"No one knows what Columbus was wearing when he set foot in the New
World, but on July 20, 1969, when Neil Armstrong took his “one giant
leap” onto the Moon, he was clad in this custom-made spacesuit, model
A7L, serial number 056. Its cost, estimated at the time as $100,000
(more than $670,000 today), sounds high only if you think of it as
couture. In reality, once helmet, gloves and an oxygen-supplying
backpack were added, it was a wearable spacecraft. Cocooned within 21
layers of synthetics, neoprene rubber and metalized polyester films,
Armstrong was protected from the airless Moon’s extremes of heat and
cold (plus 240 Fahrenheit degrees in sunlight to minus 280 in shadow),
deadly solar ultraviolet radiation and even the potential hazard of
micrometeorites hurtling through the void at 10 miles per second.
"For the suit’s creator, the International Latex Corporation in Dover,
Delaware, the toughest challenge was to contain the pressure necessary
to support life (about 3.75 pounds per square inch of pure oxygen),
while maintaining enough flexibility to afford freedom of motion. A
division of the company that manufactured Playtex bras and girdles, ILC
had engineers who understood a thing or two about rubber garments. They
invented a bellowslike joint called a convolute out of neoprene
reinforced with nylon tricot that allowed an astronaut to bend at the
shoulders, elbows, knees, hips and ankles with relatively little effort.
Steel aircraft cables were used throughout the suit to absorb tension
forces and help maintain its shape under pressure."
Via
Smithsonian.com
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