The Story Behind Upcoming Film “Spacesuit” (2013)

http://www.thecredits.org/2013/09/bras-in-space-the-incredible-true-story-behind-upcoming-film-spacesuit/

by cromulent • 12 years ago

79 22 12 years ago

gdubs2• 12 years ago

"Moon Machines" -- an incredible series if you haven't seen it, with episodes on building the flight computer, etc -- has an excellent episode on the story behind the spacesuit:

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xxxikn_moon-machines-2008-p...

hcrisp• 12 years ago

A good companion book is "How Apollo Flew to the Moon", by W. David Woods. It fills in a lot of the technical detail that other Apollo space program books omit, without forgetting the human dimension. Amazing effort by a man who is not an engineer, nor affiliated with the original Apollo program. He just had an interest that grew over the years until he was encouraged to put his knowledge into a book. He wrote it like he was explaining Apollo to a friend at his day job.

kahirsch• 12 years ago

Thanks, that's a very good video.

AYBABTME• 12 years ago

Just finished watching the whole series after your comment 6h ago. Was very nice, and gave perspective to engineering practices, notably testing, time management, complexity management. All kinds of things we have to deal with in the immaterial software world, they had to deal with at such large scale, with little room for error.

Also the episode about the guidance software was all the more relevant.

gdubs2• 12 years ago

Great way to spend a Sunday! Yes, the guidance software episode is particularly relevant; it was the first one I watched. Puts today's software engineering in perspective.

efiftythree3• 12 years ago

There really needs to be more, very public, displays of stories like this one. Whenever I hear someone ask why we should invest in missions to Mars and/or the Moon this is the kind of thing I think about. How many amazing things that we take completely for granted were created in order for us to send humans to the moon and live in space?

Setting our sights on harsh and distant destinations creates a massive vacuum of technological innovation. I firmly believe that solutions to energy, hunger, conservation/human impact on ecosystems can be found on our journey to the further reaches of space.

philwelch3• 12 years ago

Why don't we make energy, hunger, and conservation the moonshots themselves instead of trying to make a literal moonshot and hope that we solve those problems as a side effect?

ars3• 12 years ago

Because those things are incremental things, not all at once things.

We slows transition to nuclear power, not all at once. We slowly provide inorganic fertilizer and irrigation water to everyone, not all at once. We slowly increase living standards so that people have extra energy and money to care about pollution.

declan2• 12 years ago

I'm sympathetic to what you're saying -- these articles are great reads -- but remember there's also the opportunity cost of taking money via taxes from entrepreneurs and private-sector innovators who, in aggregate, would surely have come up with some of their own innovations with additional resources. And perhaps they would have been even more useful to humanity.

pedrocr2• 12 years ago

As far as I know the argument for that is not very strong. Despite all the mythology around entrepreneurship startups are known to be good at piecing together existing technology into scalable businesses, not primary research. Moonshot level breakthroughs need large sums of money being thrown into the unknown. And that is something for the state like in the foundation of SV[1] or large monopolies like Bell Labs inventing the transistor.

[1] http://steveblank.com/secret-history/

efiftythree3• 12 years ago

I'm hopeful, based on organizations such as SpaceX, that these innovation vacuums will continue to be filled by private organizations rather than via government agencies. Not only do I hope that will be the case I think at this point when considering the financial state of most governments around the world it appears in my mind to be the only real working solution.

We know all too well that the process to taxation to output results in cents on the dollar reaching its destination.

ErsatzVerkehr• 12 years ago

It always pains me to see the space program justified on the basis of its spin-offs. The main (civilian) problems that the space program solved were in getting to space, putting a man on the moon, developing a re-usable orbiter, and building the space station. Similarly, if we really want to solve problems of energy or hunger, why not create a dedicated alternative-energy or anti-poverty 'Apollo program'?

One of the greatest engines of technological development in the 20th century was WWII. Fortunately few people argue for new wars by citing the potential for spin-off technologies. But the logic would be about as good. (Arguably the space program itself was a product of the Cold War.)

Aside from that - the linked article doesn't say anything about spin-offs. It says that very prosaic, existing technology for daily life on Earth was adapted for use in the space program.

chc2• 12 years ago

We already have solutions to all of those problems. People just don't want to put them into practice because nuclear power is so dangerous it causes like 0.05% of the deaths of traditional energy sources and eating mostly vegetarian diets is just unbearable, etc. What they want are solutions that are indistinguishable from what we have now but still somehow solve the problem. I don't think Mars is going to offer us a free lunch.

efiftythree3• 12 years ago

As the old saying dictates Mars certainly isn't a free lunch. However, I wouldn't necessarily agree that we have solutions to the problems I mentioned. I'd agree that we have some potential solutions most of which are in very early stages and often quite expensive. Both issues have kept wider adoption from occurring.

dfc• 12 years ago

The space program was not an idealistic quest for knowledge. It seems like you like your spin-offs to be the product of nation state v. nation state. Maybe blame al-qaeda? We have drones instead of mars rockets because UBL hid in caves and not on mars.

ars3• 12 years ago

According to Wikipedia this article isn't really very accurate. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ILC_Dover

They lost the contract because the suit didn't work, not because of bureaucracy.

The company that made it was already making pressure suits for the Navy and Air Force, they were not a bra maker (a sister division did make bras, but the parent was primarily a latex company not a bra company, they made life rafts, canteens etc).

This article is basically the Hollywood version of the story: i.e. just a small resemblance to reality, but mostly story, little fact.

The Story Behind Upcoming Film “Spacesuit” (2013)

Related Stories