NASA
DOUG WHEELOCK never really liked his spacesuit. “It may look cool, but it’s 35 years old, smells like a locker room and there’s some discolouration on the inside,” he says. Yet that dilapidated old thing was all that stood between him and deadly cold nothingness during the NASA astronaut’s six spacewalks. “It’s actually kind of scary when you think about it,” he says.
Wheelock is talking about the puffy-looking white suit with the reflective visor that NASA calls the Extravehicular Mobility Unit (EMU). These suits are among the most famous pieces of clothing ever worn, but they are well past their shelf life.
When Apollo astronauts visited the moon in the 1960s and 70s, they stayed for a few hours, so it didn’t matter if the suits were a little on the basic side. Now, though, space