Axiom Reveals Its Lunar Fashion Line For 2023 And Beyond
Keith’s note: All the pre-launch hype for a new Moon suit sort of petered out today as Axiom Space revealed its new Artemis moon fashion line for 2023 and beyond. Before the fashion show began at NASA Johnson some images were released at the Axiom website of a dark black suit with orange highlights. The team colors and uniforms of the Baltimore Orioles immediately came to mind. But why is the suit black?
BUT WAIT – this black suit is not the official Artemis III Moon suit (what was supposedly being announced). The Axiom guy said that the actual Moon suit will be white. OK, so why the trendy colors? Simple: Axiom hired a costume designer from the TV show “For All Mankind” to sexy up the suit. Oh well, the aftermarket apparel companies will have fun with the trendy colors – and of course Axiom will be able to extract licensing fees for that. My question for NASA is “When will we seethe ACTUAL suit that Artemis III astronauts will wear on the lunar surface?”. Maybe someone in the media will ask that – but NASA TV cut off their feed so anyone not in the room won’t know what the answer is.
Given the harsh thermal extremes on the Moon one would think that the suit would be much brighter so as to reflect back unwanted solar energy. Also (speaking from personal expeditionary experience) given that the first landing is in the heavily shadowed lunar south pole you’d think that brighter colors would be used so as to aid anyone looking to find and rescue an incapacitated astronaut. Speaking of rescue, there seems to be no obvious way to attach the sort of gear you’d want to use on rugged terrain (harnesses, carabiner loops etc.) I have asked JSC about this before and they never actually answered.
Update: they did have a media webcast after all but the NASA Johnson AV squad did not take the phone bridge 101 training class so the reporters who dialed in could not be heard. The NASA PAO person had to listen to and then repeat their question which wasted time and cut down on the number of questions. The Axiom guys did not really get into specifics since this is all still an open competition environment. There are all kinds of pockets and attach points on their suit for things like crew rescue – but Axiom is not going to talk about that until they reveal the actual suit design. So … what we saw today was certainly more fashion show than design briefing. The suit we saw is not the suit we were promised and there is no indication when we’ll actually see the actual suit.
6 responses to “Axiom Reveals Its Lunar Fashion Line For 2023 And Beyond”
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FYI, as a life long fan of the team they are the BALTIMORE ORIOLES.
Grrr .. auto spell ….. I live in Northern VA so I should have caught that.
I’m not getting the decorative elements on the top – that V-shaped thing on the chest and the shoulder wings. Abrasive regolith was a big problem for Apollo. Why would you design a suit that adds decorative elements that will trap abrasive sand and drag it back into your habitat?
And how long will the suit last under those conditions and with what replacement costs? Moon dust is likely to greatly shorten the lifetime of the suits, habitats, rovers, etc.
Suit only needs to last 4 Eva’s since they aren’t coming back or being reused from one Artemis mission to the next. Maybe a glove from the historic first woman ansld first person of color suit will make it’s way back to a museum but that is only if Orion can find a spot for it on return. The suits stay on the lander to be disposed of which is sad.
Well, if Apollo was any kind of an example, they changed manufacturers fewer than 5 years before the moon landing and in the last 2 years the suit went through substantial revisions so that posters being published with artwork of the astronauts on the surface looked quite a bit different than when it really happened. Maybe we’ll see in the next 9 months whether the Moon lander is ready to fly and then perhaps the Moon landing could happen in 5 years. Artemis 2 maybe in 2025 and then 3 perhaps 3 years later.