Spacesuit: Fashioning Apollo

— —

Nicholas de Monchaux (Assistant Professor of Architecture and Urban Design, University of California)

Spacesuit

Fashioning Apollo

Nicholas de Monchaux (Assistant Professor of Architecture and Urban Design, University of California)

$110

Hardback

Not in-store but you can order this
How long will it take?

Availability Information

We source books from suppliers in Australia and overseas. For books we don't currently have in stock, the time it takes to get them from our suppliers can vary widely - from a few days to a few months - so we check each book with each supplier to determine the expected time it will take to be supplied to us.

We then advise you accordingly. If the time taken to get any book is too long for you, you can let us know and we will cancel or adjust your order, and refund as required.

To find out the anticipated arrival time for specific items prior to ordering, please contact us by phone or email:

Phone +61 2 9264 3111, or 1800 4 BOOKS (1800 4 26657) if outside Sydney:
option 1 Abbey's Bookshop (Crime, History, Science, Kids & more) • info@abbeys.com.au
option 2 Language Book Centre (ESL & Foreign Languages) • language@abbeys.com.au
option 3 Galaxy Bookshop (Sci-fi, Fantasy, Romance, Graphic Novels) • sf@galaxybooks.com.au

QTY:

English

Massachusetts Inst of Tec
18 March 2011

Mathematics & Sciences; Astronautics

Series: The MIT Press

How the twenty-one-layer Apollo spacesuit, made by Playtex, was a triumph of intimacy over engineering. When Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin stepped onto the lunar surface in July of 1969, they wore spacesuits made by Playtex- twenty-one layers of fabric, each with a distinct yet interrelated function, custom-sewn for them by seamstresses whose usual work was fashioning bras and girdles. This book is the story of that spacesuit. It is a story of the triumph over the military-industrial complex by the International Latex Corporation, best known by its consumer brand of ""Playtex""-a victory of elegant softness over engineered hardness, of adaptation over cybernetics.

Playtex's spacesuit went up against hard armor-like spacesuits designed by military contractors and favored by NASA's engineers. It was only when those attempts failed-when traditional engineering firms could not integrate the body into mission requirements-that Playtex, with its intimate expertise, got the job.

In Spacesuit, Nicholas de Monchaux tells the story of the twenty-one-layer spacesuit in twenty-one chapters addressing twenty-one topics relevant to the suit, the body, and the technology of the twentieth century. He touches, among other things, on eighteenth-century androids, Christian Dior's New Look, Atlas missiles, cybernetics and cyborgs, latex, JFK's carefully cultivated image, the CBS lunar broadcast soundstage, NASA's Mission Control, and the applications of Apollo-style engineering to city planning. The twenty-one-layer spacesuit, de Monchaux argues, offers an object lesson. It tells us about redundancy and interdependence and about the distinctions between natural and man-made complexity; it teaches us to know the virtues of adaptation and to see the future as a set of possibilities rather than a scripted scenario.

By: Nicholas de Monchaux (Assistant Professor of Architecture and Urban Design University of California)
Imprint: Massachusetts Inst of Tec
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 229mm, Width: 178mm, Spine: 23mm
Weight: 1.157kg
ISBN: 9780262015202
ISBN 10: 026201520X
Series: The MIT Press
Pages: 250
Publication Date: 18 March 2011
Recommended Age: From 18 years
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Nicholas de Monchaux is Assistant Professor of Architecture at the College of Environmental Design, University of California, Berkeley. His work has appeared in the architectural journal Log, the New York Times, the New York Times Magazine, Architectural Digest, and other publications.

Reviews for Spacesuit: Fashioning Apollo

Spacesuit pays worthy homage to that often overlooked but essential technology for human space exploration. Jeff Foust The Space Review The density of ideas and connections is intoxicating. De Monchaux swings masterfully between subjects, teasing out unexpected connections and spotting the seeds of contemporary life that were planted by the space race. - Tim Maly, Icon De Monchaux has an ear for a good story and affection for the historical characters Spacesuit offers a broad and creative appraisal of that suit's many contexts, encouraging readers to consider technology as design, shaped by the circumstances of its time, unfailingly and elegantly layered and crafted to serve a purpose. -Margaret A. Weitekamp, Nature

Winner of <PrizeName>Winner, 2011 Eugene M. Emme Astronautical Literature Award, given by the American Astronautical Society.</PrizeName> 2011
Winner of American Astronautical Society Eugene M. Emme Astronautical Literature Award 2011
Winner of American Astronautical Society Eugene M. Emme Astronautical Literature Award 2011.
Winner of Winner, 2011 Eugene M. Emme Astronautical Literature Award, given by the American Astronautical Society. 2011
Winner of Winner, 2011 Eugene M. Emme Astronautical Literature Award, given by the American Astronautical Society.</PrizeName> 2011