How are astronaut suits built in such way so that there are absolute no gaps or holes for air to escape? What is the material provided?
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We are good at making stuff with no holes. You can buy a drysuit for a couple of hundred currency units and can be pretty confident it will have no holes.
Also atmospheric pressure isn’t very high, a diver going to 100 metres depth needs a suit that is airtight to 10 times the pressure a spacesuit needs to withstand.
Duct tape is pretty flexible and has no holes. So off they can do that, astronauts suits should be easy, right?
There are gaps and holes, you just need the air to escape slow enough that your life support systems don’t have to work that hard to maintain pressure.
There are multiple layers, seams, sealant and materials that essentially make air escaping like trying to run through a very complicated maze to the point where the total leakage is effectively negligible.
Great question! The answer is: very carefully, and a variety.
There are some great documentaries out there about how the early space age suits were made.
Here’s a short one:
Modern suit design uses more advanced materials and manufacturing techniques, but it still takes hard work from engineers and craftspeople to make them work.
Space suits are engineering marvels.
I feel so dumb. The father of modern rocketry is from my city: AND the company that makes space suits for NASA is located in my city, too.
And the only thing I know about either is what I just wrote above.
The suits to leak a tiny amount, whether due to pores in the material or imperfect seams and joints. It’s just very slow, and the wearer has got an oxygen supply that keeps the suit filled.
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