SpaceX’s Pioneer Spacesuit

Better, stronger, faster and less than $6m!

For many years SpaceX have produced their own Intra-Vehicular Activity (IVA) spacesuits, used to protect astronauts inside the Dragon spacecraft against unplanned depressurization. In Sept 2021 NASA issued a Request For Proposal (RFP) to develop and supply Extra-Vehicular Activity (EVA) spacesuits, i.e. designed to protect astronauts outside of a spacecraft, under their xEVAS program. Given their prior success and current experience, SpaceX would seem ideally placed to receive an xEVAS contract – but instead they declined to bid for this work (worth $3.5bn overall). What makes this decision even more startling is that SpaceX were already developing their own EVA suit at that time, based on the Dragon IVA suit.

This go-it-alone attitude might seem extraordinary, except there have been numerous occasions in the past where SpaceX decided to self-fund large development projects. Falcon 9 reuse, Falcon Heavy, and more recently the initial work on Starship were all funded internally, in order to promote the company’s goal to create a settlement on the moon and self-sustaining city on Mars. Even if SpaceX had managed to procure outside investment for these large development projects, these investors would likely want a say in what’s produced and require reams of paperwork and progress meetings, meaning the final product would be delayed and less suited to meet SpaceX’s overarching goals.

“You need to [try to not] get money from the government, otherwise the government will tell you what to build and how to build it… they will tell you how to build this and that’s just not always – I mean for some things it’s the best to do, but in others it’s actually not.” ~ Hans Koenigsmann, SpaceX Vice President of Build and Flight Reliability

Space Trials

Polaris Dawn spacewalk ~ credit Polaris Program

SpaceX aim to test their new EVA suits during the upcoming Polaris Dawn mission, a private Dragon flight commanded by the entrepreneur Jared Isaacman. During a Washington Post interview, he provided some interesting insight into how SpaceX might employ their new spacesuit in the future: -

“When we get back to the Moon and we get to Mars someday, it won't be just, you know, two people at a time. You envision a potential colony on Mars at some point, a permanent presence on the Moon, in which case you need a lot of spacesuits, and they can't cost hundreds of millions of dollars. You need a mass‑produced, low‑cost EVA spacesuit so you can get outside the safety of a habitat and vehicle and do work, you know, on the surface of that planet or celestial body or even in space on the way. So EVA is very important for us.” ~ Jared Isaacman, Commander of Polaris Dawn

This would be a bold move by SpaceX because a different spacesuit is normally used for each application i.e. inside the spacecraft (IVA), spacewalks (EVA), plus surface exploration suits for the moon and eventually Mars. However, there’s some evidence SpaceX are attempting to develop an ‘omni-suit’ to cover all applications. For example: during Polaris Dawn all crew members will use the same suit throughout the mission, whether they remain inside or venture outside the spacecraft.

The second Polaris mission promises even greater challenge, with a Crew Dragon spacecraft likely rendezvousing with the Hubble space telescope to perform essential maintenance. The orbit of this venerable telescope has decayed since its launch in April 1990, so requires a boost to place it in a higher and more sustainable orbit. Likely too the Polaris astronauts will take this opportunity to service the telescope, something long overdue as this work was last carried out by the Space Shuttle in May 2009. Overall the Polaris-2 Mission could include days of spacewalk activity, a true test of this new model spacesuit.

Later on, SpaceX intend to launch hundreds of people on each Starship to the moon and Mars, making a mass produced low cost spacesuit a commercial necessity. Hopefully by then the basic suit will have become the standard, allowing them to advance to the next phase…

Future Iteration

SpaceX are always improving their designs, so we can reasonably expect to see many iterations to the original omni-suit. Certainly it will need to be adapted for surface operations, although these enhancements might be added to the standard design to improve overall safety. For example, lunar dust is highly invasive and abrasive hence it could significant reduce the useful life of the spacesuit and equipment inside the spacecraft due to secondary contamination. However, lunar dust is ionized by exposure to solar radiation which should allow it to be removed by an electric field, creating an Electrodynamic Dust Shield (EDS). Ideally electrodes could be embedded in the surface of the suit allowing it to be continually swept clean of invasive dust, preventing any from being tracked into the spacecraft.

Another perennial problem they will likely address is the inherent inflexibility of most spacesuits. By necessity the suit is pressurized, which makes the joints difficult to flex, making movement clumsy and increasing the wearer’s workload. Hence construction work on the moon or Mars would be challenging to say the least, even for the fittest people.

To mitigate this problem the standard suit could be fitting with a powered exoskeleton, essentially turning each construction worker into a human forklift. Fortunately the type of servomotors and power-pack required are already being produced by Tesla for their Optimus robot. Fine control of the exoskeleton could be achieved through a neural implant courtesy of Neuralink, another Elon Musk company. For optimum efficiency the entire suit could be managed by an onboard AI, something else being developed by a recent Musk startup called xAI.

Another possible suit enhancement would be the use of a catalytic rebreather, which extracts usable oxygen from the carbon dioxide exhaled by the wearer. This should allow the suit to be worn almost indefinitely, given the provision of adequate power – and toileting facilities!

No doubt there are many more possibilities to improve functionality, such as using a Mechanical Counter Pressure (MCP) suit, but these would involve a fresh start rather than iterating on the current model spacesuit.

In Conclusion

From a SpaceX perspective they had little choice except to build their own custom spacesuit, given the scope of their long term goals. In order to settle new worlds and support an ever expanding space economy they require a simple to operate, lightweight and above all inexpensive suit, able to function in most space environments. Similar to the past, they chose to iterate on a current design (their existing IVA suit), to reduce development cost and time to delivery. And who knows if the NASA suits fail to materialize in time for Artemis landings...SpaceX could offer a suitable alternative off-the-shelf.

Chris Prophet