Filmmakers employ various images to suggest the strangeness of outer space, but protective spacesuits most powerfully communicate its dangers and the frailty of humans beyond the cradle of Earth. (Many films set in space, however, forgo spacesuits altogether, reluctant to hide famous faces behind bulky helmets and ill-fitting jumpsuits.) This critical history comprehensively examines science fiction films that portray space travel realistically (and sometimes not quite so) by having characters wear spacesuits. Beginning [A] with the pioneering Himmelskibet (1918) and Woman on the Moon (1929), it discusses [B] other classics in this tradition, including Destination Moon (1950), Riders to the Stars (1954), and 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968); [C] films that gesture toward realism but betray that goal with melodramatic villains, low comedy, or improbable monsters; [D] the distinctive spacesuit films of Western Europe, Russia and Japan; and [E] America's spectacular real-life spacesuit film, the televised Apollo 11 moon landing (1969).

A high school senior wins a space suit in a soap jingle contest, takes a last walk wearing "Oscar" before cashing him in for college tuition, and suddenly finds himself on a space odyssey.

How the twenty-one-layer Apollo spacesuit, made by Playtex, was a triumph of intimacy over engineering. When Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin stepped onto the lunar surface in July of 1969, they wore spacesuits made by Playtex: twenty-one layers of fabric, each with a distinct yet interrelated function, custom-sewn for them by seamstresses whose usual work was fashioning bras and girdles. This book is the story of that spacesuit. It is a story of the triumph over the military-industrial complex by the International Latex Corporation, best known by its consumer brand of "Playtex"—a victory of elegant softness over engineered hardness, of adaptation over cybernetics. Playtex's spacesuit went up against hard armor-like spacesuits designed by military contractors and favored by NASA's engineers. It was only when those attempts failed—when traditional engineering firms could not integrate the body into mission requirements—that Playtex, with its intimate expertise, got the job. In Spacesuit, Nicholas de Monchaux tells the story of the twenty-one-layer spacesuit in twenty-one chapters addressing twenty-one topics relevant to the suit, the body, and the technology of the twentieth century. He touches, among other things, on eighteenth-century androids, Christian Dior's New Look, Atlas missiles, cybernetics and cyborgs, latex, JFK's carefully cultivated image, the CBS lunar broadcast soundstage, NASA's Mission Control, and the applications of Apollo-style engineering to city planning. The twenty-one-layer spacesuit, de Monchaux argues, offers an object lesson. It tells us about redundancy and interdependence and about the distinctions between natural and man-made complexity; it teaches us to know the virtues of adaptation and to see the future as a set of possibilities rather than a scripted scenario.

This book gathers together many of the illuminating essays on science fiction and fantasy film penned by a major critic in the SF field. The pieces are roughly organized in the chronological order of when the movies and television programs being discussed first appeared, with essays providing more general overviews clustered near the beginning and end of the volume, to provide the overall aura of a historical survey. Although this book does not pretend to provide a comprehensive history of science fiction and fantasy films, it does intermingle analyses of films and TV programs with some discussions of related plays, novels, stories, and comic books, particularly in the essays on This Island Earth and 2001: A Space Odyssey and its sequels. Inciteful, entertaining, and full of intelligent and witty observations about science fiction and its sometimes curious relationship with the visual media, these essays will both delight and entertain critics, fans, and viewers alike.

Discusses activities astronauts do while they're in space.

Many designers enjoy the interfaces seen in science fiction films and television shows. Freed from the rigorous constraints of designing for real users, sci-fi production designers develop blue-sky interfaces that are inspiring, humorous, and even instructive. By carefully studying these “outsider” user interfaces, designers can derive lessons that make their real-world designs more cutting edge and successful.

The space suit is an icon of space flight. It is the very symbol of interplanetary exploration - of pioneering adventure, of excitement and danger, and of man's quest to learn more of other worlds.This book follows the remarkable history of the space suit through science fiction and fact. With an absorbing blend of drama and detail, Brett Gooden explains how this seemingly impossible dream gradually evolved into the complex suits of today and how the quest continues for the 'Mars and Beyond' suits of tomorrow.Man has dreamt of flying into space and walking on other planets for hundreds of years. But the risks to the human body involved in making this a reality only were only first recognized when, in the 1800s, an adventurous few climbed high mountains and took the first tentative steps into the sky under hydrogen filled balloons.Gradually it became clear that to leave the earth's atmosphere and gravity, our frail bodies would need protection from many dangers. Jules Verne, in his epic novel Around the Moon in 1872, recognized this need and was one of the first to suggest that some form of suit, similar to that used by deep sea divers, might allow his space voyagers to venture safely into the vacuum outside their spaceship.In the period between the World Wars, daring pilots, competing with each other, ventured higher and higher into the thinner atmosphere. They challenged the physiologists and engineers to provide them with special suits to achieve this goal.At the same time, cheap pulp fiction magazines pumped out colorful adventures of humans in space. Their eye-catching cover illustrations became the archetypical feature of these 'pulps' and allowed artists to give vent to their wildest fantasy. Nevertheless, their inventive dreams for space suits fed back to the scientific community. Fiction influenced fact. Complemented by astonishing and detailed illustrations, this book unlocks the seemingly impenetrable secrets of how the space suit was made into a practical and essential device. How simple everyday items such as the car tire, the caterpillar and the concertina provided critical clues that eventually brought the space suit to reality. This is the fascinating, extraordinary and often bizarre story of the Space suit - through Fact and Fiction.