Biggest omission: Binoculars for the operator to see what the waldos are working on ten feet away. Can you imagine repairing Hubble in that rig?

I enjoyed the von Braun video, and I had to laugh when he held up a model of that…can, and teased out one of the arms to reveal a human-hand-shaped manipulator on the end. Subconsciously they understood the problem.

I think microgravity supports the evolution of ever-lighter spacesuits, till we achieve that science-fiction trope, the force-field skinsuit. Astronauts go outside most often to do hands-on work, often in tight quarters (the NASA video has an image of an astronaut entirely inside Hubble, snaked inside a compartment to swap out some equipment; you couldn’t get the can into a space like that). I’m reminded that Alexei Leonov’s historic space walk almost ended in disaster when he couldn’t get his inflated suit back inside his capsule. Flexibility and compactness is the holy grail in an EVA suit.

But then, I prefer to skinny-dip when possible. No encumbrances for me when I’m floating on the water. I think in space I’d want the least obtrusive spacesuit possible to fully experience floating in space.

lots more pictures and history here:

http://cyberneticzoo.com/teleoperators/1954-bottle-suit-wernher-von-braun-walt-disney-american/

Planetary surface exploration requires legs and arms, of course, but I suspect the biggest design influence was existing models, diver’s suits and high-altitude pilot pressure suits. Engineers are more likely to elaborate, evolve and modify existing concepts than to think out of the box.

I thought of your dream post when I saw an article about Grumman’s “Moon Suit” from 1962. Note the wraparound window, which would let you check whether an enemy fighter plane (or a tiger or a Martian) is stalking you. That was one primal dream, man.

But I can’t stop thinking about that suit for more reasons than your dream. It seems like a very practical design for a “surface excursion module” (not so much for microgravity, where it’d be more of a nightmare). It would have been roomy, and you could draw in your arms to scratch an itch or eat a sandwich, or to save your arm if the suit arm gets punctured. Notice the window in the bottom of the can–you’d have had better visibility of what’s at your feet than any real Apollo surface suit. And the whole hard shell concept seems very practical when your job is to walk around the landscape performing scientific examinations of stuff. The mockup shows the astronaut carrying around a workstation attached to the front of the can.

To me, that was a promising design, but when I went searching for more pictures of it, I picked up from the context that it was ridiculed at the time for the way it looked. Not for being a good or bad spacesuit, but just because it looks dorky. I guess the ideal aesthetic for a heroic astronaut is a form-fitting sci-fi-ish space number, not some clunky tin can. Something more like NASA’s new Buzz Lighyear costume, the I-kid-you-not Z2:

I dunno. I think I might be too embarrassed to wear that thing, even if they offered me a trip to Mars.