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SNL Spoof Of Space Station EVA Makes A Point

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
March 31, 2019
Filed under

In NASA’s spacesuit saga, women see their own stories, Washington Post
“A spacesuit may not look much like what most women wear to work. But as plans changed for an all-female spacewalk this week because of spacesuit sizing issues, many working women on Earth saw something of their own experience in the headlines — sharing stories online about ill-fitting uniforms, male-centered equipment design or office spaces outfitted without their needs in mind. Across social media platforms, women told of giant overalls, wading boots that were the wrong size, oversize gloves that kept them from being nimble, a lack of bulletproof vests that accommodated their chest sizes and a dearth of petite-size personal protective equipment at construction sites.”
Keith’s note: The operational facts of this incident speak for themsleves. The crew and NASA made a decision based on the hardware as it was configured on board the ISS and the interruption to the ISS schedule that would be required to make a second medium-torso EVA suit. They also considered the safety and operational requirements that one astronaut required after their body had adapted to life in space. That said, a bigger question – one that cannot be immediately resolved – is whether having 30-40 year old spacesuits with their limited ability to be quickly reconfigured is how we want to equip astronauts to work in space. With an ever expanding diversity of people becoming astronauts – through whatever avenue – sheer pragmatism will dictate that EVA suits that are much more easily serviceable and adaptable to every wearer will be required. NASA and the commercial sector will have to realize that this is required and will then need to devote the budgetary resources to make this happen.

NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.

21 responses to “SNL Spoof Of Space Station EVA Makes A Point”

  1. Matthew Black says:
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    Ugh. I hate it when the crewed space program gets treated like a laughing stock…

    • Jeff2Space says:
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      Unfortunately, NASA PAO hyped this one up a bit too much (i.e. first all female spacewalk ever) and when it was cancelled, it did make NASA look like they didn’t know what they were doing because initially, no one in the press did a good job of explaining the change.

      It took days before I saw articles which really, truly, explained the gory details. Yes when you read all the details the change makes perfect sense. But, I’ve also been following the space program all my life and have an aerospace engineering degree on top of that, so I know that the EMUs aren’t monolithic things and that spare medium suit torso on ISS wouldn’t have been readily usable without all the other bits attached to it.

      Unfortunately, the general public was just like, “WTF, NASA? Why don’t you have enough spacesuits for women on the space station? Are you sexist or something”.

      Consider that the EMUs were designed during this era:

      NASA Engineers Designed Makeup Kits for Female Astronauts in Space
      https://www.vogue.com/artic

      NASA tweets astronaut’s makeup kit from 1978
      https://www.dailymail.co.uk

      • fcrary says:
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        From what I’ve read, there are several issues here. Sure, size and fitting change when someone spends time in free fall. And, yes, it isn’t easy to swap components of the current EMUs. So, under the circumstances, the decision was perfectly reasonable and not discriminatory.

        But, according to at least one report, they have two each (not necessarily in ready-to-use configuration) of medium, large and extra-large torsos for the EMUs on ISS. Where’s the small? What if medium fits someone on Earth but then they find out she needs a small after some time in free fall?

        The design of the suits is a third issue. If they were a bit more modular, or easier to get ready for use, this problem wouldn’t have come up. But there is a long list of things about those EMUs that need to be fixed for a next generation suit. I’m not sure modularity or prep time is near the top of the list.

        • cb450sc says:
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          Apparently the small and XL were jettisoned due to budget cuts, but the XL was brought back because too many of the men wouldn’t fit the L. This twitter feed has a surprisingly thorough explanation of the sizing and what happened.

          https://twitter.com/maryrob

        • Daniel Woodard says:
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          There has been discussion of new generations of space suits for many years but the money always runs out before they get to the operational level. The problem a few years ago with water building up in a helmet was similar, the equipment has been in service a long time. With so much incredibly delicate surgery now being robotic I have to wonder whether some investment in RMS systems with haptic feedback and greater dexterity might not pay off equally well.

      • Steve Pemberton says:
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        The Daily Mail article says Shuttle cost to deliver cargo to ISS in 2018 U.S. dollars was 272,000 per kilogram. That seems about three times even a high end estimate.

        • Jeff2Space says:
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          Cost per kg payload to ISS calculations vary widely for the space shuttle. This is because it’s not strictly delivering cargo. It’s also delivering a crew to ISS as well. If memory serves, this was anywhere from five to seven astronauts, depending on the mission. Those astronauts often did lots of work while there, including EVAs. So how do you account for the split between astronauts and cargo?

          Also, the overall cost of a shuttle flight varied greatly depending on who was doing the accounting. On the very low end it could be the marginal cost of adding a flight to the manifest, which ignores most of the “standing army” costs, giving a cost on the order of $450 million or so. On the higher end it could be the shuttle budget for that year divided by the number of flights. On the very highest end, it could be the total space shuttle program costs, including development, divided by the total number of flights. At the very highest end, you get a cost of about $1.5 billion per flight.

          • Steve Pemberton says:
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            Just a back of the napkin calculation of what Daily Mail was commenting on which was the cost per kg for delivering cargo to ISS. I used 1.5 billion per Shuttle flight, divided by 16,000 kg payload capacity to ISS, which is just over $90,000 per kg on a full capacity flight.

            Of course the Shuttle didn’t always fly fully loaded and maybe the study that they are referring to divided the estimated cost of all the ISS flights by the total flown cargo. Which is fine but then they should have been clear that’s what they meant. Otherwise it made it sound like if you wanted to deliver 16,000 kg to ISS on a Shuttle flight it would have cost 4.3 billion.

    • ThomasLMatula says:
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      If you think this is bad just wait and see what happens if SpaceX is successful with its DearMoon mission. The contrast between the dozen or so artists and reporters leaving the Starship via the walkway like tourists coming back from vacation versus the U.S. Navy fishing NASA astronauts out of the ocean after landing there in their spam can (AKA Orion) will be too good for the comedians to pass up.

      That is when the SLS/Orion/Gateway will have its funding pulled by an angry Congress after it holds hearings to find someone to blame for it. Yes, I know the Congressional Pork Machine is to blame, but finding someone else to blame for mistakes is a form of art in the beltway.

      • Michael Spencer says:
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        The excuse that space is hard and takes a long time worked when there was no comparison. It’s still hard. But the time thing, not so much.

  2. cb450sc says:
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    I have to point out that the dog pictured is (I am pretty sure) Laika, who not only didn’t get a spacesuit, but died in-flight.

    • Daniel Woodard says:
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      Laika is not the name of the dog, but a breed, although she was actually a mongrel and had several nicknames. Astonishingly she was found wandering in the street as a stray near the space program building. As a kid I was shocked to learn the Russians had no plan to bring the dog back alive.

      • ThomasLMatula says:
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        Yes, all the dogs that Russia sent into space were strays. The scientists felt they would be tougher and better able to handle it. She was about 2 years old when they found her and being a stray probably already had a litter or two of puppies. Her descendants may still be roaming the streets of Moscow as strays.

        Yes, it was cruel for them to sacrifice a dog that way, as bad as the cosmetic industry using dogs, cats and rabbits for tests. Years later the scientist said there was really no need for it and he regretted doing it.

  3. David_McEwen says:
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    What surprised me about this whole fiasco is that they are using 30-40 year old spacesuits! Another telltale sign of NASA’s aging infrastucture/equipment. Somehow it feels like the agency is being hollowed out.

    • fcrary says:
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      It’s not just NASA. Unless I missed something, the Russians are still using the Orlan suits. That design was first used back in 1977. I’m not sure about upgrades, either for the Orlan or NASA’s EMU, but they are still the same basic design.

  4. George Purcell says:
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    It’s part of what is so frustrating about the SLS money pit. The amount of forgone capability–from spacesuits to orbital fueling depots–that has not been developed is astounding.

  5. cb450sc says:
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    I know there are other spacesuit concepts under development (does SpaceX plan to launch in shirt-sleeves?), but I guess they aren’t really meant for extended EVA? I know I’ve seen designs that were more or less skin-tight suits with stitching of some sort that enforced lines of zero-expansion.

    • Jeff2Space says:
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      On Dragon 2 there will be SpaceX launch/entry suits. One of the prototypes was “Starman” which was launched in the Tesla Roadster that was the mass simulator used on the first Falcon Heavy launch. They’re pretty cool looking.

  6. Steve Pemberton says:
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    While I can easily imagine male engineers asking stupid questions and making wrong assumptions on any of these topics, the Vanity Fair and Daily Mail articles imply that the engineers designed the makeup kits and selected what went in them with no input from the female astronauts. The quotes from Rhea Seddon indicate otherwise, in fact she says what was agreed on was “a small kit with items of our choosing”

    • fcrary says:
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      I can’t remember the reference, but I once read some choice comments from Dr. Ride on the subject. After she was selected for flight (first female NASA astronaut) some of the responsible engineers were at a loss about what supplies to put on the Shuttle, when it came to personal hygiene. They eventually realized they ought to ask her. If memory serves, her description of this pointed out that some of the questions were pretty clueless, and she wondered how anyone who had lived with a woman for more than a few months could be that clueless.

  7. fcrary says:
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    I’m afraid I can’t agree with you. I think the people involved were clueless in an embarrassing way. Instead of guessing and then asking, they could have admitted the did not know how many tampons a woman might need on a one week flight. And then just asked. Instead they made a bad guess and only later decided to ask a woman. More than enough is a fine idea, but they apparently did not know enough to say if 100 would be two or ten times more than the expected need.

    When it comes to the stupid guys crack, maybe I and Dr. Ride are/were expecting too much from scientists and engineers. My expectation is that we observe things, in quantitative numbers, and put those observations together to understand how things work. And I do not limit that to narrow, professional specialties.

    If a man lives with a woman for any length of time and _if_ he does his share of the shopping responsibilities, he ought to know how often a woman buys a box of tampons. If he is someone I’d consider a competent scientists or engineer, he’d notice the number of items per box on the label. So, without intruding on the women in his life, he ought to be able to make a decent, give or take a factor of two, estimate on how many tampons a female astronaut would need for one week in orbit.