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SF author Ken MacLeod said that the specification of a human being is "a space suit for a fish." For a list of the parameters for a NASA spec space suit, go here.
Current NASA space suits have their drawbacks. They take forever to put on, they fight your every movement, and if you tear it you die hideously in about 90 seconds.
The only thing that allows an astronaut to bend their limbs at all is the magic of constant volume joints. These are why most pictures of space suits look like the Michelin Man (i.e., like a stack of donuts).
 Photos courtesy of NASA
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Taking a typical over-engineering approach, NASA has been looking into armored suits. These suits try to fix the tearing problem at the expense of making the first two problems much worse. |
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 Space Travel by Dr. Kurt Spielberg (1958).
Artwork by William Hutchinson.
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The gloves are especially a problem. Back in the 1950's it was unclear if space suit gloves were even possible. You need to make the various protective layers thin enough to be able to fit between adjacent fingers. And with miniature constant volume cuffs at each finger joint. Some suit designers took a tip from deep sea diving suits and postulated mechanical pincers instead of gloves. But as we know NASA did manage to design actual space suit gloves. However, they do not work very well. Almost every single NASA astronaut who has performed EVA has complaints about the difficulty of doing any fine work while wearing those gloves. |
 Tritonia deep sea diving suit. Note the pincers.
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 Professor Dava J. Newman, 2000
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An innovative alternative approach is the Mechanical Counter Pressure (MCP) Suit. Instead of trying to hold your body intact with air pressure, it holds it in with spandex. It sounds crazy but it just might be crazy enough to work. A skin-tight suit of high tech cloth exerts pressure over the rocketeer's body to provide pressure. A bubble helmet with oxygen supply allows one to breathe. Open pores in the suit actually allow the body to be cooled by perspiration. Tears will cause bruising to the skin, but are not as lethal as they are on a conventional suit. The suit can be quickly put on. They do not interfere as much with movement (+20% energy expenditure, compared with +400% for a NASA suit). And you can store them by folding them up and putting them inside the bubble helmet. |
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They do need some care in design, though. Any concave areas on the body that the suit does not hug will bulge out under internal body pressure until it fills the void (i.e., your armpits will become armhills). Putty or fluid filled bladders will be needed to prevent this. Care must be taken around those nether regions, the small of the back, and in certain locations of the female chest. And upon entering vacuum, one will have an instant attack of dire flatulence. Don't be polite, let it out right away or you may damage your intestines. |
 Professor Dava J. Newman models a mock-up of one of her suits.
Image courtesy of the Volker Steger/Science Photo Library.
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From Exiles To Glory by Jerry Pournelle (1977). The pressure suit went on like a diver's wet suit, and looked like one only not so thick. It fit very closely; he had to use talcum power to get into it. Gloves dogged onto the ends of the sleeves, and a seal set firmly around his neck. He slipped into the boots, hung the small equipment bag over his shoulder, and reported back to the technicians. They pulled and pinched, looking for loose spots. They didn't find any in Kevin's, but the next to come up was the girl he'd seen before, and after a moment they handed her a lump of what looked like clay. "Shove that under your breasts," the technician said. "Yeah, right there. Don't leave any gaps." "But - " She was obviously embarrassed. "Lady, you're going into vacuum," the man explained. "Your innards will be pressurized to about seven pounds by the air in your helmet. Outside is nothing. Your skin won't hold that. The suit will, but you've got to be flat against the suit, otherwise you'll swell up to fit any empty spaces. It won't do a lot of good for your figure.""Oh. Thank you," she said. She turned away and used the clay as she'd been told. |
There may be a length of tubing added along the seams of the arms, legs, and torso. The suit will be relaxed for easy dressing, then the tubing will be pressurized to put tension on the fabric (This was used in the g-suits worn by early jet pilots). The tubing will automatically pressurize when the helmet is put on and pressured up. A more advanced design uses a strip of "shape metal alloy'. An applied voltage can toggle the metal strip between expanded and contracted.
There is some discussion of space suit design here.
 Solar Lottery by Philip K. Dick, 1959. Artwork by Ed Valigursky.
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In The Millennial Project Savage suggests that light tungsten armor plates be worn over the suit to give some anti-radiation protection (this would only be needed in high radiation areas, like the Van Allen belts). A minimal version of the suit can be developed for everyday wear inside a spacecraft. In cases of emergency air pressure loss, all you'd need is an oxygen mask and earplugs to survive for hours (This was used in Jerry Pournelle's "Tinker". The suit was worn like long johns under a coverall. The coverall is due to the fact that the suit is about as modest as wearing a coat of paint.). If you want to go to extremes, a full MPC suit could carry six litres of Spirulina culture with support equipment, creating a closed life support system. |
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The helmet will have an outer layer of five millimeters of high density lead crystal. Inside will be two layers of dense borosilicate glass sandwiched between two layers of Lexan. The middle layer of Lexan will add strength and prevent shattering, the inner will act as a reserve helmet. The outer surface will be gold anodized to block glare, ultraviolet, and infra-red. There may be a nested set of telescoping curved armor plates that can be deployed for further protection. Some SF novels have a space helmets equipped with a tiny airlock near the mouth, called a "chow-lock." It is used to allow the astronaut to eat and drink without venting the helmet's air to the vacuum of space. I am uncertain how practical this concept is, or how idiot proof it can be made. The part of the suit that will cause designers the most headaches is the "neck dam". This goes around the neck, and tries to keep and air-tight seal. Otherwise the helmet shoots off like a champagne cork and all the air in the helmet will spray out. It also has to be comfortable to wear, and help in controlling the humidity inside the helmet (so it doesn't fog up). "Planetary suits" are used when there is an atmosphere, but it isn't breathable. They have a slightly different design from space suits. |
 Artwork by Robert Schulz
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 Artwork by Ron Turner, 1960
 Photos courtesy of NASA
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It will also be useful to supplement one's supply of space suits with emergency life support balls. These are basically bare essential spherical suits with no arms, legs, or heads for use by people who are injured or untrained in suit operations. When a passenger liner has a problem, the crew members will stuff the passengers into these balls, zip them up, and tow them to safety. In this case, one would be wise to use balls that cannot be opened from the inside. Passengers can do remarkably silly things at the worst possible moment. And even a person highly skilled in space suits can be a problem if they are unconscious and suffering from a broken arm. It will be much quicker to slip them into a ball instead of trying to suit them up. |
 Sperry Gyroscope Co. advertisement, 1962
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While wearing a space suit in vacuum, the iron-clad rule is The Buddy System. There are many mishaps that are trivial if you have a companion but fatal if you don't. Imagine that your suit springs a slow leak on your back just where you can't reach it with a repair patch. Oops. In cases of emergency, two space suited people can "cross-connect" their oxygen supplies. This is generally done when one of them runs out of breathable gas, the other shares their oxygen until they get to shelter. |
 Photos courtesy of NASA
While engaging in extra-vehicular activity, our space-suited rocketeers may use a "broomstick", or some kind of small jets (a Manned Maneuvering Unit or MMU). NASA has also developed a nitrogen-gas propelled unit that fits on the backpack, called the Simplified Aid for Extravehicular Activity Rescue (SAFER). The SAFER can help an astronaut return to the shuttle or station in the event that they gets separated from the spacecraft. SAFER has a deltaV capacity of 3 m/s. |
 Baby, it's cold outside...
Artwork by Earle K. Bergey, "inventor of the brass brassière"
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 Artwork by Fred Freeman for Collier's Magazine (1952).
For strict safely, static lines or safety lines are mandatory. The spacecraft should have plenty of small steel rings bolted at regular intervals over the hull for spacemen to attach their safety lines to. Without a static line, a spaceman who manages to get both magnetic boots separated from the hull will suddenly find themself on a slow impromptu tour of the solar system. If their widows are real lucky the bodies might actually be recovered for burial. Another useful item is a "line throwing gun". This allows one to shoot a safety line from one spacecraft to another. The line will have to be made of special materials, since most terrestrial ropes and cables will turn glass-like and shatter in vacuum. |
 diagram courtesy of NASA
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Things get real nasty if the ship is a tumbling pigeon or otherwise rotates to provide artificial gravity. The poor EVA spacemen have to swing from hand-hold to hand-hold like trapezes artists. From their viewpoint, the spacecraft is overhead and below is a long fall to infinity. For details read Heinlein's short story "Ordeal in Space".
They may also need a "beeper". This is a low powered radar the size and shape of flashlight, used to locate small objects nearby (like that zero-recoil wrench you let go of "just for a minute"). You wave it around until is starts beeping (heard over your suit radio). As you approach the object the beep rate increases.
Astronauts also have to watch what they say. There is no air in space, so unless you are touching helmets together, you cannot talk with others without a radio. But while speaking on Terra means your voice becomes fainter with distance, over a radio it will be loud and clear out to the limit of the radio's range. This means cursing under your breath or muttering behind somebody's back will not work. There might be several channels to allow a bit of privacy, or if several conversations are going on at once.
Some SF novels suggest that for privacy, two space suited people might turn off their raidos, and touch helmets. The theory is that the sound of the conversation will be conducted through the contact between helmets. However, others maintain that the area of contact will be so small (since the helmets are basically spherical) that no audible sound will manage to pass. In Poul Anderson's TAU ZERO, he says that instead astronauts will learn how to read lips.
Many SF novels have magnetized space boots to allow the rocketeers to adhere to the hull, but magnets do not work very well on hulls composed of titanium, aluminum, or magnesium. If one does have a ferromagnetic hull, it might be best to have magnets just in the boot toes but not the heels, to facilitate walking. These might be used inside the spacecraft's lifesystem, if you think those velcro footies used by the stewardess in 2001 are just too unmanly for words.
Once people are suited up, it does become hard to tell who is who. In Destination Moon, there were four spacemen, and each had a uniquely colored suit. Kind of like colored tooth-brushes. But this won't work if you have more than a few spacemen, er, spacepeople. The person's name stenciled in large letter across the front and back is a possibility.
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In Piers Anthony's The Kirlian Quest, he notes that this problem has occurred before: knights in armor are similarly anonymous. The solution is coat of arms and heraldry. When a proposed heraldic "device" (coat of arms) is submitted to the college of heralds, it is compared with all existing devices. The new device must have at least one major and one minor point of visual difference from those already registered. Otherwise it would be too easy to confuse the two devices in the heat of battle. Mistaking a foe for a friend could be fatal. |
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In Larry Niven's Protector, the Belters of the asteroid belt spend most of their lives inside their space suit. They have a tendency to paint their suits in extravagant colors. One of the characters had Salvador Dali's Madonna of Port Lligat on the front of their suit. In an interesting psychological quirk, Belters also tend to be nudists when in a pressurized environment.
From PROTECTOR by Larry Niven. 1973
Most Belters decorated their suits. Why not? The interior of his suit was the only place many a Belter could call home, and the one possession he had to keep in perfect condition. But even in the Belt, Nick Sohl's suit was unique.
On an orange background was the painting of a girl. She was short; her head barely reached Nick's neck ring. Her skin was a softly glowing green. Only her lovely back showed across the front of the suit. Her hair was streaming bonfire flames, flickering orange with touches of yellow and white, darkening into red-black smoke as it swept across the girl's left shoulder. She was nude. Her arms were wrapped around the suit's torso, her hands touching the air pac on its back; her legs embraced the suit's thighs, so that her heels touched the backs of the flexible metal knee joints. It was a very beautiful painting, so beautiful that it almost wasn't vulgar. A pity the suit's sanitary outlet wasn't somewhere else.
From "The Hole Man" by Larry Niven. 1974
On Earth, Andrew Lear's habits would have been no more than a character trait. In a hurry, he might choose mismatched socks. He might put off using the dishwasher for a day or two if he were involved in something interesting. He would prefer a house that looked "lived in." God help the maid who tried to clean up his study. He'd never be able to find anything afterward.
He was a brilliant but one-sided man. Backpacking or skin diving might have changed his habits -- in such pursuits you learn not to forget any least trivial thing -- but they would never have tempted him. An expedition to Mars was something he simply could not turn down. A pity, because neatness is worth your life in space.
You don't leave your fly open in a pressure suit.
A month after the landing, Childrey caught Lear doing just that.
The "fly" on a pressure suit is a soft rubber tube over your male member. It leads to a bladder, and there's a spring clamp on it. You open the clamp to use it. Then you close the clamp and open an outside spigot to evacuate the bladder into vacuum.
Similar designs for women involve a catheter, which is hideously uncomfortable. I presume the designers will keep trying. It seems wrong to bar half the human race from our ultimate destiny.
Lear was addicted to long walks. He was coming back from a walk, and he met Childrey coming out. Childrey noticed that the waste spigot on Lear's suit was open, the spring broken. Lear had been out for hours. If he'd had to go, he might have bled to death through flesh ruptured by vacuum.
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From SPACE CADET by Robert Heinlein (1948) The instructor ordered his group to "Suit upl" without preliminary, as it was assumed that they had studied the instruction spool. The last of the ship's spin had been removed some days before. Matt curled himself into a ball, floating free, and spread open the front of his suit. It was an unhandy process; he found shortly that he was trying to get both legs down one leg of the suit. He backed out and tried again. This time the big fishbowl flopped forward into the opening. Most of the section were already in their suits. The instructor swam over to Matt and looked at him sharply. "You've passed your free-fall basic?" "Yes," Matt answered miserably. "It's hard to believe. You handle yourself like a turtle on its back. Here." The instructor helped Matt to tuck in, much as if he were dressing a baby in a snow suit. Matt blushed. The instructor ran through the check-off list -- tank pressure, suit pressure, rocket fuel charge, suit oxygen, blood oxygen (measured by a photoelectric gadget clipped to the earlobe) and finally each suit's walky-talky unit. Then he herded them into the airlock. |
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From EARTHLIGHT by Arthur C. Clarke. 1955.
First Jamieson, then Wheeler, chanted the alphabetic mnemonic - "A is for air-lines, B is for batteries, C is for couplings, D is for D.F. loop ..." which sounds so childish the first time one hears it, but which so quickly becomes part of the routine of lunar life - and is something nobody ever jokes about.
And in Clarke's "The Haunted Spacesuit" aka "Who's There?" they chant "FORB" for Fuel, Oxygen, Radio, Batteries.
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From SPACEHOUNDS OF IPC by E.E. "Doc" Smith, 1931. Steve and Nadia get suited up. They donned the heavily-insulated, heated suits, and Stevens snapped into their sockets the locking plugs of the drag line. "Hear me?" he asked. "Sound-disks all x?" "All x." "On the radio-all x?" "All x." "I tested your tanks and heaters-they're all x. But you'll have to test . . ." |
"I know the ritual by heart, Steve. It's been in every show in the country for the last year, but I didn't know you had to go through it every time you went out-of-doors! Valves, number one all x, two all x, three all x . . ."
"Quit it!" he snapped. "You aren't testing those valves! That check-up is no joke, guy. These suits are complicated affairs, and some parts are apt to get out of order. You see, a thing to give you fresh air at normal pressure and to keep you warm in absolute space can't be either simple or foolproof. They've worked on them for years, but they're pretty crude yet. They're tricky, and if one goes sour on you out in space it's just too bad-you're lucky to get back alive. A lot of men are out there somewhere yet because of sloppy check-ups."
" 'Scuse it, please-I'll be good," and the careful checking and testing of every vital part of the space-suits went on.
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From Ron Turner's Space Ace pop up book (1953). First things first, and the first thing you need in space is a space suit. Apart from its necessity for working on space projects (building space stations, etc.) it is absolutely vital for examining the outside of your ship in case of damage from meteorites, etc. It may even be necessary to abandon ship, in extreme cases, and in this event your very existence depends upon its efficiency. You see me here in a self-contained, total-vacuum, mark-seven suit. Below you will find listed some of its most important features:
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 Artwork by Ron Turner
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From Islands in the Sky by Arthur C. Clarke, 1952.
. . . This was where the broomsticks came in.
Commander Doyle had invented them, and the name, of course, came from the old idea that once upon a time witches used to ride on broomsticks. We certainly rode around the station on ours. They consisted of one hollow tube, sliding inside another. The two were connected by a powerful spring, one tube ending in a hook, the other in a wide rubber pad. That was all there was to it. If you wanted to move, you put the pad against the nearest wall and shoved. The recoil launched you into space, and when you arrived at your destination you let the spring absorb your velocity and bring you to rest. Trying to stop yourself with your bare hands was liable to result in sprained wrists.
It wasn't quite as easy as it sounds, though, for if you weren't careful you could bounce right back the way you'd come.
From 2010: Odyssey Two by Arthur C. Clarke, 1982.
There are some professions which have evolved unique and characteristic tools - the longshoreman's hook, the potter's wheel, the bricklayer's trowel, the geologist's hammer. The men who had to spend much of their time on zero-gravity construction projects had developed the broomstick.
It was very simple - a hollow tube just a metre long, with a footpad at one end and a retaining loop at the other. At the touch of a button, it could telescope out to five or six times its normal length, and the internal shock-absorbing system allowed a skilled operator to perform the most amazing manoeuvres. The footpad could also become a claw or hook if necessary; there were many other refinements, but that was the basic design. It looked deceptively easy to use; it wasn't.
. . .
Everything happened in about five seconds. Brailovsky triggered his broomstick, so that it telescoped out to its full length of four metres and made contact with the approaching ship. The broomstick started to collapse, its internal spring absorbing Brailovsky's considerable momentum; but it did not, as Curnow had fully expected, bring him to rest beside the antenna mount. It immediately expanded again, reversing the Russian's velocity so that he was, in effect, reflected away from Discovery just as rapidly as he had approached. He flashed past Curnow, heading out into space again, only a few centimetres away. The startled American just had time to glimpse a large grin before Brailovsky shot past him.
A second later, there was a jerk on the line connecting them, and a quick surge of deceleration as they shared momentum. Their opposing velocities had been neatly cancelled; they were virtually at rest with respect to Discovery. Curnow had merely to reach out to the nearest handhold, and drag them both in.
From Have Space Suit - Will Travel by Robert A. Heinlein, 1958.
I had an awful time getting into it - dressing in an upper berth is a cinch by comparison. The photographer said, "Just a minute, kid. I've seen 'em do it at Wright Field. Mind some advice?"
"Uh? No. I mean, yes, tell me."
"You slide in like an Eskimo climbing into a kayak. Then wiggle your right arm in-"
It was fairly easy that way, opening front gaskets wide and sitting down in it, though I almost dislocated a shoulder. There were straps to adjust for size but we didn't bother; he stuffed me into it, zippered the gaskets, helped me to my feet and shut the helmet.
. . .
But I didn't get tired of it; a space suit is a marvelous piece of machinery - a little space station with everything miniaturized. Mine was a chrome-plated helmet and shoulder yoke which merged into a body of silicone, asbestos, and glass-fibre cloth. This hide was stiff except at the joints. They were the same rugged material but were "constant volume" - when you bent a knee a bellows arrangement increased the volume over the knee cap as much as the space back of the knee was squeezed. Without this a man wouldn't be able to move; the pressure inside, which can add up to several tons, would hold him rigid as a statue. These volume compensators were covered with dural armor; even the finger joints had little dural plates over the knuckles.
It had a heavy glass-fibre belt with clips for tools, and there were the straps to adjust for height and weight. There was a back pack, now empty, for air bottles, and zippered pockets inside and out, for batteries and such.
The helmet swung back, taking a bib out of the yoke with it, and the front opened with two gasketed zippers; this left a door you could wiggle into. With helmet clamped and zippers closed it was impossible to open the suit with pressure inside.
Switches were mounted on the shoulder yoke and on the helmet; the helmet was monstrous. It contained a drinking tank, pill dispensers six on each side, a chin plate on the right to switch radio from "receive" to "send," another on the left to increase or decrease flow of air, an automatic polarizer for the face lens, microphone and earphones, space for radio circuits in a bulge back of the head, and an instrument board arched over the head. The instrument dials read backwards because they were reflected in an inside mirror in front of the wearer's forehead at an effective fourteen inches from the eyes.
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Above the lens or window there were twin headlights. On top were two antennas, a spike for broadcast and a horn that squirted microwaves like a gun-you aimed it by facing the receiving station. The horn antenna was armored except for its open end. This sounds as crowded as a lady's purse but everything was beautifully compact; your head didn't touch anything when you looked out the lens. But you could tip your head back and see reflected instruments, or tilt it down and turn it to work chin controls, or simply turn your neck for water nipple or pills. In all remaining space sponge-rubber padding kept you from banging your head no matter what. My suit was like a fine car, its helmet like a Swiss watch. But its air bottles were missing; so was radio gear except for built-in antennas; radar beacon and emergency radar target were gone, pockets inside and out were empty, and there were no tools on the belt. The manual told what it ought to have - it was like a stripped car. Carry steel bottles on your back; they hold "air" (oxygen and helium) at a hundred and fifty atmospheres, over 2000 pounds per square inch; you draw from them through a reduction valve down to 150 p.s.i. and through still another reduction valve, a "demand" type which keeps pressure in your helmet at three to five pounds per square inch-two pounds of it oxygen. Put a silicone-rubber collar around your neck and put tiny holes in it, so that the pressure in the body of your suit is less, the air movement still faster; then evaporation and cooling will be increased while the effort of bending is decreased. Add exhaust valves, one at each wrist and ankle-these have to pass water as well as gas because you may be ankle deep in sweat. The bottles are big and clumsy, weighing around sixty pounds apiece, and each holds only about five mass pounds of air even at that enormous pressure; instead of a month's supply you will have only a few hours - my suit was rated at eight hours for the bottles it used to have. . . . |
 Artwork by George Solonevich (1961). Note the binoculars/range finder
mounted stalks.
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To make darn sure that you're getting enough (your nose can't tell) you clip a little photoelectric cell to your ear and let it see the color of your blood; the redness of the blood measures the oxygen it carries. Hook this to a galvanometer. If its needle gets into the danger zone, start saying your prayers. (ed. note: in Heinlein's other novels, instead of a galvanometer they use an "anoxia warning light")
. . .
Air sighed softly into the helmet, its flow through the demand valve regulated by the rise and fall of my chest - I could reset it to speed up or slow down by the chin control.
. . .
I didn't bother with a radar target or beacon; the first is childishly simple, the second is fiendishly expensive. But I did want radio for the space-operations band of the spectrum - the antennas suited only those wavelengths.
. . .
The only thing that complicated the rest of the electrical gear was that everything had to be either "fail-safe" or "no-fail"; a man in a space suit can't pull into the next garage if something goes wrong - the stuff has to keep on working or he becomes a vital statistic. That was why the helmet had twin headlights; the second cut in if the first failed - even the peanut lights for the dials over my head were twins. I didn't take short cuts; every duplicate circuit I kept duplicate and tested to make sure that automatic changeover always worked.
Mr. Charton insisted on filling the manual's list on those items a drugstore stocks - maltose and dextrose and amino tablets, vitamins, dexedrine, dramamine, aspirin, antibiotics, antihistamines, codeine, almost any pill a man can take to help him past a hump that might kill him.
. . .
I made it a dress rehearsal - water in the drinking tank, pill dispensers loaded, first-aid kit inside, vacuum-proof duplicate (I hoped it was vacuum-proof) in an outside pocket. All tools on belt, all lanyards tied so that tools wouldn't float away in free fall.
. . .
I ran into a snag. The spare bottles I had filched from those ghouls had screw-thread fittings like mine - but Peewee's bottles had bayonet-and-snap joints. Okay, I guess, for tourists, chaperoned and nursed and who might get panicky while bottles were changed unless it was done fast - but not so good for serious work.
(Bayonet-and-snap joint: a joint to match two pieces into a single piece; instead of screw threads, a little pointed piece (bayonet) from one section sticks into a slot in the second piece and latches on; 35 mm cameras and lenses are good examples. So named because it was invented for bayonets.)
. . .
"Mind your pressure. Kip. You're swelling up too fast." I kicked the chin valve while watching the gauge - and kicking myself for letting a little girl catch me in a greenhorn trick. But she had used a space suit before, while I had merely pretended to.
From Delilah and the Space-Rigger by Robert Heinlein (1949)
Besides the usual cargo lock we had three Kwikloks. A Kwiklok is an Iron Maiden without spikes; it fits a man in a suit, leaving just a few pints of air to scavenge, and cycles automatically. A big time saver in changing shifts. I passed through the middle-sized one; Tiny, of course, used the big one. Without hesitation the new man pulled himself into the small one.
