? so the zinc battery, which is also a one shot deal, we have as many batteries, the baton goes right in here at this point and there are as many batteries as we're going to run missions. it's five pounds and it's designed with the launch vibrations in the vehicle from cape kennedy in mind, it's a very rugged, reliable. and that's enough to run this before and after around this for 4 hours. yes. is the other thing that i'd like to mention is failure detection. so i have to be able to run a successful mission. we must feel confident that we could bring the band back in the event a failure. and the astronaut will have on

here various systems that tell him that he's got problems. if he in does two of these will be a low pressure warning device which will trigger an audible warning buzzer if the pressure goes below point two pci, how would that happen if we had a leak in a system or if for some reason we stopped supplying oxygen, the pressure would begin to decay? and the other thing that we would like to tell him about is if we're using up too much oxygen, we have a flow warning buzzer that tells him you're using your oxygen to fast do something. if he does get into one of these serious problems, how is he going to get back? he's wandering around and then he has an emergency mode of operation. he immediately cuts in his emergency oxygen system, which is built onto here for specially that purpose. the emergency oxygen system is a toroidal 7500 square inch supply that contains only 2/10 of a pound of oxygen. and when can when used in conjunction with the main supply can give us emergency

ventilation and of the helmet area, even though fan fails. now that thing will go in this area up against the backpack. another emergency system is in communication. we have a redundant system. we can have to see the rest of the spacesuit to be worn on the moon. we talked again with matthew retinopathy at the manned spacecraft center in houston. this white garment, what is the cerebral garments? it's made up into layers is a layer material. the first layer is a nomex. this whole garment provides protection against radiant energy impinging on the shield from the sun. and also we reflect from the moon and protect them against meteorites. so this most interesting installation installation only works in a vacuum. it's very similar to the material that we have in a thermos bottle on earth.

it's as though the men were completely enclosed in them. it's just so many layers of some seven or eight layers of aluminum mylar with a rim and, then covered with the breath of resistance nomex material that we've talked before and have this belt layer, this nylon felt, which provides the bumper protection against the meteorite. we often discuss, for instance, on the lunar surface, we have meteoroid micrometeoroid, which are constantly hitting the moon even if they don't hit the man or only hit close to the man, they travel at immense speeds, something like 30,000 feet per second or higher. and as they hit the moon, they send off showers of rocks which to have high energies associated with them. and they themselves traveling very high speeds, could injure the man were it not for the protection afforded by this soft

layer. how big are these are, they're not large. they from five micron in diameter upwards to a speck of dust of a you can see them actually. and as i said before, they went like ten times the speed of a bullet. so they have a lot of energy even though they great deal of energy, they bear out. they so fast that one could never know it again. here they are, he said. these are very unusual shoes that he has on top of the regular. no provide protection against radiant energy. the provide protection against conductive heat heat loss or gain through soles of the shoes moon. in the moon could actually be to touch this surface of the moon will probably be range between plus 250 degrees and -250 degrees and. the heat loss through the boots so could be tremendous. then of course, we have our

visors and give protection against both ultraviolet and infrared rays without from the lack of an atmosphere around the moon. normally on earth we have an atmosphere with filters out to a great degree the harmful radiation from the sun when they intent on the moon. we have no such cover and we have to provide. if it weren't there, it would become he'd have retinal burns and so forth. he must have kind of protection. these are all down over ground over his visor, the one for the infrared, the other one for the ultraviolet. they also provide visual protection in the visual, the visible range like big sunglasses. exactly. but with all of this material on that one or how he can do anything with just a stump a little bit, we actually can do quite a. you want to show him some of the exercises i use pressurized here

three and a half, 3.7 pounds quite a bit. it's very interesting but that's fine on here on the earth. but is it the with boots up on the moon. it wouldn't be on the the same on the moon. no on earth where this test just run. we're at one g but it really, in order to determine how how effort is associated with working on the lunar surface, we must somehow simulate the lunar gravity. the lunar gravity being approximately one sixth that of the the earth. now have three ways of achieving this. the first is a16g simulate to which we had fabricated. it is series of levers counterbalanced with weights, with a man hanging on end of it. he's like one portion of a giant mobile. and by counterbalancing and over

weighting one side, we can him the effective the effect of 16g. however, there's a great deal of math and inertia associated with this rig. it weighs several tons and. in order to overcome this, we use several ropes and then on the of them so that it won't take over from the man then there's a third one second one and this is the langley simulator where a large pendulum, a very long pendulum is attached. the man sideways who attempts to walk as though he were walking alongside of a building he's held by six or eight tethers from various points of articulation on his in this manner we can vary the point or pivot of the pendulum so as to simulate again 16g on his boot soles, but probably the best of doing it is in the kc 135

aircraft, which through parabolic flying parabolic arc can simulate between 35 and 40 seconds in duration 16g and we've done of our test most effective tests are done at altitude in the kc 135 craft. now these are supplied to us the air force. but when you put all that together what does a spacesuit nowadays cost specifically the mercury spacesuit ran between six and $7,000. the gemini spacecraft spacesuit will run ultimately. approximately $35,000. and the apollo suit, when it is complete on a unit, will run somewhere around $250,000, including the life support system. let's see. do you feel that this apollo suit is the ultimate spacesuit? no. there is another system that's being developed undergoing the same series tests that have been

imposed on the other suits. and this is a hard suit this suit is fabricated of of aluminum and honeycomb. so like a suit of armor, then it's indeed a suit of armor, with the exception of the visor, which is a plastic, the joints are covered with cloth just for purposes of protection, keeping ducts and so forth out of them. but many of us feel that a suit of this type is the ultimate in lunar exploration, the extravehicular mobility unit for a project apollo is, as we've seen, not the final word spacesuits. research is already underway on even more advanced systems, but no matter what these systems may look like, they will certainly benefit from the experience gained with apollo emu. today we visited the man center in houston, texas i'm john bet. am i t? science reporter.

and. there.