Adam Savage's Apollo A7L Spacesuit Upgrade!

Hey everybody, Adam Savage here with a show and tell from my cave and as you've probably already gathered it is space related, This is of course my beautiful a7l replica built by Ryan Nagata on which i did some of my own custom machining on these front couplers but over the past few months ryan has delivered a few augmentations to this suit that truly take it into a whole nother realm of replica and we're going to walk through those modifications today because they are so beautiful all right let's get started first up we should take some nice video shots of how beautiful this suit is made of a coated nylon that ryan chose for the way in which it weathers you can see some of the close-up seam detailing here the different stitching this is ryan's incredible fidelity it is a truly amazing replica um even went so far ryan discovered that nasa uses a very specific kind of velcro that's laid out all in rows instead of randomly like normal velcro i guess that's nasa uh and in fact um there are these this is a detail i love there are uh the buttons are sewn in uh i guess they're mounted to like ptfe or i don't know some type of plastic and then sewn in um not having done that ryan actually can you see this he screen printed the stitches on to the little nubbin that goes around the button yeah and then airbrush the edge like from here you cannot tell that that's what's happening that is amazing here are the couplers that i machined this is the project on which i discovered that if you're using uh 6061 and then perhaps another type of aluminum that when you anodize them you will get i don't know if it's visible on camera you will get two totally different colors as i have here these this color is different than this color um this is another thing ryan did which i particularly love is he uh to do the the the internal plug of the electrics um this is just as a laser print of the front of one of those connectors yeah i know totally awesome all right uh let's talk about some of these modifications the first one is in the hands and i know when i did the one day build of my new space gloves i did a bit of a show and tell about the space gloves these are absolutely amazing this is the brand newest uh uh pattern that ryan has built for the apollo era gloves this pattern was patterned off a real glove so it is as close as humanly possible to the real thing and just to show you the fidelity that ryan goes to the internal labels are all there uh and including there's an internal label inside there but the thing i wanted you to pay attention to is this this is no longer a cast piece of plastic this is a machine an anodized piece of aluminum for the glove wrist ring and ryan made a set of receivers for this for my suit so now the gloves it's aluminum on aluminum and they're still magnets that hold it together uh it's a very positive fit oh and i gotta tell you like having aluminum just honestly right i i said this when i machine these just like having actual aluminum parts on this thing make it feel so much more real and the weight feels great i mean this is yeah these things are beautiful but that is still not what i wanted to show you today that is still just we are traveling along the way the very thing i want to talk about today is ryan's new neck ring now let me take you on a tour through the old neck ring this is ryan's original neck ring that my suit shipped with and it's beautiful uh it's got velcro around the bottom to attach to the suit uh the the pieces and the markings are great he's got decals for the engage and disengage use with helmet ring only uh also just to show you this up close yeah i mean it's beautiful modeling it looks great and mine is beat up because i'm hard on my equipment but i i do want to point out that ryan actually paints metallic paint into the silicone mold to get a really robust coating and still i was able to beat the hell out of it but for me all that weathering makes it look kind of kind of good but ryan's new neck ring is a wholly different beast here it is and it's not just completely machined out of aluminum but it has if you can see here and i'll shoot a close-up of this little pins and those little pins actually retract oh yep check that out it is a functioning functioning neck ring okay let's talk about functioning this isn't going to help you survive in space that's not what i mean by functioning i mean that it locks it locks what does it lock to i'm so glad you asked because one of the other things that ryan has improved upon is the bubble helmet oh my gosh okay wait i'll be right back here is ryan's old bubble helmet and it looks great it is a beaut again this is the one that shipped with my suit when i first got it the selva device here again the decals and everything and it fits in this neck ring actually doesn't quite fit in this neck ring but that's okay it doesn't have to it fits in the old neck ring this one yes but a couple of things about the shape of this um ryan was able to have access to a real bubble helmet and i think you can see the slightly different shape between these two this one is way way way more accurate and if you look at certain close-up details like the little spacers here around here they're just uh blank little uh wrecked uh sorry little oblong pills but here they have little holes on either side of them just a little bit more detail and again the newest thing about this bubble helmet is not only is it pulled in thicker this one's pulled in very very thin petg and i actually left it in my car on a mythbusters shoot and it got a little dented because of the heat um ryan pulled this out of a much thicker piece of petg it's still quite thin compared to the real thing but again this doesn't have to help you survive the vacuum of space um but its shape is 100 just gorgeous and it has a anodized aluminum ring now here's the thing about this ring this will fit in an original apollo neck ring it will actually lock into an original piece of apollo hardware that's the kind of fidelity look i have never i pretty much guarantee you i am never attaching this to a real apollo neck ring i don't think anyone's going to allow me to but i could oh yeah so of course now the thing you're wondering is this locks to this yes it does watch this and dude that they i can barely contain my excitement a locking neck ring oh listen to that obviously i'm gonna have to put this on but i uh in order to put it on i'm gonna actually uh it's not quite a build but it is an elaboration of today's uh uh show-and-tell so on the lower left red coupler this one here i've actually machined a air distribution system on the backside of this for the helmet yes because the helmet is meant to disperse air it starts here you push air in through here uh and it wraps around the inside of the suit i'll shoot a b-roll of that in a second and it comes up this little air conditioning line see this i've glued this in and then safety printed into the suit and it comes up here and this is an accurate part right here and this feeds in to the back of the helmet where it feeds in here and then this whole system is a distribution system for air check that out right so the air comes in here and spins around here and the whole point is to bring air up and around the inside of the helmet to keep it from fogging over yeah so the air comes in here gets pushed around here and spread out all the way around the inside of the helmet oh so beautiful hey uh so at this moment in the video you should be watching me put on a space suit and try it out uh with the neck ring so i can get the whole experience and you know what happened um i was pushing the record button when i thought i was pushing the stop button and vice versa i'm sure you've done that i know we have all done that ed in the past and i did it for the finale of this video which is like a 10 minute cut that somehow didn't happen and i just didn't notice and uh norm called me up and he was like hey we're missing the outro for the neck ring detail so that's what's about to happen enjoy the neck ring finale all right now that we've established all of now that we've established all of that it's time for the moment of truth i'm going to put this on try the neck ring out in situ i'm also going to be showcasing uh one other cool mod to this suit that ryan sent me recently you're gonna love it oh all right let's see here oh okay so uh hold on oh okay you need out now this is ryan's beautiful communications communications assembly otherwise known as the snoopy cap uh and the snoopy cap here is super super cool and i'm about to show you why because it's got this it's got this plug here and it actually goes to this accurate plug let's see and uh we get a quindar beep after every after everything we say yeah so much but wait that that's not all mission control yeah there's still a few bugs to work out but there's one more thing how do i breathe in here with this now because i have attached this i've got this inflator oh my god this is driving crazy nope nope nope hold on okay great all right i'm already heating up so it's time to attach the fan this is in pool toy inflator i purchased on amazon for about 25 bucks it connects up into here and when i turn it on when i turn it on it blows air up back there which is awesome and now let's put on this helmet shall we there we go this is what i need to wear outdoors during the coronavirus outbreak and as you can see it's not fogging up my visor it goes away so i can't tell you how satisfying it is to be able to open this latch and pull off a helmet that is just feels like such an awesome experience thank you guys for joining me for this show and tell uh truth be told i think i've had more fun with it than you have ah i continue to be amazed by ryan nagata's incredible work and our long-term and long-time collaboration is super fulfilling part of our friendship uh thank you guys for joining me for this show and tell see you next time you

Channel: Adam Savage’s Tested

Views: 122,553

Rating: 4.9628005 out of 5

Keywords: testedcom, adam savage, apollo, spacesuit, nasa, replica, a7l, al7, mythbusters, adam savage space suit, adam savage space, adam savage space helmet, adam savage apollo suit, adam savage apollo 11, adam savage apollo space suit, adam savage tested, space suit, inside adam savages cave, adam savage cosplay, tested space suit, space suit cosplay, ryan nagata space suits, adam savage ryan nagata, ryan nagata, adam savage a7l, adam savage space suit build, space suit replica

Id: mquypbwrF94

Length: 15min 47sec (947 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 06 2020