NASA today announced the selection of two companies to develop the next generations space suits they've been trying to develop since 2007.
After more than a decade of work to develop a new spacesuit in-house, NASA said it would instead buy spacesuit services from two private companies, Axiom Space and Collins Aerospace.
Each of these companies will be able to use technology NASA has worked on but are responsible for the overall development of the spacesuits used on the International Space Station and activities on the lunar surface. Axiom and Collins said they intended to demonstrate their spacesuits for NASA—likely in the form of a spacewalk outside the space station—by 2025.
Axiom Space, of course, we've talked about several times here and most recently about their mission aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon to the ISS in April. They're developing a private space station. I don't know that spacesuits are in their areas of expertise; the only things I've read about them and EVA suits is that SpaceX has developed EVA suits for the forthcoming Axiom/SpaceX Polaris Dawn mission.
Axiom Space is already building its own private space station, and its chief executive, Mike Suffredini, said Wednesday that the company's customers definitely want to do spacewalks. The contract award means that Axiom will be able to hire 300 additional employees to work on the spacesuit project, which now must also operate in the dusty environment on the surface of the Moon. Axiom's partners include KBR, Air-Lock, the David Clark Company, and Paragon Space Development Corporation.
Collins Aerospace is a bit less obvious a choice. They're a descendant of an early radio company that hams will have heard of, Collins Radio (I have an early '60s vintage Collins KWM-2 on my shelf). Over the years, they became a subsidiary of Rockwell International as Rockwell Collins and then were acquired in rapid succession by United Technologies Corporation and then Raytheon.
The other winner was Collins Aerospace, which will lead a team that includes ILC Dover and Oceaneering. These three companies have experience building spacesuits, with Collins designing the Apollo spacesuits used during the first Moon landings. While Collins does not have a private space station, it plans to offer its suits to other companies planning to build them in low Earth orbit, said Dan Burbank, senior technical fellow for the company.
The companies beat out a lot of other bidders for this opportunity. More than 40 firms were listed as "interested parties" when NASA first announced the private spacesuit program, formally known as the Exploration Extravehicular Activity Services, or xEVAS, contract. Blue Origin, Honeywell Aerospace, Leidos, Sierra Space, and SpaceX were among the other interested parties.
The
Collins Aerospace corporate website
doesn't claim that the Apollo suits were actually designed by a predecessor of
today's company. Instead they point out that Collins "provided the
communications equipment used by every American astronaut traveling through
space (including the footage of the first step on the moon)." It's
possible that was North American Rockwell before they acquired Collins Radio,
but I'm by no means an expert at that history. I just recall reading about North American Rockwell in the Apollo program around that time.
Perhaps it's obvious but one of the side effects of NASA having been trying to
get replacement suits since 2007 is that the current suits are a pretty old
design. "The previous suit has been the workhorse for 40 years," said the
director of NASA's Johnson Space Center, Vanessa Wyche, during a news
conference. The agency elected to go with an approach copied from the
very successful Commercial Crew program.
"We never intended a government to be a production house," she said. "So we knew there was always a transition to industry in our future. The question was when that transition should occur. We decided with the amount of knowledge we had gained from xEMU that we could hand to these guys, and that would get them kick-started. And the sooner we got them on the path to actually delivering flight suits, the higher probability we were actually going to make our schedule." [The source material doesn't explain what xEMU means. A little research shows it to be Exploration Extravehicular Mobility Unit - SiG]
xEMU conceptual artwork NASA illustration.
Wow, I guess that Congress finally questioning why NASA doesn't have any new suits or any next-gen suits or anything except a collection of suit parts that are increasingly getting worn down and down-right dangerous to use.
ReplyDeleteSo some NASA bureaucrat scrambled fast and hard to set up a competition that once again legacy aerospace wins over newcomers.
Stupid NASA. This should have been done 10 years ago, or 20 years ago. Dangit.
The real question is, is this a cost plus contract like Boeing, Lockmart, ULA and other legacy aerospace companies get or is it 'retail' priced like what SpaceX does?
"Integrated Communications (no snoopy cap)" - what does THAT mean? Never heard of it before..
ReplyDeleteWith the Apollo era suit, the speakers and microphone were attached to a black and white cap, thus the 'Snoopy' tag.
DeleteThe new suits supposedly will have speakers and microphone in the helmet as part of the whole hardware package, with no need for the astronaut to plug his/her/its headset in.
Now, to me, having a cap to suck up sweat makes sense, so the new suits will still probably have some sort of 'arming cap' (seriously, the cap used isn't that far off pattern-wise from a 12th Century arming cap) that the 'naut wears inside the suit.
Having the mike and speakers as part of the suit sounds like a great idea. Hopefully. Comm cables are notorious for getting twisted and twirled up, and the plug and cable are obvious points of failure.
On the other hand, a cheaper way to go would be using the old-style system and just send up 4 per astronaut expecting for failures to occur. In a station or base, any excess can be stored for future use. I mean, how expensive can a set of headphones and a throatmike be in the civilian world (compared to how cost overrun NASA approved and procured ones cost?)
So after over 15 years of fail, NASA yet again defers to private industry, which is how we got to space, and the moon, in the first place.
ReplyDeletePut NASA in charge of clothing astronauts, and they're naked with a barrel over them for two decades.
Government inaction/in action in one panel.
Tell me again why NASA isn't a kiosk in the lobby at the TSA, Commerce, or the FAA, and solely in charge of handing out permits and licenses.
Even worse, for over 15 years of promising the next new hottness, the existing collection of suit parts (different sizes, so one can assemble a 'custom' fit from existing hardware) has been breaking down and failing more and more. Which has caused the cancellation of spacewalks.
ReplyDeleteAnd when NASA realized they were in trouble, private industry (yes, SpaceX, but others too) said they could fix the issue here, now, and far cheaper than Legacy Aerospace.
With two contractors "developing" suit designs, will the suits be compatible with each other regarding things like Life support connections, spare parts, etc or is this just the "final" phase of a single suit selection process with an even longer time period for the actual deployment?
ReplyDeleteI can visualize a scenario where your Collins suit has a damaged helmet, but the only spare is for an Axiom suit with a different connector.
An excellent question that isn't covered in detail in the source materials I've seen.
DeleteAlthough it doesn't say "build to print" or to NASA's specifications or something like that, it does say, "NASA will have some requirements for the spacesuits but leave the overall design decisions to the companies." That's ambiguous enough that it could mean those requirements include using specific connectors or other parts for things, or it could mean specific requirements like it can't leak more that some amount in a hard vacuum.