I completely missed it. Thought it was gonna be later in the afternoon. :confounded:
Anyhoo, at least those suits aren’t the Robby The Robot look…
Just to clarify, the pictured hard suit has nothing to do with SpaceX and is instead an AX-5 experimental prototype from 1988. You can even see “AX-5” in the top-right of the image, as it was being tested at the Ames Space Center.
The real Tesla suits look like leftovers from a bad sci-fi film, imo, but with all of the SpaceX and NASA publicity campaigns it’s not hard to find photos like the one posted by Joshk. Google it.
Any suit that looks huge and cumbersome is an EVA suit, not a flight suit. The suits worn by Bob and Doug are rated for a vacuum for a short duration in some unforeseen emergency, but they could not be used for work outside the vehicle as they would literally fill up like a balloon and the astronauts couldn’t move their limbs even before they froze to death.
EVA suits are a fairly difficult problem as you need to pressurize and insulate the suit and make it highly robust while still allowing the astronaut to move around with ease for EVA’s that might last for many hours. Rigid shells can solve the strength and durability problem when combined with an air-tight inner liner, but tend to restrict movement. Joints are points of both failure for the inner layers and binding for the hard shell, however, so sliding joints as displayed on the AX-5 have been avoided in production U.S. suits to date.
With all of that said, not a single astronaut who spent the money and time to get 4 PhDs and 6 Master’s degrees and finally got a ticket to space and an EVA slot will care one iota whether their EVA suit looks silly or not; only the PR department and CR (Congressional Relations) folks at NASA will care.
The EVA suits actually used on the ISS are called Extravehicular Mobility Units (EMU’s) and are nearly 40 years old with some staying aboard the ISS for 6 years at a time because it’s so expensive to transport them back and forth. They have been upgraded over the years, but the existing suits were first used on the Space Shuttle. 2 EMUs were lost with Columbia, leaving NASA with 11 working suits last I heard. The ones used for training in the underwater neutral buoyancy tank are not full EMUs, but mock-ups not suitable for space.
So, when you see astronauts outside the ISS replacing batteries or repairing leaks, they are wearing the same suits first worn by astronauts in the 1980’s. Luckily, they’ve been cleaned every 6 years 
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NASA got laughed at pretty badly when they first tried to have an all-female EVA crew for the first time in history only to realize that the EMUs aboard the ISS were too large for one of the astronauts. People saw this as obvious evidence of the sexism at NASA and while they indeed should have had the proper suits for the planned crew, it’s hard to swap sizes when you keep EMUs aboard the station for 6-year stints. The historic EVA waited for a couple of months until they could send up a smaller EMU on a cargo capsule.
Watched it with my wife and daughter, they were reluctant at first but when they saw the speeds they were traveling and the dinosaur they really got into it LOL.
It took a bedazzled brontosaurus floating around in zero gravity…but they loved it.
ktnx! Grabbed the whole 4gigamegs of it for later perusal, and possibly for posterity. :smiling_imp:
[re: mondragon alien or whatever]
Nah, too pointy. I’m sticking with Michelin Man.
I’m happy launch went well, and wish them docking will be successful, too.
In the 70th, I was convinced we would have been on Mars decades ago. Followed Viking missions and was amazed by all the pictures. But here we are, even happy to get men into orbit safely.
If only boots were white.
I never understood so many people's fascination with Mars.
Humans cannot live on Mars, and it's really far away, so I see no point in going there.
I mean, it'd be easier to fix the problems we have on Earth than to make Mars habitable for humans.
Look at the stats of the red planet and you'll most likely agree. 
It was the round, distended “belly” and rounded arms of the new spacesuit design that reminded me of the Fifth Element Mondoshawan alien. Definitely not a clone, but looks inspired. And the legs, taken from Robby the Robot. But yeah, Michelin man is echoing in there too.
It’s the human drive to explore. I can appreciate it.
However, Mars is way too inhospitable. We will go there, just to tick off that checkbox. If USA is the first nation to go, it will be “bragging rights.” But in essence, zero gravity is slow poison to the human body. We are just not meant to do this. The only real viable means to explore should be through automation. As we progress with technology, like VR displays, minimal delay communication, etc., we should be able to launch several probes per celestial body to explore on a long term basis.
Android housed AI is the ultimate answer. It has no need for inefficient environments or biological matter. It doesn’t really age, so it can go on very long term explorations. And we, the humans, will be on our home, planet Earth, watching it all.
With, at best, nearly three minutes delay (one-way), VR is quite limited. That’s why we never catched Aliens there 
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They have Maglite on ISS 
They have money to fly into space, but they don’t have money for a decent flashlight
Just noticed the maglite too 10 minutes ago, and was planning to post it here 
Well in the confines of the ISS, a punctured lithium battery could damage your lungs and eyes LONG before you got strapped into a space suit and flushed it with fresh air. And then what? You can’t open a window and the life support system probably is no help clearing the chemicals from the air. Basically, it would be lethal. I’ll take some D cells please
I saw an image last Wednesday when Trump visited the Nasa/SpaceX launch site that looked like a screen grab of a live feed. Trump had a very surprised look on his face when he saw Elon Musk was in the room. Did anyone else see this? What’s the story there? Google isn’t finding anything and I forget where I saw it.
My (BLF version) Lumintop SD10 runs on a single D-cell and would be a good and more compact competitor for that Maglite (as well as the numerous flashlights that run on AA cells like the SWM D40A). But the fact remains that the Maglite is unsurpassed in its ability to wack someone’s skull, is that a useful feature in the ISS?
The extra mass should make it easier to stabilize as you get go. Low mass flashlights would be more likely to be perturbed as you tried to remove your hand.
I remember the first moonwalk and finding a TV to watch it. It was a big deal. It is a shame we let NASA become what it is today. The shuttle never became what it was touted to be. The 1960s were real heady times for America. Now we don’t even fix pot holes in our roads.
I remember those days quite well myself.In a matter of days I hit the Big “60”. 
I am also a resident of Pa. I do not get it. You see other construction companies working during this pandemic and I have yet to see one pothole fixed in the area I live.
Penndot must be on lock down. :person_facepalming:
The Maglites have been up there since the early days of the station’s history. More recently some AA Maglites and plastic headlamps (I don’t remember if they are Petzl or Black Diamond) have showed up.
I’m pretty sure this is a case where the choice of flashlights was a low priority, so some low ranking engineer was probably asked to spec a light, chose something that was familiar, none of the astronauts complained, and there’s been no reason since then to bring back the lights that are already up there. A lot of people expect the cost of mass to orbit would be an issue, but the ISS supply flights generally have a small to moderate amount of extra mass available. If something extra you want to launch fits without forcing you to use a larger rocket or do an extra launch, the cost is basically the labor of the paperwork it takes to get it manifested.
Lithium ions batteries are not a complete no-go, but as far as I know, it takes a fair amount of work to get them approved. I remember a story years ago about astronauts having their iPods modified to use external AA battery packs so the normal lithium ion battery could be removed and not have to be flight qualified.
There could be an opportunity here, though. Nikon has gotten occasional good press over the years because nearly all of Nikon’s current cameras, and historically most of their 35mm cameras, were supplied by Nikon, with some customizations when determined necessary (lubricant substitutions, for example). A flashlight manufacturer might be able to work with NASA to qualify some nicer lights. However, they would have to convince NASA it’s worth any cost that might be involved if some level of flight qualification does need to happen. Government agencies aren’t allow to accept free goods or services, lest it foster any conflicts of interest.
I’m pretty sure SpaceX has leeway in what they equip on Dragon. I think their trendy hard plastic and streamlined designs could use a retro touch - maybe Barbolight’s Apollo penlight replica?