SUITS ARE SEWN, NOT GROWN

Spacesuits aren’t “built”. In fact they are sewn. So how do you sew a space suit?

The Apollo suits were sewn by expert craftswomen such as Jeanne Wilson, who meticulously handstitched the torso, arms and legs of the Moon-landing suits.

At her previous job, sewing suitcases, everything was fast, she says. But on the Apollo spacesuits, “everything was very slow. Every time you sewed a seam, it had to be inspected because of the importance of what we were doing.

“They had to take two X-rays to make sure there were no pins or anything else left in the suits. There were nights we’d go home and worry, ‘Oh my God, did I leave a pin in it?’ And you would lose a little bit of sleep at night sometimes. You actually broke down and cried – I know I did.”

The highly detailed nature and shape of gloves required seamstresses to specialise.

“Each astronaut had their own moulds made from their hands,” says Joanne Thompson, a glove specialist. “The palm part had long strips that went through the fingers and attached to the knock part

and there was an opening to the thumb, and you had to stitch around that.”

The gloves had fabric ridges like an accordion, called convolutes, so the astronaut had maximum dexterity.

Multiple gloves had to be made for all stages of testing, well before the astronauts even boarded a rocket for space. “We had to make different types of seam samples and they would test them until they tore,” says Thompson. “We used to make them all day long and knew they were going to be trashed. But we knew a man’s life was going to depend on it, so we just kept on going.”