My NASA Mercury Space Suit

Mr. Nagata · Oct 12, 2014

I've been a huge space buff since I was a kid and built my first Apollo space suit when I was 14. I'm pretty obsessed with space suits and some of you might remember my Star Trek Tholian Web suit from last year:

But I've ALWAYS wanted a replica Mercury space suit. I've been researching it for about 2 years now. I completely patterned this out and sewed it myself. All the hard parts are casts of original parts or scratch-built. I spent the better part of the last year finding all the correct webbing, buckles, and pulleys. All of the flown Mercury suits were a little different, but this is the most accurate replica of Shepard's Mercury suit ever made, even more accurate IMO than the one made by Global Effects for From the Earth to the Moon. I also have an accurate Apollo space suit and a set of Apollo inflight coveralls in the works.

Cameron · Oct 12, 2014

Work of art sir.

CaptPuppyguts · Oct 12, 2014

This is AMAZING! You've got me contemplating building my own now too!

kmc · Oct 13, 2014

Astonishingly good work, Nagata-san. 最も完璧な宇宙服ですよね。

Mr. Nagata · Oct 13, 2014

Thanks! I put together a comparison photo. My suit is modeled after Alan Shepard's, and the suits in the photo are Grissom's and Glenn's. The main difference being that those suits had quick release rings on the cuffs while Shepard's suit still had the old Navy Mark IV zipper closures. There are many other minor differences, but I just put it up for comparison.

Mr. Nagata · Oct 13, 2014

And another one:

Lear60man · Oct 13, 2014

Work of art for sure. Beautiful workmanship.

Apollo suit you say? Pics?

What are you using for a microclimate/cool suit? Or is this not meant to be worn for any length of time?

Mr. Nagata · Oct 13, 2014

Last one. Grissom was the same height as me, so our suits are roughly the same proportions:

Mr. Nagata · Oct 13, 2014

Thank you, sir! The Apollo suit is just in the planning stages. I've only completed a few parts, but my goal is to make it as accurate if not more than the Mercury suit. I'm trying to duplicate the structure of the suit since most of the replicas I've seen for sale are pretty baggy-looking.

The Mercury suit is not terribly hot to wear as long as I don't keep the visor down too long, so I didn't build any sort of real cooling unit. The one in the pics is just a dummy (though I can carry my wallet and phone in it). I will have to build an actual cooling unit for the Apollo suit or the helmet will fog up immediately. But I'm also engineering it to be fairly cool to wear. I'm going to make the sleeves and legs using a reinforced tubing system rather than stuffing the suit full of batting. It's a little more like the structure of the actual pressure garment.

Lear60man said:
Work of art for sure. Beautiful workmanship.

Apollo suit you say? Pics?

What are you using for a microclimate/cool suit? Or is this not meant to be worn for any length of time?

nick daring · Oct 13, 2014

Stunning work! The fit and finish looks exact!

This suit is in my long list of projects. Very jealous!

Were the buckles and pulleys and other assorted small hardware found pieces or were they specially designed and fabricated by NASA for the suit?

Lear60man · Oct 13, 2014

Cool (pun).

I ended up fabricating a cooling vest after looking at similar units that are used on mascots and theme park characters. Its like a fishing vest with a lot of pockets on the outside. I filled the pockets with frozen gel packs. The yes packs still had ice in them over 8 hours of constant use.

There is a member here who also has Apollo parts for sale on shape ways. There is another company that makes aluminum connectors for the Apolo suit....i just need to dig it up. Mine came with them....but they are a big part of the costume.

Fonque · Oct 13, 2014

That's a wonderful piece of work there. I'm sure there's many a space museum who'd love to get their hands such an accurate replica.

EmmaInCandyland · Oct 13, 2014

Fantastic! You're ready for the next flight now

Mr. Nagata · Oct 13, 2014

That's a great idea. I'm probably going to have to build an actual blower unit that blows air into the helmet. My plan was to build a replica of the suitcase air cooling unit and use ice packs in there with a rechargeable leaf blower as the base blowing unit. There's a lot of space in the Apollo cooling units, so I should be able to fit it just fine. I'm going to make the suit in the launch configuration with the bubble helmet and suitcase. Maybe I'll do the LEVA configuration at a later date and put the blower unit in the PLSS.

Lear60man said:
Cool (pun).

I ended up fabricating a cooling vest after looking at similar units that are used on mascots and theme park characters. Its like a fishing vest with a lot of pockets on the outside. I filled the pockets with frozen gel packs. The yes packs still had ice in them over 8 hours of constant use.

There is a member here who also has Apollo parts for sale on shape ways. There is another company that makes aluminum connectors for the Apolo suit....i just need to dig it up. Mine came with them....but they are a big part of the costume.

Thanks! The little brown pulley that controls the helmet ring cable is a phenolic aircraft pulley. There's a Mercury suit at a museum in Los Angeles and I was able to read the serial number off of it. There were several models used including the one on my suit. As far as I know, the metal bracket holding the pulley is a custom job for the Mercury suits. I made mine out of aluminum.

The buckles on the white webbing are a 2-part buckle, probably Navy issue originally. I found the exact buckle in a catalogue for a Korean parachute parts company, but they never responded to my emails. But I'm pretty sure the dies for those buckles were inherited from a US manufacturer because early M56 Army gear has the same buckles, minus the retainer piece underneath. I collected several of these buckles, but they were black oxide coated. I stripped them and saw that they had anchors stamped on them, which tells me they were probably Navy parts initially. I fabricated the retainer piece myself out of sheet metal. They're pretty close to what the original buckles looked like.

The gray webbing is 1 3/4" parachute harness webbing. The black broken line is a tensile strength code. The buckle on there is a pretty standard quick fit adapter.

nick daring said:
Stunning work! The fit and finish looks exact!

This suit is in my long list of projects. Very jealous!

Were the buckles and pulleys and other assorted small hardware found pieces or were they specially designed and fabricated by NASA for the suit?

JediMasterAubie · Oct 13, 2014

Gorgeous and inspiring. Fantastic Work!

TazMan2000 · Oct 13, 2014

Very authentic looking. This could be used in a movie.

TazMan2000

RocketCow · Oct 14, 2014

Extremely cool! Looks stunning.

Mr. Nagata · Oct 14, 2014

Thank you. This is the highest compliment! I've seen the term "museum quality" thrown around a lot with regards to space suit replicas, but I've seen a number of pretty poor replicas in museums. The best space suit replicas are the ones made for movies. The Right Stuff had some decent Mercury suit replicas. And the ones made by Spaceworks for Apollo 13 and Global Effects for From the Earth to the Moon are the best Apollo suits around. My goal is to make a replica Apollo suit on par with those.

TazMan2000 said:
Very authentic looking. This could be used in a movie.

TazMan2000

stephen210 · Oct 14, 2014

OUTSTANDING work!!. Craftsmanship to the highest degree!! Congrats.

Ablegamers · Oct 14, 2014

Amazing!

My NASA Mercury Space Suit

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