Ruined?! What Happened to Adam Savage's Mercury Spacesuit

this is a fun one um this is the most recent space suit that came out of this shop this is my version of the xmu that we built for uh to help Dr uh drum up some attention for GeForce launch and I have often told the story of the fact that my very first space suit was a Baskin Robins ice cream tub over my head with some animation acetate in there but the first space suit to come out of my adult shop after alien the first American space suit the first non-fictional American space suit to come out of my shop was [Music] um was the Mercury suit um I'm going to tease a piece of the Mercury suit you can see it here weathered Fabric and things looks pretty good I'm kind of happy with it I was kind of happy with it I commissioned one of these I actually commissioned two of these way back when way back 2005 2006 and I found this fabric that I really liked good reader fabric is vinyl do you know what happens to vinyl over time yeah yeah um this is just this isn't exposed to sunlight this is not stored under suboptimal conditions this is stored in a wardrobe one of these was on a figure one of them is in a w was in a uh sealed container with desin they both rotted at the same rate oh a total Destruction um and this turns out to be the difficult thing about vinyl covered metallic Fabrics is that the vinyl used is I don't know it's maybe not even vinyl but it's a rubberized Fabric and whatever this rubberized coating is um it's got an expiration date it's got a used best if used by date um so I handed over one of these suits plus the plans that the person I'd hired to make them made for me and I gave them to costuming genius Christine Noble who did all the sewing for this one and some other suits of mine she came back [Music] today with this oh yeah okay so Christine's um particular specialty is is color and there's going to be some color work on this but it's not because of Christine it's just because I need to add 50 70 years of um exposure to this because all the whites are crispy white but I just want to call out the the the first of all the red and the different Reds we got a little bit of an orangey red we got a little bit of rutier red little blue in there Christine's sensitivity to color is one of my favorite things about collaborating with her um she's just phenomenal at her job and I am now going to off camera I added the neck ring I uh yeah off camera I added the neck ring and I stripped the hard Parts off of the old suits uh the old suits had several hard Parts there was a connector here there was a electrical connector in the leg there's a pressure uh gauge on the wrist and there is a no that's it one two three also this patch I think I think that's the right patch I got a double Che I think that's the right patch I have to go to my stock of Ye Old the uh beaten up NASA patches and I may replace this with with one of those um when I say beaten up I mean spefic specifically um Luna replicas ran some OG NASA meatball patches on an ancient Vector based embroidery machine which was much more correct looking than modern embroidery machines and the Calgary Ghostbusters came to the same conclusion and turned out some unbelievable patches um the Mercury suit was a really interesting project to start with there is no Mercury suit there just isn't there's not one Mercury suit there's like as many as many astronauts da a suit there are that many Mercury suits it's like they were all slightly different and it was a rapid process of collaboration and iteration NASA was trying out different stuff all the time on these famously uh John Glenn wanted uh uh uh uh a a light up here I think it's St GL one of the astronauts wanted a light in their finger and they put a light in there and it immediately cut off circulation to the astronaut's finger this is the kind of stuff that was going on Mission by Mission launch by launch wearing by wearing um because they were rapidly trying to figure out how to survive in space they knew so little about going to space that I love this this this sort of exemplifies this to me on John Glenn's friendship 7 cockpit was an ey chart because they didn't know once he left or got farther away from Earth's gravity well they didn't know if his eyes would stop working like that's a reasonable question and a hard one to answer so let's just see empirically what happens the spirit of experimentation and iteration and failure analysis and recovering from losses and tragedies and blown up Rockets Etc the Mercury suit really sort of it's the it's the it's the Beating Heart of the spacit story for me um not least of which because in the 50s when they first started taking the markv High Altitude suit and putting a silver coating on it because that was the future was that a sentence I think I started off with a clause that implied there would be another clause and I just stopped let's try that again see in the 50s when they were sorry I don't mean to reveal so much in the ' 50s when they were uh first making high altitude suits they took the one that worked a mark four high altitude pilot suit um and then they didn't change much for the very first Mercury suits they simply made them silver because culturally that's what everyone thought space suits were going to look like don't get me wrong there's also a reason it's reasonable to have reflective material because temperature Management in space they knew that was going to be a pain in the ass oh before they even got there but really it's silver because Buck Rogers there's always been a virtuous cycle between culture and science um we covered the acquisition at the National Air and Space Museum the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum we covered the acquisition of an X-Wing Fighter from um uh from the force awakens um and there were some complaints in the comments about why is the Smithsonian collecting a fictional space ship and it is totally reasonable to ask to ask questions but that question to me comes from a place of really not having paid attention to what the Smithsonian has been about since its Inception and the fact is is that when they named the first space shuttle Enterprise they got a lot and the one that never flew but they got a lot more public Outreach because of that when Apollo 13 came out NASA's budget went up when the Martian came out NASA's budget went up fictional spaceships are really important to real spaceships there is and I think they even call it the term of art is a virtuous cycle so I just love that Buck Rogers is the reason that these are silver and those guys those dudes those Mercury 7 men they were so you could tell they were chuffed at how they looked there's this wonderful suitup photo of Scott Carpenter and he's like looking into the he's like looking into the camera and he has given all of his Charisma to that camera it is a thing if I'm allowed to I think it's public domain yeah here you go look at that look yeah so um it this there's a reason the Mercury was the very first suit that I uh chose to attempt to execute in full um and so now obviously you know what's coming next is it's time to weather this and to integrate it and to tie all this stuff together uh and that's what I'm going to do I'm going to take this home actually and I'm going to give it a tea bath uh to get all these whites down and that's actually because I have a bathtub I have a bathtub over there and that's the better thing to do it in than a bucket here in the cave uh next shot you see will be me coming back with this and it'll be a lot more yellowed and uh what did I tell you just a second there it is oh wait I guess I should start with I'm going to go home now and have some dinner and relax uh and then do a teab bath on my Mercury suit and I will see you all tomorrow for you it's just going to be like um so this is uh the same suit you just saw with a couple of passes at tea staining um now to do tea staining I will put a kettle on and I'll mix up about actually I'll mix up one of these to go containers and I filled this through the suit in a bathtub through the tea all over it mushed it around a bunch threw it out on my deck and there were still some big h fken white parts so then I came made made a second batch of tea and I came in and I bulleted it now I just want to show you I have always talked about weathering on this channel as a multicolor process that even if you're going to make something look just grimy you want more than one uh color of grime and you will finish that first color of grime and think that looks pretty good I don't think I need another color and the answer is the second color will always be better um so uh here let's take a look at the back side of this here um this is a good example of that kind of variation you see how the color is not super consistent that's that's where the real magic happens with ke standing like this and with multiple color passes is getting that that variegation that's weathers monolithically uh in fact when you look at pictures of this suit you can see they're all over the place so I'm actually going to so I'm actually just going to do a little extra te- sting right now to show you kind of how I think about it so I've got here just a chip brush you fall I got a chip brush and I can already see some of the areas that I think need more tea and when I first put this on you're going to be like whoa and you're going to think that's like too much but it's not so we're at this phase now where I don't where I want all the whatever I'm adding I want it to be spotty um when you look at old stuff and in order to weather properly you should be looking at hundreds and hundreds of pictures of old stuff um you just note that the weathering isn't random and it's not consistent and to make a thing that feels like it's correctly weathered kind of just want to so like part of me thinks how am I ever going to get to every last corner of this thing in order to get the tea on it and the answer is I'm never going to so we just go through and we kind of add some drips and drops where we can um I still haven't even added Grime to this yet and some of these will look poor when I'm done with them and some of them will look fine get something there that one all the whole thing looks a little too right yeah now you're getting dirty um that need to sound so weird about that and sometimes just letting it cool up somewhere also it smells great what tea am I using I'm using thank you for asking I'm using black tea it doesn't matter what kind of black tea frankly to me I'm agnostic on that front you're going to fall out if I don't all right so from across the room it's already looking better um this what I'm doing now to kind of what I think of as a weathering detail pass um that I'll do at least like three or four of these before I think I'm done and it goes on darker than it dries it dries lighter then it goes on so trust in Providence on that you'll put it on and you'll be like oh if the guy screwed up you will every single time I hit brush to stuff I think oh maybe I screwed up it's it's a feeling that never goes away yeah that's great okay [Music] let's [Music] around oh oh oh oh [Music] [Music] make sure you get some of that weathering into the zippers oh my God can I show you something [Music] so the like I've talked about earlier in this video the Mercury suit began as the Navy Mark for high altitude suit um and it was mostly this color this green uh this is this military green these are vintage military zippers they're hard to find they're brass they're beautiful um but when it came to the continuous zipper in the middle of the creation um Christine could not find the continuous zipper and here is her die job of white zipper to match this zipper here come on in whoa so sorry about that uh again the real thing is on the bottom the die job is on the top oh goodness gracious my this is a different phone clamp so that is the real thing and that's the die job amazing amazing amazing work and even then getting just a little bit of like liquid around this just fantastic for feeling like like it's the right thing I love that it's right in front of the the Iron Man which is my favorite paint job [Music] ever some [Music] [Music] [Music] all right uh these velcro velcro I see a little te- sting on there I want more of the these are very unevenly colored on the original um they're very uh they're showing lots of weathering so I'm just going to get a bunch of stuff on there let it bring it down over [Music] here that's great Homer Skinner uh all right let's just do that there you go [Music] cool let that dry for a little bit and uh we'll come back to it yes the floor is covered with tea why do you [Music] ask it's not like I care about t being on the floor I'm just cleaning up so it's not trip Hazard that's all all right so this Mercury suit that Christine Noble belt is um an absolute Masterpiece I can't remember if I've said this in the previous video video but um I had sent her all of the reference material I had built on all of the Mercury suits and there are very there is no such thing is a Mercury suit when you look at pictures from the Mercury program what becomes really clear is that every single one of those suits was a prototype they were trying out different things on everyone on every mission on every training um there are little things that show up and disappear attachments like every every every picture of every suit is slightly different and then in 2021 uh tested and I were filming at the National Air and Space Museum and we were in their conservation lab when uh Ryan Kaiser on our team spotted basically a a body under a sheet and he was like what's that and they we're like it's a Mercury suit and we ended up doing a whole video on Alan Shepard's Mercury suit Alan Shepard was the first American in space so this suit we were looking at is a legendary suit it's the first American in space suit um I took a ton of really detailed pictures of it close-ups and I sent those also to Christine and she copied them exactly so in the end what I've ended up with is a near perfect replica of Alan Shephard's Mercury suit save for because my glove Rings were for a different addition I'm modifying that because well it doesn't have shepherd's name on it's got mine so it's a slight modification um I am going to have to include the word replica inside this suit because I think one could be led to believe by nefarious parties that this was a some had some kind of real lineage the pieces all look so good like Linda's gloves these are some of my favorite gloves Linda guice ever made for me um I had done a set of boots which I'm really happy with they need some work on the Soles because the soles of the Mercury boots were natural rubber I was going to sand these down and make them look more correct but this part is really close I have some straps to add to these it's another build um but dudes and dudads um this there we go that's after some weathering in my kitchen with some tea I threw it in my bathtub I mucked around with it um so what's going to happen next and that will be the end of this introduction video to this beautiful artifact is I have a museum mannequin uh this came from another exhibit my stuff was in and Museum mannequins are very different than normal mannequins because they are made of completely inert materials inert means that the material is exactly what it is and it won't change over time how do materials change over time you ask I'm glad that you've asked because uh for instance um here we [Music] go I love a certain kind of plastic called acetal is its chemical name delin is a product name um this is a fantastic material it is like a bearing plastic it machines really easily doesn't deal your tools but you can't quite tell but this material is always off-gassing and that means it's releasing volatile volatile organic compounds slowly into the air not to any degree that would affect any of us in normal operations but that does mean that it's not applicable to any NASA application they can't use stuff that off gases because you don't want gases you don't know about in confined environments where you're providing the breathing um and there's no backup uh so Museum manicans are made out of all materials that are fully stable uh open cell Foams polyurethane Foams uh Fabrics all of these are like they and what's an example of an unstable material if you leave a newspaper just in your it turns yellow that is the acidic content of the paper slowly taking over and causing the coloration change that's a non-stable material okay so I've got one Museum mannequin and I'm pleased about that because that's exactly what the real things are dressed on at the Smithsonian and this the museum mannequins are expensive they are spendy um so this beautiful suit deserves to go on a spendy mannequin and uh I'm just going to set up the camera here so you can watch me do the uh the dressing dressing mannequins is no fun it's always a pain in the ass and when I was at the Smithsonian talking to the person that dressed their costumes and clothes and artifacts onto mannequins I asked for the secret and she said there is no secret it's tough for all of us getting a gesture out of a suit is the the the the abiding problem of mannequin posing so there is no secret it's just Brute Force and making it work all right I'm going to set up the shot and then I'm going to set up my mannequin [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] for [Music] [Music] [Music] all right [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] yeah I like it I like it uh-huh we're going to call this done for now there's going to be a few side projects I'm going to remake the entire connector platform for his leg geta display I'm going to rebuild the cap of this uh Inlet Port I'm going to rebuild uh this entire pulley Arrangement but those might be even three one day builds hard to say uh but Christine's amazing work of Alan Shephard's beautiful suit is now on a lovely and suitable Museum you guys Jo see you next [Music] time thank you for watching that video if you're anything like me you were watching it wondering Adam how can I spend more time with my friends in the outdoors under improvisatory and impromptu conditions and I would counsel you to go to adamsavage decom and buy yourself one of my bed rolls which will allow you plenty of dry yet comfortable socializing on grass or any other place you find yourself I've had one of these in the trunk of my car for 25 years okay I haven't been making these for 25 years it was somebody else's until I made my own okay Adam savage.com I'll see you there

Channel: Adam Savage’s Tested

Views: 175,573

Keywords: tested, adam savage, adam savage tested, space suit, adam savage space suit, adam savage space, mercury spacesuit, adam savage cosplay, inside adam savages cave, space suit replica, adam savage mercury

Id: aOu00Tg2-P4

Length: 28min 37sec (1717 seconds)

Published: Wed May 08 2024