Mar 24 1976
From The Space Library
Travelers aboard NASA's Space Shuttle orbiter in the 1980s would use a unique space suit and rescue system, developed at Johnson Space Center. The Shuttle suit, a departure from the customized astronaut suits, would consist of a two-piece upper and lower torso cover in small, medium, and large sizes to accommodate all astronaut candidates or crews, including females. Only the pilot and mission specialist would be outfitted with the space suit; the commander and payload specialists would be provided with a personal rescue system nicknamed the "cosmic soccerball," consisting of a container nearly a meter in diameter constructed of three layers-urethane, Kevlar, and an outside thermal protective layer, with a small viewing post of tough Lexan-containing its own simplified life-support and communications systems. During a rescue operation in space, a space-suited astronaut could transfer the rescue balls in one of three ways: using the handle to carry the enclosure like a suitcase from one vehicle to another; hooking a device like a clothesline between two spaceships and passing the rescue ball with its passenger from the disabled ship to the other; or using the remote manipulator arm in the orbiter's cargo bay to pluck the rescue ball with its passenger from the disabled ship and put it aboard the rescue ship.
Materials to be used in the rescue ball and the Shuttle suit would provide longer shelf life, according to technicians who ran pressure and abrasion tests on them; use of the fabric to make joints in the space suits (instead of the Apollo and Skylab suit use of neoprene rubber molded into convolutes containing cables) would provide better mobility and reduce cost and weight of each suit. The new suit also featured a module construction that closed with a body seal at the waist, considered more reliable than the pressure-seal zippers used in the previous suits. The new suits also were designed with an integral portable life-support system as part of the rigid upper torso, instead of the bulky 34-kg package that previously had to be unpacked and connected to the suit. (NASA Release 76-56; JSC Roundup, 26 Mar 76, 1)
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