Spacesuit: Fashioning Apollo

Spacesuit: Fashioning Apollo is a beautiful book by author Nicholas de Monchaux. The story involves Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin stepping onto the surface of the Moon in July 1969 wearing a spacesuit which is a Playtex space suit. It’s a suit of 21 layers of fabric, each with a distinct function related to each other, tailor-made with expert tailors.

Playtex’s spacesuit goes up against the hard armor-like space suit favored by military contractors and favored by NASA engineers.

Here are the top 3 reviews and comments that readers love about this fascinating book.

Review 1: Spacesuit: Fashioning Apollo audiobook by Susie

Supple Triumphs Over Hard

We are all so inured to the image of the Apollo 11 astronauts in their puffy marshmallow-man space suits, that we forget what sensational achievements those suits were. This is the story of how the elegant, but ultimately impractical designs of military industry were defeated by Playtex, makers of women’s undergarments, the people who knew how to fashion fit.

Anyone looking for the irony in history here’s your audiobook. It’s filled with moments of deep moral inquiry juxtaposed with the absurd.

These twenty-one essays, fascinating and funny, describe the suit and its evolution from fashion, manufacture, the absurd things expected of earth-evolved human bodies in outer space, the space race, and more.

Bronson Pinchot catches all the dry humor in the book and gives a truly entertaining reading of the many passages like the following,

“Once agreed upon, the only problem came with sizing the most intimate part of the suit assembly, the urinary collection device (UCD) that slid over the astronaut’s penis. After an “incident” with the first astronaut fitted for the device, the UCD’s designations were changed from ‘Small, Medium, Large’ to ‘Large, Extra Large,’ and ‘Extra-Extra Large.’”

Well, now we know.

Review 2: Spacesuit: Fashioning Apollo audiobook by Jacob Ford

Has a lot, missing a few things

Like a more academically dense and daylong 99% Invisible episode, the thoughts and conclusions and births of traditions that have become just another part of life today, from a time where the birth of new traditions was just another part of life.

What’s missing: a PDF companion with all the images and figures. You get embarrassingly lost hearing text read to you that was clearly designed to be set next to the image being discussed.

What’s strange: each layer (chapter) can’t quite decide if it’s self-contained or linear with its neighbors. They reference each other in both directions and contain redundant information, but are labeled in sequence and at least seem to be trying to build up some overall story. The lesson: just don’t be confused when a chapter briefly recaps something to you which you thought you’d heard a whole chapter on an hour ago. That’s exactly what’s happening, and you didn’t miss or misunderstand anything.

Review 3: Spacesuit: Fashioning Apollo audiobook by giterdunn

Decent read, more about fashion than engineering

Almost quit listening during the first chapter, which about as much in French than it is in English, but overall glad I stuck with it. There’s a lot of history, social commentary, and fashion talk in the book, not nearly as much technical information as I would have liked. The chapters are called layers due to the many layers of the suit, but they never fully describe the physical layers of the suit. This book is more metaphor than reality.

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