SPACE GLOVE FASHION

Smithsonian Air & Space Museum

When it comes to swanning about in outer space, few wardrobe items are as essential as gloves. Out in the airless vacuum of space, they need to be strong enough to resist puncturing, which could kill you, but flexible enough to let you pick up moon rocks and stuff. The solution is a complicated mix of expensive fabrics, made-to-measure tailoring and a hyper-dense material called superinsulation.

For the Apollo moon missions, the gloves started with pressurised rubber covered with a fireproof material called Beta Cloth. Woven from fine silica fiber (kind of like fiberglass), it doesn’t melt until it reaches 650°C and can’t catch fire. This was then covered with Mylar and a metallic mesh hand area, with the thumb and fingertips benefiting from bespoke blue silicone rubber. Outer gloves, with a unique metal-woven fabric, acted as a protective cover against micrometeorites, tearing and heat.

A NASA pamphlet called Wardrobe for Space explains the overall get-up: “Completing the Moon explorer’s ensemble were lunar gloves and boots, both designed for the rigors of exploring, and the gloves for adjusting sensitive instruments. The lunar surface gloves consisted of integral structural restraint and pressure bladders, molded from casts of the crewmen’s hands, and covered by multilayered superinsulation for thermal and abrasion protection. Thumb and fingertips were molded of silicone rubber to permit a degree of sensitivity and ‘feel’. Pressure-sealing disconnects, similar to the helmet-to-suit connection, attached the gloves to the spacesuit arms.”

In the late 1980s (pictured), research on the AX-5 spacesuit led to a new breakthrough in hard, rigid designs, but the astronaut glove remains far-from-perfect. Thanks to long-duration spacewalks–like when astronauts ventured outside to fix the Hubble Space Telescope–bruising, blisters and even bent-back fingernails (ouch) aren’t uncommon. To help design better gloves, NASA offered a £250,000 prize last year to anyone who could create a strong yet comfortable glove. The winner, Peter Homer, used rubber gloves and some fabric off eBay. Aspiring designers take note.

Now, with people seriously thinking about missions to Mars and the asteroids, companies like ILC Dover, the Chanel of the spacesuit world, are already talking about radiation-proof weaves, shape morphing components and even self-healing fabrics. Watch this space.

CHRIS HATHERILL

Chris Hatherill is a co-director of super/collider