Post-Standard Sunday (Syracuse, NY) August 6, 1961 "A Suit for the First Man on the Moon"

Post-Standard Sunday (Syracuse, NY) August 6, 1961 "A Suit for the First Man on the Moon" Pages 10-11

This image popped up during a random search I made in 2009 - it's probably from a newspaper archive site originally. From the Post-Standard Sunday (Syracuse, NY) August 6, 1961 Pages 10-11  "A Suit for the First Man on the Moon"

Transcript below:

A suit for the first man on the moon

"You're going to land on the moon. You need a suit that will protect you against all the dangers you'll run into. You can start by figuring out what they are."

That's the assignment Professor John Lyman handed his class in Experimental Engineering at U.C.LA. Along with it he gave them a rough model of a moon man's suit designed by California engineer Allyn B. Hazard. The class studied it, wore it, and tried to make it into a practical safeguard for our first moon man. They pin-pointed six major problems the suit must solve:

1. Breathing: No air on the moon, so the suit must pack oxygen for at least 10 days.
2. Hot-cold: The moon switches from a boiling 215 degrees F. in the daytime to 250 below at night. Suit must be power-heated and cooled, heavily insulated.
3. Radiation: A phenomenon called "solar flair" intermittently showers the moon with very intense radiation. Suit must completely shield wearer.
4. Vacuum effect: Suit must prevent fatal loss of moisture due to moon's near-vacuum atmosphere.
5. Mobility: Moon's surface is thought to be covered with dust that may be 20 feet thick in places. Also, the atmospheric pressure inside the suit and absence of pressure outside will cause moon man's arms to fly up like Jimmy Durante's and stick there.
6. Chow: Moon man must carry rations inside suit.

You can see why the suit doesn't exactly have Ivy League cut. Our scientists have dubbed President Kennedy's proposed $40 billion man-to-the-moon project "Apollo." Apollo should sue!

--Joseph Gies

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