Spacesuits are approximately 3/16” thick, with 11 layers. This is a cross-section of the spacesuit used on Extravehicular Activities, or spacewalks, staged from the Space Shuttle and sometimes the International Space Station. The same spacesuit, manufactured by the ILC Dover company, has been used throughout the Space Shuttle program since the first Shuttle spacewalk on STS-6 in 1983, though it has undergone several modifications and alterations. The suit consists of eleven layers of material consisting (from the inside layer, out) of: - A soft nylon liner (fitted against the astronauts skin as an undergarment) - Nylon spandex with a 300-foot water cooling loop threaded through it to cool the astronaut’s skin - Nylon with polymer coatings to form the pressure bladder (yellow) - Dacron fabric as a restraint and abrasion prevention for the bladder - A black colored nylon ripstop coated with neoprene to insulate & prevent against micrometeroids - Five thin layers of aluminized Mylar for thermal protection from the extreme temperature of space - And finally, the thick Ortho-Fabric outer shell, made of Gore-Tex, Kevlar and Nomex, which prevents against heat-absorption from the outside and is flame-retardent (via Launch Photography)
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Spacesuits are approximately 3/16” thick, with 11 layers.

This is a cross-section of the spacesuit used on Extravehicular Activities, or spacewalks, staged from the Space Shuttle and sometimes the International Space Station. The same spacesuit, manufactured by the ILC Dover company, has been used throughout the Space Shuttle program since the first Shuttle spacewalk on STS-6 in 1983, though it has undergone several modifications and alterations. The suit consists of eleven layers of material consisting (from the inside layer, out) of:

- A soft nylon liner (fitted against the astronauts skin as an undergarment)
- Nylon spandex with a 300-foot water cooling loop threaded through it to cool the astronaut’s skin
- Nylon with polymer coatings to form the pressure bladder (yellow)
- Dacron fabric as a restraint and abrasion prevention for the bladder
- A black colored nylon ripstop coated with neoprene to insulate & prevent against micrometeroids
- Five thin layers of aluminized Mylar for thermal protection from the extreme temperature of space
- And finally, the thick Ortho-Fabric outer shell, made of Gore-Tex, Kevlar and Nomex, which prevents against heat-absorption from the outside and is flame-retardent

(via Launch Photography)

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