NASA’s Unmentionable(s) Adventure

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1:22Now, on with the episode.

1:26On July 20th, 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin took their first steps on the moon. On CBS News, Walter Cronkite rubbed his hands in glee, while a NASA astronaut next to him wiped away a tear. No doubt millions of others, stunned at this historic achievement, wept a bit themselves. Let's listen to a snippet of actual audio footage from the landing. Oh, that looks beautiful from here, Neil. It has a stark beauty all its own. It's like much of the high desert of the United States.

2:02It's different, but it's very pretty out here. He said, that looks beautiful from here, Neil. Then Neil Armstrong said, It's like much of the high desert of the United States. It's different, but very pretty out here.

Spacesuit Design Challenges

2:17But one group of people watched the moon landing with less awe than fear. I'm not talking about the astronauts' families or NASA administrators. I mean the team that made the spacesuits for Armstrong and Aldrin. For two and a half hours, this team fretted and prayed, petrified that a stitch would come loose or a seam tear. Something that would cause the astronauts to abort the mission, or even collapse and suffocate while the world watched. That did not happen, of course.

2:47And when the two astronauts ascended back into the safety of the lunar lander, everyone at Playtex heaved a huge sigh of relief. And yes, you heard that right. The team that built the first spacesuits was indeed the underwear and lingerie maker, Playtex. For all of the majesty involved, and all the futuristic science, the first human beings to set foot on another celestial body, did so wearing what amounted to an oversized, high-tech brassiere.

3:23This is The Disappearing Spoon by Sam Keen, a topsy-turvy, science-y history podcast, where footnotes become the real story. Designing the spacesuit was arguably the hardest part of the entire moon mission. The garment had to be thin and flexible, like a second skin, and it could not sacrifice dexterity. NASA insisted that someone wearing it be able to bend over

3:54and pick up a dime lying on the ground. Yet it also had to be tough, able to withstand a strike from a stray micrometeorite streaming along at 22,000 miles per hour. And the suits had to withstand the moon's intense temperature swings from 280 degrees below zero to 240 degrees above zero. What garment could possibly meet all those requirements? For its early missions, Mercury and Gemini, NASA punted the spacesuit problem down the road.

4:24Mercury's suits were just modified Navy dive suits, stiff and clumsy. Because the astronauts never left the cockpit, that didn't matter. Gemini astronauts did some spacewalks, which required more agility, but they were mostly just floating there weightless. The moon mission, Apollo, was different. The astronauts had to climb ladders, walk around, pick up rocks. The suits needed a whole new design. NASA started thinking about the problem early. In 1962, the agency took its first bids for spacesuit designs.

4:57It was startled to receive one from Playtex and their parent company, the Delaware-based ILC, International Latex Corporation. Playtex was famous then for its cross-your-heart bras, as well as comfy latex girdles, the Spanx of its era. But Playtex also made industrial rubber products for World War II, rafts, bedsheets, bibs. And bra making was actually a fertile area of garment innovation. Starting in the 1860s,

5:27the U.S. had awarded 1,200 patents for bras, half to women. After reviewing the bid, NASA admitted that Playtex had some impressive ideas. One involved the suit's joints. Other contractors had proposed suits with rigid joints, like suits of armor. Playtex envisioned something like accordion folds around the knees and elbows, light and stretchy. Still, certain things about the Playtex bid gave NASA pause. The team leader was a college dropout.

5:57Prior to joining Playtex, he repaired televisions for a living. Another executive there had an even weaker technical background. He was a former sewing machine salesman. Perhaps even worse in NASA's eyes, most of the workforce was seamstresses. Women. Plus, come on, it was Playtex. How could NASA executives explain to Congress or Walter Cronkite that they had just hired an underwear company to make the trickiest piece of equipment in the whole program? They turned bright red just thinking about it.

6:30So, NASA compromised. They made Playtex a subcontractor, a junior partner to Hamilton Standard, which normally made military hardware. Essentially, NASA wanted Hamilton's reliability and Playtex's haberdashery skills and innovation. They would split a contract for $1.6 million, around $17 million today. Unfortunately, the compromise failed. Hamilton hated working with an underwear company. Hamilton also wanted to stick with their Buzz Lightyear armor suits.

7:01They kept forcing Playtex to change its design, which frustrated Playtex. Plus, Hamilton got to thinking. Why split $1.6 million with seamstresses and TV repair guys? So, it engineered a coup. It went to NASA behind Playtex's back and claimed that those brawmakers were hopeless. NASA was sympathetic. In 1965, Playtex was fired. The news crushed the Playtex team. Three years of work gone.

7:33Poof. The moon landing was the most incredible project in human history, and they had been dismissed from it. Talk about embarrassing. But they did not give up. After firing Playtex, NASA didn't just hand a new contract to Hamilton. Instead, NASA decided to hold a competition between Hamilton and another team with engineers from the David Clark Company and tire maker B.F. Goodrich. That team had previously designed suits for the Gemini missions. NASA asked each team to present their best suit in six weeks' time for a series of tests.

8:06Well, through the grapevine, the Playtex crew heard about the competition. They got angry about not being invited. So, the dropout TV repairman, Len Shepard, hopped on a plane to Houston to beg for a chance to enter. NASA executives hesitated. So, Shepard threatened to sue them for breach of contract for firing Playtex. NASA finally said, fine, join the competition. But, with a catch. They would get no NASA funding. Playtex had to pay for everything itself.

8:36And they still would have to hit the same deadline, now just five weeks away. Shepard considered the offer. It was a big gamble. Space suits took years to design and cost millions. What if the suit flopped? They would never get another chance and could suffer financially. But Shepard said, to hell with it. He told NASA they would be ready. When Shepard returned to Delaware, his team ran into one problem immediately. The Hamilton Company's engineers had had testing facilities in the Playtex building.

9:08When Playtex got fired, the Hamilton folks locked everything up and left. Meaning Playtex could not access the labs in its own building. It was a dirty trick. So, Playtex got down and dirty too. Employees picked the locks and busted in. When some locks proved stubborn, the engineers crawled through ventilation ducts to retrieve materials and blueprints. They would not be denied. Then they got to work. First thing, they raided the main Playtex factory for the company's best seamstresses,

9:38a group of several dozen women and their female supervisors. In doing this, the male engineers at Playtex were being humble. They knew a lot about high-tech fabrics, but little about actually making clothing. So they asked the seamstresses for insights on what would work and what would not. It was a real partnership. The next five weeks passed in a blur, a frantic scramble of snipping, stitching, and sewing. The seamstresses used their best machines, ones with nicknames like Big Mo and Sweet Sue. And in the end,

10:09Playtex missed the deadline. It just wasn't enough time. But they needed only an extra week. And NASA, perhaps in mercy or perhaps still wary of being sued, allowed them to join the competition in Houston. And right away, the Playtex suit failed. When NASA tried inflating the suit with air, a zipper blew out. The grumpy NASA executives said Playtex had 12 hours to fix the problem. Len Shepard quickly chartered a flight back to Delaware and rallied all the exhausted seamstresses

10:39to fix things. When they finished, he jetted back in the middle of the night. And in the end, the scramble paid off. While it was not perfect, the Playtex suit far outperformed the rival suits. When an astronaut wearing the Hamilton suit began climbing a ladder during one test, his helmet popped off like a cork out of a champagne bottle. Not great. Meanwhile, the Clark Goodrich suit proved too soft and balloon-like. When NASA inflated it, the shoulders puffed up so much that the astronaut could not get back

11:09inside the lunar lander. Had that happened on the moon, he would have been stranded up there. So despite the zipper snafu, Playtex won the competition. In NASA's words, there was no second place. The bra-makers beat the military guys that badly. And because Playtex had spent its own money designing the space suit, it now held all the patent rights. The company soon strong-armed NASA into a $10 million contract for the Apollo suits, over $100 million today. But if Playtex thought things would be smooth sailing,

11:41they were wrong. Despite them winning the competition, NASA still didn't quite trust Playtex. And the women there would pay the price.

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Playtex Spacesuit Production

14:53or even Burt Reynolds? Wonder no more. Eleven Reader offers them all. Plus, you can upload PDFs, articles, and online content and have your favorite narrator read those too. Start with 10 free hours per month or upgrade to Ultra for $11 a month. That unlocks unlimited uploads plus 20 hours of premium audiobooks. Use promo code SPOON to get your first two months for only $1. That's promo code SPOON

15:24for two months for $1. And you know, the reason this podcast is free is because of ad partners. I need audience support to keep making this show. So, check them out. I know that you're all readers. Most text-to-speech is robotic. Eleven Reader is stunningly natural audio just the way you want it. The spacesuit that Playtex produced was by far the most sophisticated piece of clothing ever designed until that point. It consisted of 21 separate layers

15:55all with different functions. Some were for comfort, some for moisture regulation, some for heat retention. Many were gossamer thin, yet had to survive tests that involved taking power sanders to them. The suit even had liquid-cooled underwear for Pete's sake. Still, the main components of the suit were all basic Playtex underwear technology. It contained latex from girdles, nylon from bra straps, and soft webbing from bra cups. The suits were tailored to each astronaut. Making each one

16:26required 65 separate body measurements, everything from inseams to the curvature of the buttocks. In fact, the hyperfit of the suits annoyed the astronauts. If they had an extra cheeseburger one weekend, the suit would be too snug come Monday morning. They had to watch their weight carefully. However, some components were not tailored. Instead, they came in intermittent sizes, like small, medium, and large. That also caused some problems. One classic question that astronauts get is how they go

16:56to the bathroom in space. For this purpose, the Playtex suit used a hollow sheath. It slid on and allowed the astronauts to urinate. But a few astronauts got mad when they saw the size label on their penal sheaths. To protect their frail egos, the Playtex crew quickly relabeled them. From then on, the sheaths started at large and proceeded to XXL. Overall, the seamstresses did incredible work piecing the 21 layers together. Often, the fabrics had to be cut by hand and stitched

17:27together on the same basic sewing machines your grandmother used. And the error tolerances were unforgiving, just 1 64th of an inch. That is the width of a pin. And speaking of pins, the women could not use pins like they were used to. When sewing on a machine, pins keep the material lined up so it doesn't shift when it's tugged. But Playtex banned the use of pins for the spacesuits. NASA could not afford even the tiniest pinprick in the material in the vacuum of space. In fact, Playtex got a

17:58little fanatical here. It banned all jewelry from the sewing floor to prevent an inadvertent tear or puncture. And the company installed x-ray machines to search each layer of the suit for pins. Still, one woman did try to cheat and got caught with a pin by supervisor Eleanor Foraker. Foraker glared at her and said, you know what a pin is for? Then she jabbed the woman in the butt with it. The woman never dared use a pin after that. To be fair, Foraker and others were under intense

18:28pressure making the suits. Each suit had a tag with a laminated picture of the astronaut's face, and that face stared at the women while they worked. Every hour of every day the women had to think about someone dying if they made a mistake. The seamstresses worked 80 hours a week. Foraker herself took no vacations for three years. She sometimes clocked out at 5 a.m. and reported back to work at 7 a.m. She also had two nervous breakdowns, and regularly broke down crying at home.

18:59The women and engineers had to change designs on the fly, too. Tragically, three Apollo astronauts died in a fire during a training mission in Houston in 1967. I've actually put together a bonus episode about the accident at patreon.com slash disappearing spoon. After the deaths, many people feared that NASA would abandon its quest for the moon altogether, and NASA's determined response shaped the agency's entire future. Hear this riveting story at patreon.com

19:29slash disappearing spoon. Now, the fire was not Playtex's fault, but an autopsy revealed that the fire had melted the Playtex suits. NASA immediately ordered Playtex to make all future suits fire resistant. It took months, but Playtex engineers developed a fiberglass fabric coated in Teflon for the outside of the suit. It could withstand temperatures of 1,200 degrees. The fabrics also gave the suits their distinct look. Mercury astronauts had worn suits

19:59with a metallic sheen, like smooth tinfoil, mostly because that looked cool on black and white televisions, but it also made them look like cheap science fiction robots. In contrast, Playtex's fiberglass Teflon layer was a crisp, clean white. It looked chic, and it became the iconic look for the Apollo crew. Function and fashion. Now, after all this sacrifice and innovation, you would think that Playtex had proven its worth to NASA, right? But NASA still

20:30did not trust them. They still saw Playtex as a bra company helmed by lowly female seamstresses. And word got around that, even late in the game, NASA was still putting out feelers for other contractors to help with the suits. Playtex finally decided to put on a demonstration that would penetrate the skulls of the meathead NASA administration. One afternoon, its engineers suited up a technician, trotted him over to the local high school, and filmed him running through football drills. He punted, he passed,

21:00he kicked field goals. For good measure, he did wind sprints and push-ups. Imagine you're a regular citizen driving by the school that day. Then you see a moon man knocking down tackling dummies and catching touchdowns. What on earth? But the NASA team loved it, and this got them past their mental block. They could finally see not bras, but manly football stars. There was no more grumbling about the suits after that. And of course, the suits performed brilliantly on the moon. Every last Playtex

21:30seamstress watched the Apollo 11 broadcast with one eye closed, dreading the prospect of something going wrong. But nothing did. Neil Armstrong later wrote the women a personal thank-you letter. He called the suits tough, reliable, almost cuddly. The most advanced clothing in history had done its job. Today, a spinoff of Playtex still makes spacesuits for NASA, using both traditional sewing machines as well as advanced laser cutters. And of course, women aren't just making the suits now.

22:01They're also wearing them in orbit, and might wear them soon on the moon. In many ways, the Playtex spacesuits were the most iconic aspect of the golden age of space travel. Jim Lovell of Apollo 13 fame once talked about showing up to give talks at schools. If he wore street clothes, the kids would be crushed. Where was that famous gleaming spacesuit? Was he even a real astronaut? They could not hide their disappointment. It's an amusing story. But in some ways, I think the kids are

22:31right. Those spacesuits made the astronauts and made moonwalks possible. And only Playtex could have pulled them off. Despite being primarily a brawmaker, Playtex alone could envision the spacesuits not as bulky hardware, but as a tough, reliable, and even intimate part of the astronauts themselves. This is the Disappearing Spoon podcast. If you like the show, please subscribe, leave a

23:02five-star review, or tell friends and family. Reviews, subscriptions, and word of mouth really do help. Also, please support the show at patreon.com slash disappearing spoon. It costs as little as seven cents per day for ad-free shows. You can also get bonus episodes and signed books. You can find more incredible stories in my books. Check out samkeen.com. You can also inquire about booking me as a speaker at your school or event. This episode was written, edited, and

23:34produced by me, Sam Keen. Thanks for listening.