When NASA made the first space suits, how did they know what space would be like? I.e., how did they know what to put on the suits?

Question

When NASA made the first space suits, how did they know what space would be like? I.e., how did they know what to put on the suits?

In: Technology

Answer 1

We’ve known since antiquity that space was a vacuum. We’ve been able to directly measure the temperature and pressure environment in space since the late 1940’s through both sending rockets and high-altitude jet test pilots. We sent probes into space since the late 1950’s. There really wasn’t anything we didn’t know about how to make a functional (if not optimal) space suit by the early 1950’s because, again, we had high-altitude test pilots flying jets in what were essentially space suits by that time.