NASA’s commercial spacesuit program just hit a major snag
NASA’s commercial spacesuit program just hit a major snag
"Unfortunately Collins has been significantly behind schedule."
If NASA were to re-open competition, one of the bidders could be SpaceX, which has already designed a basic spacesuit to support the private Polaris Dawn mission.
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I have no faith in SpaceX suit, it definitely doesn't look ready for moon exploration, barely ready for spacewalks.
The whole suit competition is embarrassing. After COVID ended it seems like all the rich folks stopped caring about space travel despite its importance.
Not sure what the solution is but capitalism won't be one until there's a way to profit.
The SpaceX ones are privately funded, so who cares if the first generation of them sucks? At least they're trying and might have a path to success.
Not sure what the solution is?
Proper funding for NASA and for an equivalent for sea exploration while we're at it, get the private sector the fuck out of space.
Until there’s a way to profit from space? There are already tons of ways to profit from space.
At least these are "only" the ISS suits, not the Lunar surface suits from Axiom, so this doesn't make the Artemis situation worse. Hopefully SpaceX can evolve their new suits enough to be useful for space station EVAs for Vast or whoever.
Setting this up as a task order contract never made sense to me. Firm fixed price for this also doesn't make sense to me. It's a development program with 0 commercial customers and no ability to lease them to private customers. What a weird, late, mess.
I wonder if they could ever purchase some of the Feitian space suits... politically awkward, but it might work.