Adam Savage here for testing comm with some space stuff oh my gosh 2019 is the
year it is such an exciting year for space stuff it's the 50th anniversary of
Apollo I'm going to be in DC for some of the celebrations this summer and today I
wanted to do a little bit of show-and-tell of some more incredible
work by my friend and master spacesuit and space program replicator Ryan Nagata
this Gemini suit behind me was actually built by Ryan for the production of
first man and while not used by Ryan Gosling in the film it's one of my new
favorite pieces I think I covered it or mentioned it on testing before but this
isn't the show-and-tell I wanted to talk about this is this is an amazing thing
this is a camera built by NASA for the Gemini astronauts but it's actually also
a little rocket for propelling one's self around in space so if you want to
look at what I consider the loneliest space shot ever taken it's of Gemini
astronaut ed white on the very first extra-vehicular spacewalk in a Gemini
suit this one of these and they built this for the astronauts to leave the the
safety of their of their capsule and what it is is a camera obviously on top
for taking pictures of what's going on but there's also this whole rocket
arrangement we're pushing this lever would send rocket blasts out of these
three jets and allow the astronaut to guide themselves around in theory now I
haven't done the research to find out if they actually utilize this to propel
themselves around and if it actually worked but Ryan and I alighted upon it
as a key thing we wanted a replica of and Ryan did all the heavy lifting in
this relationship I went online and bought the contracts Zeiss camera that
is the exact make and model used and it was not cheap and actually I may sell it
on eBay if if it's still in working order and I sent it to Ryan and he made
castings of it so this is an ultra lightweight version and
I just look at this look at this incredible fidelity this is the fake one
this is the real one and honestly it's hard to tell the difference from the
foil stickers to the slight amounts of dirt all over it
to the actual lens on the lens Ryan's work always I'm gonna pay at the high
compliment of saying it intimidates me this is a magnificent piece and well
right now it's a it can be taken apart because this was built for shipping it
just got to me this morning I am going to figure out a way to display this in a
in a permanent way I love how primitive this thing looks I
mean the idea that you would send an astronaut into the black void of space
and go here's your gamma thing I hope and guide you back to the ship if you
lose control I also want to say for the record that the main forms of this were
actually printed for me by carbon 3d they donated the 3d printing for the
master forms that Ryan used to make castings of to make this piece so thanks
Carbon ah so that is one the Gemini camera what do you call it
mm you the man maneuvering unit I don't know if that's what they called this
back then but that is what the thing that the astronauts currently use is
called but I got a second piece from Ryan also in the same shipment and it is
this bomb this is a NASA there's a replica of a Apollo era bubble helmet
and it is about as close to the real thing as you could get the neck ring is
aluminum the the writing is etched in and filled with paint just like the
originals I believe if Ryan's correct I believe
that this would actually fit in and operate with a real space suit if you
wanted it to this head pad on the back is actually an air dispersion unit
because the best way to keep a helmet from fogging Chris Hadfield told me this
is to blow air up from the back around the front and I know that there are a
lot of five-o first members and storm troopers who follow this dictum and this
whole back pad is meant to disperse err that's coming up from the bottom out
so it air comes around this whole channel and you see all these little
separators here each of these provides a vent for air to come in and all the way
around oh yeah and this is what the astronauts wore Wow it's doing a lot of
feeding back with my hearing aid you can hear that that's awful
okay so there's a couple of other things that might not be immediately obvious
the fidelity to the original shocking it's a gorgeous piece but it's also it's
actually polycarbonate and for those of you who don't know the difference
because a lot of people don't polycarbonate is different from acrylic
is different from PE TG these are all three clear plastics that I have used in
model-making ptg is my favorite it's effectively what is your what your soda
bottle is made out of and it's great because you can heat it up and it slumps
and it forms over stuff but it's hard to form thick versions of ptg and the
original space helmets were built out of polycarbonate because polycarbonate or
lexan which is a brand name of polycarbonate doesn't shatter
it's very resilient I mean you can get it to shatter if you really beat the
hell out of it but it's very shadow resistant which is one of the reasons
they used it for the space program it was resilient but one of the
difficulties with polycarbonate is that it's what's called hygroscopic which
means there are lots of tiny little droplets of water embedded within the
polycarbonate and normally you don't see them normally they don't affect you at
all but if you try to heat polycarbonate
straight just from its raw state off the shelf you'll see tons of little bubbles
form and those little bubbles are formed by tiny molecules of water that are
heating up and turning the steam within the polycarbonate and hygroscopic means
it draws water in so the way to vacuum form polycarbonate is to bake the water
out and it takes a while in fact in Ryan's experience in his house it took
him five days of baking this polycarbonate sheet which was a
quarter-inch thick when he started to bake all the water out so that when he
formed it it would make a bubble free smooth surface I also want to talk about
the form this is in you can see this shape it's not perfectly
symmetrical it's not a straight bubble it's a very interesting shape this is
actually cast off of an original bubble helmet that was lent to Ryan by Apollo
15 pilot al worden who has actually been a guest in this cave before it's really
exciting to meet him so this is exactly like the original and what Ryan did was
he took al wardens helmet he made a silicon negative mold so effectively a
big silicone bowl in the shape of this helmet and he clamped the heated
polycarbonate quarter and sheet on top of that and drew with a vacuum down into
the silicone there are tiny tiny little D tents that only the most careful I
could see that are where the air came through the silicone to allow the
polycarbonate to fill the void and also I believe if I'm correct Ryan dusted the
inside with cornstarch to allow a bit of airflow even when it was touching the
end result is that working with a bunch of materials he was not formally
familiar with Ryan has turned out one of the most beautiful replicas of anything
that I have in this job and I'm super excited
I actually am so excited and I'll reveal this in another build I've added a whole
air circulation system to my Apollo a7l Nagata built spacesuit so that I could
wear it and have the helmet flow that I want but I'll cover that in another
video thanks for watching
you