Spacesuits in fiction

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Science fiction authors have designed imaginary spacesuits for their characters almost since the beginning of fiction set in space.

Often, comic book creators seem unaware of the effects of internal pressure which tends to inflate a spacesuit in vacuum, and draw their imaginary spacesuits as hanging in folds like a boilersuit; this can often be seen in the Dan Dare stories, where the artist often drew from actual or photographed posed actors. Many space story writers merely mention a "spacesuit" without considering or describing design details, in the same way as they mention a raygun or a spaceship without considering how its mechanism would work.

The breathing apparatus which is part of the Primary Life Support System of real space suits is always a rebreather type system. However, in illustrations in fiction such as comics, a spacesuit's life support system is often largely composed of two big backpack cylinders, as if it was open circuit; at least one fictional scenario has liquid breathing spacesuits.

Contents 1 Early concepts 1.1 Edison's Conquest of Mars 2 Early twentieth century 3 After World War II 3.1 In films 3.2 Dan Dare 3.3 Heinlein 3.4 Armored space suits 4 After first real space flights 4.1 Dune film 4.2 Gerry Anderson UFO series 4.3 Gundam 4.4 Skintight spacesuits 4.5 Symbiotes 4.6 Space fiction without prominent use of spacesuits 5 References 6 External links to other fictional spacesuits 7 See also

[edit] Early concepts

[edit] Edison's Conquest of Mars

From Edison's Conquest of Mars (1898):

...since it was probable that necessity would arise for occasionally quitting the interior of the electrical ships, Mr. Edison had provided for this emergency by inventing an air-tight dress constructed somewhat after the manner of a diver's suit, but of much lighter material. Each ship was provided with several of these suits, by wearing which one could venture outside the car [spaceship] even when it was beyond the atmosphere of the earth."

This illustration of the suit shows no life-support pack; it also appears to be skintight (note the wrinkles), and to have a soft hood with a built-in fullface mask, rather than a hard helmet, although according to the story the suits had helmets. The spacesuits had no suit radios, but the spacemen had to pass a telephone or telegraph wire to communicate; spaceships used lights or flags to communicate.

This common early idea for a spacesuit would have not worked in reality for several reasons:

• The suits have no constant volume joints to prevent the suits from ballooning under their interior pressure.
• The suits have no gloves.
• The rubberized material of a diving suit would have quickly become brittle due to loss of volatiles in space vacuum; and also due to cold making the rubber brittle when out of sunlight, if they radiate heat away faster than the spaceman's body heat warms them.

[edit] Early twentieth century

Early fictional spacesuits were heavily influenced by the "hard hat" diving suits which were in use from the 19th century on (see Timeline of underwater technology#19th century), including features such as the corselet and side windows on the helmet. Others were inspired by the hard shell "armored" type atmospheric diving suits of the period.

Skintight spacesuits (skinsuits) appear in the original Buck Rogers comics published from 1928 on. This comic was so popular that expressions such as "Buck Rogers outfit" for real protective suits that look somewhat like spacesuits entered into common usage.

With the rise of the Science fiction pulp magazines in the 1920s many depictions of imaginary spacesuits were created from scratch by artists such as Frank R. Paul, often appearing on the covers of the magazines. Very often these artists' creations were absurd, with such errors as a helmet whose neck hole is too narrow for the head to get through.

Often fictional spacesuits are drawn with two large backpack cylinders as their only life-support gear, as if the exhaled gas is vented to space as in an ordinary open-circuit scuba set.

[edit] After World War II

Following World War II, fictional spacesuits were influenced both by the real life pressure suits and gee suits which had seen use during the war for high-altitude aviation and also by the speculative articles on space travel which were published in magazines like the Saturday Evening Post and Collier's Weekly by such space pioneers as Wernher von Braun and Willy Ley and which featured carefully considered spacesuit designs.

[edit] In films

Some early space travel fiction films showed characters in spacesuits much more often than Star Trek and afterwards. Both types of film prop spacesuits in the 1964 film version of The First Men in the Moon use one aqualung-type air cylinder as life-support system.

[edit] Dan Dare

In the Dan Dare comic series, which started in April 1950 in the "Eagle" comic, the standard Spacefleet spacesuit had no backpack, had a corselet as per Standard Diving Dress and its life-support system was stated to be between the layers of a double-walled helmet.[1] The spacesuits used in the Dan Dare scenario "Operation Saturn" by the villain Blasco are a different design and have small life-support backpacks. The Dan Dare stories also show various alien spacesuits.

[edit] Heinlein

Author Robert A. Heinlein's novel Have Space Suit-Will Travel (1958) drew both on these contemporary articles and on his experience designing pressure suits during World War II and featured a detailed description of a very realistic space suit with constant volume joints and fixed helmet and shoulder yoke, which was entered through a frontal gasketed zipper.

Front cover illustrations for the novel obviously inspired by contemporary diving apparatus show its life-support backpack as a correctly-drawn old-type open-circuit two-cylinder aqualung as used for scuba diving with manifold and large round regulator and A-clamp. The artist avoided the error found in most comic-strip drawings of old-type aqualungs, of drawing each breathing tube coming directly from a cylinder top. But to make this type of aqualung (as shown here) work in space, its regulator's existing perforated "wet-side" cover would have to be replaced by a sealed cover with a spring-loaded exit valve to keep a breathable pressure on the "wet" side of the regulator disphragm. And the whole breathing system would have to be checked for leaks which would be harmless in scuba diving but would blow in space vacuum.

• On the left image the breathing tubes run to each side of the "chin" of his helmet, and the regulator is hidden behind his head.
• On the right image the breathing tubes run to a control panel on his chest, and the regulator can be seen. The image shows two spacesuits, whose helmets differ. One has a flashlight on top; the other has two flashlights, one on each side, and on top what may be a radio or an instrument (radar?) pack.

The spacesuits in these drawings differ much, but all depict the helmet base as being wide enough for the wearer to get it on over his head, demonstrating that their artists had paid little attention to the writer's detailed descriptions.

In a description of the spacesuit Heinlein appears to be confused about the various effects of oxygen toxicity and bends and nitrogen narcosis.^[2]

[edit] Armored space suits

Robert A. Heinlein's novel Starship Troopers (1959) famously featured armored power-assisted spacesuit-like battlesuits used in combat.
Joe Haldeman's novel The Forever War (1974) featured armored vacuum combat suits which were similar in principle but more advanced in design.

[edit] After first real space flights

After the establishment of NASA, and the first space missions, fictional spacesuits tended to follow real spacesuit design, including such features as a large rectangular backpack to hold life support components, except in low-budget science fiction movies and comics which were still inspired more by imagination than by reality.

[edit] Dune film

During the production of the spacesuits and stillsuits for the film Dune, the prop and costume designers stated a need to avoid "the standard outer-space stuff ... that sort of NASA look". ^[3]

[edit] Gerry Anderson UFO series

The Gerry Anderson UFO series of the late 1960s/early 1970s features two types of spacesuit:

• Alien spacesuits, filled with a breathable liquid to resist acceleration stresses on the occupant.
• SHADO issue spacesuits.

The design of the alien spacesuits was revised during filming; in some episodes they are partly covered with bright metallic chainmail, and in some they are as per the image shown. The studio which made the series seems to have had only two alien spacesuit costumes. In the episode Ordeal where two aliens carry a human (Foster) who is in an alien spacesuit, one of the aliens has to be out of shot, or else 3 alien spacesuits would have been needed. The helmet splits into front and back halves to get it on over his head.

• This behind-the-scenes photo shows the earlier (with chainmail) type of alien spacesuit, and a SHADO issue spacesuit.
• A photo showing a SHADO issue spacesuit

[edit] Gundam

Spacesuits are commonly used in the Gundam anime metaseries, but are often renamed to avoid confusion with space-use mobile suits. In the Universal Century timeline, spacesuits are called "normal suits"; the After Colony timeline calls them "astrosuit". Gundam spacesuits often have a pouch full of adhesive strips, used to temporarily seal tears in the suit (as demonstrated in Mobile Suit Gundam) or cracks in the helmet (as demonstrated in Char's Counterattack).

[edit] Skintight spacesuits

The potential for greater mobility and simpler operation with a skintight spacesuit, generally refered to as a space activity suit or mechanical counterpressure suit, make this type of space suit an attractive choice for fiction, where flexibility of use can be a boon to plot development.

Some space story writers whose work mentions flexible skin-tight spacesuits include:

• The spacesuits in early Buck Rogers comics seem to be skintight.
• Jerry Pournelle, who has been extensively involved in analysis and design of space technology systems. Pournelle envisions a layered design where the inner flexible suit can be overlain with various kinds of thermal protection or armor, for protection against meteoroids or space battle damage, in the same way a flak jacket protects the occupants of a warplane. Skintight spacesuits first appeared in recent science fiction in Jerry Pournelle's story Exiles To Glory in 1977
• A. Bertram Chandler.
• Stephen Baxter in his Manifold series, notably 'Time'. Baxter's work covers the technical aspects of using the suit for short EVAs, including the need to don the suit without creasing to prevent embolisms.
• Larry Niven used Pournelle's design in some of his later Ringworld novels.
• Victor Koman in Kings of the High Frontier.
• Kim Stanley Robinson used a suit that works on the same principle for Martian surface exploration in the Red Mars novel.
• Roger Leloup in the adventures of Yoko Tsuno
• In Spider Robinson's novel Stardance (1979) they played a significant role.
• Skinsuits feature rather prominently in the Honorverse books by David Weber.

[edit] Symbiotes

Spider Robinson's novel Starseed (the 2nd volume of his Stardance trilogy) and John Varley's short story Equinoctial (from his collection Picnic on Nearside) both feature alien symbiotes which act as living space suits, supplying their wearer with oxygen and recycling waste gases and deriving their energy from solar power.

[edit] Space fiction without prominent use of spacesuits

In some space fiction, space suits are largely absent. Spacesuits are rarely seen in the original Star Trek TV series (1960s). They play a more significant part in the later movies, most notably Star Trek: First Contact (1996). No spacesuits appear in any of the Star Wars movies, but they occur in some Star Wars novels and comics.

[edit] References

1. ^ 1977, Ballantine Books, paperback, ISBN 0-345-26071-6
2. ^ page 27 of the February 2005 edition (ISBN 1-4165-0549-0)
3. ^ pp 69 & 71, The Making of Dune, by Ed Naha, publ. R.H.Allen 1984, ISBN 0 426 19641 4

[edit] External links to other fictional spacesuits

• [2] [3] in the Jason X scenario
• film prop spacesuits from Armageddon Day
• [4] Fan-made replica of Tholian Web spacesuit from Star Trek scenario
• [5] Film prop spacesuit from Doctor Who series
• [6] About restoring a Space 1999 film prop spacesuit

[edit] See also

• 'Spacesuit' entry on the Star Trek Wiki
• 'Spacesuit' entry on the Star Wars Wiki
• Atomic Rocket: Spacesuits