Spacesuit

Product Description

This is the fascinating extraordinary & often bizarre story of the Spacesuit through science fiction & fact. Man has dreamed of flying into space & walking on other planets for hundreds of years but gradually it became clear that to leave the earths atmosphere & gravity our frail bodies would need protection from many dangers. In the period between the World Wars daring pilots competing with each other ventured higher & higher into the thinner atmosphere. They challenged the physiologists & engineers to provide them with special suits to achieve this goal. At the same time cheap pulp fiction magazines pumped out colourful adventures of humans in space. Their eye-catching cover illustrations became the archetypical feature of these pulps & allowed artists to give vent to their wildest fantasy. Nevertheless their inventive dreams for spacesuits fed back to the scientific community. Fiction influenced fact. Complemented by astonishing & detailed illustrations this book unlocks the seemingly impenetrable secrets of how the spacesuit was made into a practical & essential device. It shows how simple everyday items such as the car tyre the caterpillar & the concertina provided critical clues that eventually brought the spacesuit to reality. With an absorbing blend of drama & detail the author explains how the seemingly impossible dream gradually evolved into the complex suits of today & how the quest continues for the Mars & Beyond suits of tomorrow.