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Elon Musk Posts First Photo of SpaceX's New Spacesuit (arstechnica.com)
Early Wednesday morning, SpaceX founder Elon Musk posted a photo of the spacesuit that will be used by astronauts flying aboard the company's Dragon spacecraft, perhaps as early as next year. Ars Technica reports: In his Instagram post, Musk added that this suit was not a mock-up but rather a fully functional unit. "Already tested to double vacuum pressure," he wrote. "Was incredibly hard to balance aesthetics and function. Easy to do either separately." (Double vacuum pressure simply means the suit was probably inflated to twice the pressure of sea level and then put into a vacuum chamber.) Musk gave no other technical information about the suit. Most strikingly, it is white, in contrast to the very blue spacesuits unveiled by Boeing in January. These are not, strictly speaking, "space suits." Rather, they are more properly flight suits designed to be worn during the ride to space and again on the ride back down to Earth. They have a limited time in which they can operate in a full vacuum and are not intended for spacewalks.
Actually, when your goal is to make space travel mass market, making things aesthetically appealing is a key aspect. Musk's goal is not and never has been $25m trips to space for the select few; he wants to make space travel a common occurrence.
As for "solid spacesuit", I assume you mean like the NASA AX series, which are built more like atmospheric diving suits than traditional space suits. And the answer is the same reason why NASA doesn't use them - while mobility in them is superb, they're significantly heavier. About the only place in the solar system where it makes sense to use them at present (in combination with insulation and either a heat-absorbing material (akin to Venera) or a heat pump with cooling channels, and a bellows balloon) is the surface of Venus. A more popular research topic is hybrid pressure / hard suits, where you have certain parts rigid (such as the torso) and others inflated.
Ever since, I've been suspicious of Jesus and very careful around chlorine.
Outside is vacuum, inside is double pressure.
Ever since, I've been suspicious of Jesus and very careful around chlorine.