- There are times as sewers when we put the wrong fabric and pattern together.

We learn each time that happens, and there is always room for another try.

When a company called ILC Dover puts fabric and pattern together, they're putting that result into outer space, and there is zero tolerance for error because they are protecting the life of an astronaut.

How are spacesuits made?

What fabrics are used?

How are they fitted?

How much do they weigh?

So many questions and we have the answers today on Fit 2 Stitch.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] Fit 2 Stitch is made possible by, Kai Scissors, (soft piano music) Bennos Buttons, (soft piano music) OC Sewing, Orange County, (soft piano music) Vogue Fabrics, (soft piano music) Pendleton, (soft piano music) Imitation of Life, (soft piano music) and, Clutch Nails.

(soft piano music) - There is a company named ILC Dover, and I'll bet most of us have never heard that name and yet, most of know exactly who they are.

I'm gonna bring on Dan Klopp, from ILC Dover because he's going to help us understand who this company really is.

I am so excited to have you.

I'm just thrilled that he's here.

And how much were gonna learn about this is incredible.

Who is ILC Dover?

- So, ILC Dover is a company that was originally formed back in the 1930s in Upstate New York, as International Latex Corporation, so that's where the ILC.

- ILC, International Latex Corporation.

- And, in the early days of International Latex Corporation, they developed a government contracting business and a consumer products business.

We are a legacy of the government contracting business.

- [Peggy] Okay.

- As the story goes, they came up with the idea for inflatable life rafts.

So, prior to that-- - [Peggy] Like, big inflatable life rafts?

- Well, part of that life rafts, so we've all seen the movie Titanic, the life rafts were hard shell.

They were a boat that was stored on the ship.

What ILC came up with is a way to dip canvas into latex rubber and form a water-tight-- - How fascinating?

- Barrier and that made an inflatable life raft, so you could pack it down, so you could carry a lot more life rafts in a lot smaller volume.

- Because there wasn't enough life rafts on the Titanic.

- Exactly.

- Wow, okay.

- Exactly my point.

Anyway, during World War II, that part of the business, for obvious reasons, was very successful.

And then, after World War II, the company decided to split into two companies.

They decided to split away from the consumer products bit, Which that bit became known, the company name was the most famous trade name that they had under that, which is Playtex Corporation.

- Wow.

- And then, we are a legacy of, cause we were located by that time, in Dover, Delaware, and so they decided to name our part of the company, ILC Dover.

So, the ILC to International Latex and then Dover because we're in Dover, Delaware.

So there was a running joke during the Apollo Spacesuit Era, that the same engineers that designed spacesuits, designed ladies undergarments-- - Latex girdle.

- Which is not quite true, although both companies have the same historical root.

but it made for good press.

- All right, good joke.

- Good story, yes.

- So the spacesuit's like wearing a little girdle.

- Yes.

- It's Kind of like.

- Well, there are similarities.

- What startled this for me, and the fascinating is we talk about all these fabrics, is a spacesuit is made with a sewing machine.

- That's correct.

- Much of that spacesuit, maybe not all of it, but much is made with a spacesuit, and you make these suits and you have sewing machines at your plant.

- [Dan] Yes we do.

- That's fascinating to me.

Women are sitting behind sewing machines, making the spacesuits.

- And some men.

- And some men, sorry.

- Making spacesuits.

- Making spacesuits.

- On what look like ordinary Singer sewing machines that you can have-- - Wow, I guess I didn't know.

So I wanna answer all those questions.

So, can we first talk maybe about the fabrics that are just simply involved?

- Yes.

So there are lots of layers to a spacesuit.

So first of all, before we get into that, could I just do a real short, kinda educational bit-- - Oh, please, absolutely.

- On spacesuits.

- Please.

- There's two major categories of spacesuits in today's world.

There are what are called launch-entry suits, some people call them AES, some people call them IVA, there's a whole bunch of acronyms that they go by.

Those are the spacesuits that are worn only for an hour or so, during launch and then taken off once they're in orbit, and then an hour or so during re-entry.

Those are the two most dangerous parts of a space mission.

We are starting to make those kind of spacesuits, but that's not our legacy.

- I see.

- Our legacy is what are called EVA spacesuits.

So, that's the other category, where the spacesuit is a very intentional activity, the astronaut gets into the spacesuit and does a space-walk.

So, in the early days, when we were doing this, we were doing the Apollo Era suits, so the space walks were on the surface of the moon.

- [Peggy] I got it.

- In today's world, they're done from the International Space Station.

- So, that space-walk suit, the one that's the launching, the one that they have when they travel to and from, is more protective, more rigid?

- So it's actually less protective because it's never intended to be used outside the spacecraft.

- Oh, that makes sense, okay.

- So, it's less protective.

That suit will not keep you alive during a space-walk.

It's like the seatbelt in a car.

- Sure.

- It's designed to keep the astronauts safe in case of a rapid cabin depressurization, until they, with abort sort of systems that they have in the spacecraft, they can get back down to a safe altitude.

- Okay.

Now do we get to talk about the fabrics?

- So that's really separate and distinct from the EVA spacesuits, which are extravehicular activity, which-- - I learned that EVA, that acronym, EVA, okay.

- Yes.

The spacesuit becomes a personal spacecraft for the astronaut for the duration of that EVA.

Which, today's EVAs-- - Because it has to be fully contained.

- Full contained.

- They have to leave the spacesuit.

- [Dan] They leave the spacecraft, and in today's world, it's the International Space Station, and go do some maintenance mission perhaps on the outside of the International Space Station and that'll last typically six to eight hours.

- So, once they put it all on-- - [Dan] So, once they put it all on-- - They gonna keep it on-- - They keep it on.

- Until the whole thing is done.

- Exactly, and they're completely separate from the life support system that's inside the International Space Station, that keeps them alive in space while they're inside.

- Self-contained.

- Yeah.

- Its completely self-contained.

- So the suit is completely self-contained.

It even has an emergency propulsion system if one of their tethers comes loose, and it can-- - That's fascinating.

You see that on movies, but I never knew if it was really true, where they click the button and then off they go.

- Well, it's actually a little gun-shaped thing that squirts a jet of high pressure air out and that's enough, with the lack of gravity, depending on which direction they're pointing in, allow them to maneuver back to spacecraft.

- That's interesting.

- Now, that never happens cause they always have-- - Their clip on.

- They're always tethered, they have a clip on.

And in a minute, I'll show you where those clips go on the spacesuit.

- I'm so excited to get over there, but we have to go through this stuff.

- Let's go through the fabric.

- We have to go through the fabrics because, I wanna know, what are these fabrics?

They can be sewn on a sewing machine.

I don't really understand how they can be protective and sewn on a sewing machine at the same time.

- So, over every seam, because when the needle penetrates the fabric, it causes a place where the spacesuit could leak.

- A problem.

- So, we have various techniques where we seam seal the seams, and sometimes its done by glue, sometimes it's done depending on which layer of fabric as we'll see in a minute.

Here are the many layers to a spacesuit.

We might heat weld or ultrasonically weld that seam in addition to make that stitch line air tight.

- So, the sewing can be done first to get it right and then you come back and just finish it all with that seaming.

- Exactly.

- And there obviously has to be some kind way to test that the seaming is-- - Yes, and the suits are tested - multiple times.

- Because I mentioned in the beginning that you don't get try two - Right, exactly.

- Zero tolerance.

- We have a saying in ILC Dover, that failure is not an option.

- Failure means somebody's life.

- Somebody will perish.

- Wow, all right.

Sorry.

- So, the spacesuit consists of many layers, and it all has to do with all the things that we take for granted here on earth, but are really different in space once you get to outside of the Earth's atmosphere.

So, the outer layer of the spacesuit is woven from a fabric, a fiber called vectran, which is a close cousin of kevlar, and we call this the TMG layer, that's Thermal Micrometeorite Garment.

It provides some thermal protection by being white, so it reflects most of light away and it helps keep the astronaut cool when they're on the sunny side of the earth.

But more importantly, it's more or less like a bulletproof vest cause one of the things that's in space that we never see here on earth, because they burn up in the atmosphere as they're entering, are micrometeorites, small pieces of space dust that are flying at just incredible velocities.

- Like how fast?

Cause I know you know?

- Over 17,000 miles an hour.

- Yeah, so anything becomes major-- - Anything becomes major cause for those of us that remember back to our high school physics, which very few of us do.

(both laugh) - We've walked away.

- I happen to work in this area so I do remember this, is kinetic energy is a function of mass times velocity squared.

so, 1 1/2 MV squared.

- So, that's velocity.

- Although the mass is very low on these, the velocity is much, much higher than say a bullet-- - Would be here on earth.

So this is a variation on a bulletproof vest, so its stops those micrometeorites from penetrating.

Underneath that are several layers of insulation, which are aluminized mylar, and there's many layers of that in the spacesuit.

- [Peggy] And obviously the number of layers are needed.

- And all those layers are needed, because there are some pretty big temperature extremes in space.

Let's take the International Space Station as an example.

That orbits every 90s minutes, which means what they experience in 90 minutes is what we experience here on earth in 24 hours.

So they have roughly 12 hours of daylight and 12 hours of darkness.

On the daylight side of the earth, the temperatures can be upwards of plus 250 degrees Fahrenheit.

- Oh my goodness.

- Cause you don't have the atmosphere sort of moderating those temperatures, cause as we all know, first thing in the morning, when the sun's up, it's not instantly the hottest part of the day.

It takes a long time for it to heat up.

And same thing when the sun sets in the evening, it's not the coldest part of the day as soon as the sun sets.

So, it takes a while for that temperature to come down-- - So, a lot a lot things I don't think we think about, which you guys have to think about.

- Exactly.

Well in space, you don't have any atmosphere around you, so you don't have that moderating effect.

So on the sunny side, it's nominally about plus 150 degrees Fahrenheit.

On the dark side, it's below minus 250 degrees Fahrenheit.

- Oh my, in a spacesuit?

- So, every 45 minutes, so you're thinking about a 90-minute transit, you're transitioning from either plus to minus, or minus to plus.

and it can be as much as a 500-degree temperature swing, so much, much more radical conditions than anywhere found on Earth.

- Sure.

- I mean you can go to the Sahara Desert and it's not that hot, and you can go to Antarctica and it's not that cold.

So, that's why we have many layer of insulation.

So that's for the cold side of the Earth.

So all this reflects the astronauts' body heat back at them.

- Got it.

The goal is to keep the suit, the same temperature.

- Well, keep the astronaut the same temperature.

- Regardless of what's going on outside.

- Right.

So, the outer layer of the suit goes through some pretty big temperature swings, but by the time you get down to the astronaut's skin, you want that to be the same.

So, then there's a liner layer which keeps everything sliding against each other to keep it more mobile.

Then there's what we call a restraint layer.

So this is made from a fabric that is not stretchable, the fibers don't stretch and that's because what that does, is it restrains the bladder layer.

So, this bladder layer is PVC coated nylon.

So, its air tight and it's essentially a balloon.

So it has to maintain the pressure inside the suit, and if we didn't have the restraint layer, this bladder layer would just balloon out.

- [Peggy] Sure.

- So, this is what-- - Appropriately named, restraint.

- Restraint.

- Got it.

- So it restrains the bladder layer from ballooning out too much.

- Got it.

- And that makes up the suit itself.

- Got it.

- We also make two undergarments that the astronauts have to put on.

- This is my favorite layer.

Yeah, this is cool.

- This we call the LCVG.

So, you know NASA, they love their acronyms.

So, LCVG stands for Liquid Cooling and Ventilation Garment.

- Okay.

- And what this is, is I think of it as a pair of long underwear that we weave a fine gauge tubing through, and this is like the radiator in your car.

So there's water that's pumped through this.

It's actually some variation of a coolant like is in your car radiator.

And, then it goes through a heat exchanger in the backpack, the life support backpack, and it removes excess body heat.

- Wow, it's just amazing.

- So it's just like the radiator in your car, removes the excess heat from the engine to keep your engine from overheating, this on that sunny side of the Earth, where the temperatures are really high, above boiling point here on Earth, that keeps the astronaut from boiling.

It takes excess heat out.

And then, underneath that is a very fine layer of another undergarment, and underneath that, a thing that nobody likes to talk about, is an adult diaper.

- Got it, because if they're out-- - They're out during a typical spacewalk - Doing the space walk.

- Is six to eight hours and if nature calls.

- Yeah, let's go look at the EMU.

- Let's go look at the EMU.

- I wanna go look at it.

This is just way too much fun.

So EMU, I've learned my acronym, is Extravehicular-- - Mobility.

- Mobility-- - Unit.

- Unit.

Because this functions as their little space suit.

- Right.

So a spacesuit, an EVA spacesuit is a spacecraft.

- [Peggy] I hate to ask this stuff, but has this thing ever failed an astronaut?

- No.

- [Peggy] Really, never?

- Never.

- You have zero errors on this.

- Zero Failures.

- That's impressive.

- And we've been doing this for 55 years, going all the way back to the Apollo Era.

- So you're really like NASA, cause NASA does not make spacesuits.

- [Dan] That's correct.

- Okay.

- So, we're ILC Dover who was a contractor to NASA and we're the ones that have been doing the spacesuits for NASA for 55 years.

- So, all these fabric layers, how much do they weigh?

- So, the fabric plus things that aren't fabric like the helmet bubble and the visors, and sun shields, and so forth, and including the life support backpack, with all the life support systems inside of it, all configured and ready to go through the airlock on a space walk for the International Space Station, is roughly 300 to 350 pounds here on earth.

Now, of course when it's in orbit, you're in a zero G environment.

So it weighs nothing.

- So it doesn't matter.

So you don't have to really consider weight.

The goal is protection.

- We have to consider mass, but we don't have to consider weight, which are two related, but slightly different things.

- All right, so the weight is substantial, what about the cost?

- So, these are really expensive, however, when you consider how few we actually make, so in the history of human space travel, including like all governments, there have been less than 300 astronauts in like 60 years of human space travel, that have ever taken an EVA.

So, if you just do a little simple math on that, that's less than five astronauts a year on average.

- So, I wanna talk a little bit about the fit, because it doesn't have to be specific to that astronaut.

- So, let me talk about the different generations - Yeah, if you don't mind, thank you.

- So, going all the way back to the Apollo Era, what we call the A7-L Suit, which was the Apollo Era suit, those were custom fit to each astronaut.

So, the astronauts in the Apollo Era would come to our factory in central Delaware and get individually measured and fitted to each-- - And those little seamstresses would just go at it.

- Would go at it.

So that suit was for that astronaut and that astronaut only.

Then we got into the space shuttle era, and that's the starting point of what we call the EMU, today, this Extravehicular which is this suit here.

- This is the Terry.

I named it.

- I know you named it.

- I named it Terry, not male, not female, just Terry.

- Just terry.

Anyway, this generation suit, we tried to make, cause NASA was being more inclusive in that era, Sally Ride, first, American female in space.

So, females were starting to go space, which tend to have different body dimensions than males, and so we needed a-- - That becomes problematic.

- Design in more resizability than we had in the Apollo era suits cause it was impractical and cost-prohibitive for NASA.

They just didn't have the budget to do a custom suit for each astronaut.

So, in this era, it's a modular suit.

So there's an upper torso, we make that in three different sizes.

- Like a small, medium, large basically.

- Small, medium, large, basically.

And so for any new astronaut coming into the program, they'll try on and figure out which is best for them, of those three sizes.

- And really because this part of the spacesuit is not critical that they have movement.

- Right.

- So it doesn't have to fit - Well, in fact, this generation suit, this is hard.

This is what's called a hard upper-torso suit, which is different than the Apollo suits, which were a soft upper-torso.

This is a hard upper-torso, three sizes, and then we have multiple sizes of upper arm, multiple sizes of lower arm, many, many sizes of gloves cause gloves are the most critical part.

- Because they're working with their hands.

- Cause they work with their hands.

And then, the lower-torso, we don't have that many sizes but it's not that critical because what we call a spacewalk is kind of a misnomer, you're not walking on anything, it's a space float is a better way of thinking of it.

- Space float cause they're floating.

- Cause they're floating.

- So, the bottom half of their body is really just-- - [Dan] Yeah and in fact, this does not have boots in it.

It's what I call space booties.

- Got it.

- Its like a onesie because they're not walking on anything.

Their legs are just dangling.

- So all the mobility comes from wrist to shoulder, shoulder to elbow, and hands, obviously.

- Right, and hands, and the hands are the most critical.

So right now, were up to 64 different sizes.

- Of hands?

- Of gloves that we make.

- Who would think?

- And actually, as of a few weeks ago, we were only at 63.

A new astronaut was coming through the program several weeks ago, and she just happens it's a female astronaut, Jasmine, she happens to have unusually long, skinny fingers and she tried on the 63 different sizes that we already have, and they didn't fit.

- And now you have 64?

- So we made a custom size for her.

- Just for the dexterity of the fingers.

- Just for the dexterity.

- So that's that critical, that movement is that critical.

- So our spacesuit engineers will say that if you can design a glove, you can design an entire spacesuit.

- So, it's fascinating to me, cause I would never think of spacesuits as evolving, but they are.

- [Dan] Yes.

- So, Terry has a new version?

- Well, actually there's been multiple variations-- - EMU, and now it's the EMU.

- Of the EMU since the EMU, since the very beginning of the shuttle program cause various fabrics, we'll find new alternatives.

and then we'll qualify them, but there is a new version.

- But, now more people are going to the moon besides NASA.

- Well, more people are going to space, so we'll see who goes to the moon.

- Yeah, I got it.

Right now, they're just going to space.

So, this is?

- So, this is what we call our Astro Spacesuit.

This is a prototype of the next generation of spacesuit.

So this has even more resizability than the EMU suit.

We've designed this with what we call a hybrid upper-torso.

So, it has sort of the best of the Apollo Era suits with the soft-upper torso, and the EMU generation suits with a hard upper-torso.

This is a hybrid, it's kind of a combination.

- And yet these shoulders still screw in.

- Well, the upper-arm-- - I'm fascinated about how they are connected.

- And lower-arm pieces are virtually identical to the EMU.

What's different is where they attach, we have-- - Oh, that makes a lot of sense.

- Resizability elements in the shoulder bearings.

So we can do fine adjustment on that, and we've designed this so that it'll cover 99% of humanity, so roughly from a five-foot tall woman up to a six-foot-four person.

- So the EMU was limited in size from what to what roughly?

- The smallest version of that, I think the smallest astronaut that ever took a space walk in that was around five-foot-six.

- Okay.

- But this can go all the way down to five foot.

- Wow.

- Five-foot-tall person.

- So if you're little and rich, you've got the outfit to go.

- And it can go all the way up to a six-foot-four person, which there's never been an astronaut that tall in the program.

- Cause, they have to be a little certain.

- Yeah.

- So the whole concept of designing these space suits, there's actually colleges to educate for this now, or they've broadened those programs.

- Yes, so we're broadening the program to make the... And as space is becoming commercial now, so it's no longer just the domain of NASA, we need to be more inclusive, depending on who's gonna be going to space, if they're a space tourist.

We just need to cover more of a range of sizes of people.

- That's fascinating.

- So, and your name is on this suit, which your name has never been on a suit.

We'll hear of your name now more.

- So, you will hear of our name, because NASA is changing the way that they procure things now.

Up until now, we were a contractor of NASA, we've been for more than 50 years now for making spacesuits, but NASA didn't want any of their contractors to have their own company branding on the suits.

So, the suits-- - It was all NASA.

- It was all NASA, whereas, their going to a different procurement model, which will be more cost effective for us, as tax payers, where they're allowing the companies who make the various components put their own branding on.

- That's great.

- So, we'll be able to put our own branding on it, so you can see ILC Dover.

- You'll have NASA as well.

- And we'll have NASA on this.

If it's sold to the European Space Agency, it may have ESA on it.

- And you do spacesuits for everyone in the world except?

- Except the Russians and the Chinese - [Peggy] Because?

- Because space suits, believe it or not, fall under ITAR restrictions, so they're sort of in the same category as weapons, as bombs and fighter jets and things like that.

So we're restricted-- - [Peggy] As to what you can do.

- As to who we can sell them to.

- Dan, thank you so much for being here.

- It's been my pleasure.

- Thank you.

I've always been fascinated by space and just all of it, watching the outfits and everything, I always wondered so much about where they're made and what they're made out of and oh, that was just amazing.

Envision is a company that is contracted to sell military garments.

At least 25% of their work force is either blind or sight-impaired.

Join us as we travel to their work place to get a behind-the-scenes look at how they have learned to sew next time, on Fit 2 Stitch.

(soft piano music) - [Narrator] Fit 2 Stitch is made possible by, Kai Scissors, (soft piano music) Bennos Buttons, (soft piano music) OC Sewing, Orange County, (soft piano music) Vogue Fabrics, (soft piano music) Pendleton, (soft piano music) Imitation of Life, (soft piano music) and Clutch Nails.

(soft piano music) To order a four DVD set of Fit 2 Stitch Series 10, please visit our website @fit2stitch.com.

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