atind >> the hard-fought primary season is over. historic conventions are to follow this summer. delegatesan, as the consider the nomination of the first woman ever to a major political party. also, the first non-politician in many decades. watch live on c-span. you can also get streaming coverage on www.c-span.org. this all begins on monday, july 18. ♪ >> each week, "american history tv's reel america" brings you archival films that provide

context for today's public affairs issues. 1976,rs ago, on july 1, president gerald ford spoke at the opening of the smithsonian's national air and space museum in washington dc. leading up to the anniversary, "reel america" is showcasing a series of nasa films. up next, science reporter: suited for space. half hour nasa tv program, one of 13 produced with m.i.t. and wgbh boston. this episode traces the development of spacesuits, beginning with the mercury program and looking at a live support system prototype needed for the apollo moon missions. >> in less than five years, an astronaut will be stepping out on the moon to conduct man's first real exploration of our oldest satellite. it will have been a long voyage, carrying him far from his native

land by effort into a strange -- native land, planet earth, to a strange and airless world. to survive, he must carry with him a bit of his familiar environment. engineers are designing a spacesuit that will support astronauts on a round-trip lunar mission. that is coming up today on "science reporters." ♪ john fitch: hello, i am john fitch, m.i.t. science reporter, feeding to you from the moon, or -- speaking to you from the moon. or a reasonable facsimile thereof. it is actually a lunar landscape mockup of the lunar excursion module from the houston command

center, where the national aeronautics and space administration are testing and evaluating the performance of the apollo spacesuit. actually, encapsulating a man into a suit that protects him from his environment at the same time gives him adequate life support is no very novel idea. deep-sea divers have depended on such a solution in their defense into hostile depths for decades. as it applied to going up and instead of going down, bioengineering got a much later start. it wasn't until world war ii nudgingirplanes began up to 30,000 feet, that man was coaching beyond his natural reach. breathing oxygen systems had to be devised. many years later, men flying high-speed military planes at ever higher altitudes required anti-force and decompression systems. today, we move into the space

age, these two problems seem relatively tame when it comes to what is required for lunar explorations. to find out about the systems that will be used to protect men on the moon, we talked to master matthew, assistant chief of the development branch here at the spacecraft center. matt: john, before i show you the apollo system, i think you ought to see some of our earlier models. here we have the al sheppard suit. this is the mercury suit. some of the interesting things note theresuit are, are not any movable joints in this, no hide joints or steel rims or anything else. all is achieved by a very clever tailoring. you can see artificial breaks that have been sewn into the suit. this entire suit is essentially

a bladder, which has a restraining garment that allows us to have mobility. notice in the elbow we have no special joint. simply through the use of this unidirectional restraint, we can get some mobility in the elbow. he is almost rigid. this green bottle is interesting. this is the way we originally field the helmet visor. this moves up and down, and by inflating a seal around the periphery of it, which is quite an excellent sealing of the entire suit. john fitch: is this a big step forward? matt: it is based on a developmental item that came from the navy. this suit, as it stands, is a -- is very similar to a market fouraybe suit, -- mark

navy suit, which is used in high-altitude aircraft with some modifications. we have added a different kind of restraint in here. generally speaking, it does not differ significantly from the other model. at the moment, he is being ventilated by a ventilating gear that keeps him cool until you would be attached to the spacecraft, itself. john fitch: what about the next step? matt: after the mercury suit is this one. this is a suit very similar to this, in fact, identical. it was worn by white. this is a very high temperature nylon that can withstand very high temperatures, 700 degrees. john fitch: does he have the sun shining on him and space? -- in space? matt: yes, although it is

primarily used in case the spacecraft itself got hot on the outside so that he would not be burnt, it would protect the material underneath. remember, the temperature outside can be up to 220 degrees. john fitch: yes to support life out there. and this has an umbilical cord. matt: under the white flight, he received his oxygen through this port, through a long umbilical, and it was ventilated through him. the oxygen came right over his visor. also, it might be interesting to note, that he uses very low flow rates, because he did not do that much work. he worked hard, but not much harder than he would normally. -- then he would normally either inside the spacecraft or on

earth. the suit itself was equipped with lights. i don't know if we have them shown here, which would allow them to impact the spacecraft when he was inside the spacecraft to scan his instruments without destroying dark applications when he was on the dark side of the earth. john fitch: what kind of suit would they wear on the way to the moon? matt: inside the cabin, they will need a suit at all. let me show you what they will be wearing. here is our constant wear garment. john fitch: it looks like the long underwear. matt: that is what it is. it is a modified set of long underwear used as a carrier. there will be electronic equipment for amplifying signals that come out of biosensors. here is one right here. this will stick to his skin on the inside. john fitch: so that is all he has on? matt: that is all he will have on inside the command module.

he will not have a suit. again, the main reason for a suit is to protect the man against low pressures, very low pressures. at the same time, in the event of returning to the earth, we have to have protection against the earth's environment in an emergency. under normal conditions, we do not expect them to where a suit. john fitch: then once i do get once they get to the moon can , they wear something like -- matt: there is a whole series of problems associated with the environment of the moon. first, we have to protect the man against thermal lows he will encounter on the surface. micro meteorites, which are a constant source of potential danger, and the splashes of rocks that come out when a

single meteoroid would hit the ground close to the astronaut. we have to protect them from infrared and ultraviolet radiation. they are not at all reduced by the lack of an atmosphere around the moon. we have to protect the man against very hot and cold temperatures, associated with the surface of the moon. there are a whole series of them. we have to provide him with a self-contained life-support system. this life-support system would have to include a whole series of items that we can discuss later. john fitch: how are you going to stop all these problems? matt: it is interesting. here, we have an indication. thank you. here we have a mannequin dressed in a liquid cooling garment. if you will note, the inside of this garment is covered with small tubules. these little tubules are filled with water. they are actually filled prior to flight.

by conduction, by causing a flow of water through the main branch and then returning it from this secondary branch, we have the ability to pick up heat directly from the skin, which keeps the man's temperature, skin temperature, down, which gives -- stops him from perspiring. john fitch: it is like air-conditioning. matt: normally you do. this is supposed to pick up all of the perspiration associated with his work. on the moon surface, we expect the man to work hard, very hard, twice the rate he works on the surface of the sun -- the earth. as a result, his work rate is so high and his production of perspiration so great that we cannot possibly take it all up up by the rate

and amount of gas available in the portable life-support system. john fitch: then does he wear this thing over that? matt: no, this is worn over a very light set of skivvies, light underwear, which we have over here. john fitch: can we see that? i will get rid of this for you. matt: thank you. john fitch: oh, it does look quite a bit different from the gemini suit. matt: it is, it is one of the earlier models of the apollo suit. note the joints particularly. this is a demonstration of a constant volume joint concept , which was submitted to us by one of the contractors who , ultimately won the contract for the moon suit. john fitch: what do you mean by constant? matt: under this design, the man can move. when he moves, he does not disturb the column of air, so

that the internal pressure remains constant. if he squeezed air and the force -- if he squeezed air, the force of that would prevent him from making any sort of motion. there is a great deal of work anyway, and we want to keep this to a minimum. he is not pressurized at this time, being ventilated simply to keep cool. john fitch: could we see the actual apollo suit? matt: yes, let's take a look at the suit now. john fitch: it seems to me he is walking a little more stiffly than the other fellow. matt: the man is pressurized now. there is a little over 3.5 psi, meaning there is 3.5 pound differential pressure in his suit. it is slightly inflated. you can see there is a considerable pressure associated with this mode of operation.

the gases are ventilated. the incoming gases come in here, go through his helmet, then pass over the front of the suit and stop it from clogging. a portion of the gases. the rest of the gases are down to the extremities, fingers and toes, then come back uncollected and go back through here. john fitch: when the astronauts leave the land for their expiration of the lunar service, -- lunar surface they will strap , on one of the most important parts of the extracurricular vehicle movement. to learn about this unusual backpack, we visited the hamilton standard division in windsor locks, connecticut, where this is manufactured. we talked with mr. ronald lang, project manager for a system's -- for systems engineering. ronald: here in the spacelab, i would like to show you a full-scale mockup of this portable life-support system or

backpack. here is all of the required essentials for life-support. it has everything spacecraft would have, with the exclusion of expulsion. -- a propulsion system. john fitch: you don't have any rockets? ronald: no. you would use your legs for propulsion. water is going and coming to the suit. there is an electrical umbilical. to put on the backpack, he turns pressure suite on, and he attaches the connectors. john fitch: and there is a harness on his shoulder? ronald: it weighs about 35 pounds. but, in space, it does not weigh that much. john fitch: because of reduced gravity. ronald: this is the basis for life-support, chief among these the supply and regulation of oxygen to the suit. this contains a little over one pound of oxygen.

it is at 850 psi, and is regulated down to suit pressure. it is down to about one quarter of what the pressure is in this room. it would not be trouble because it is pure oxygen, the same amount on earth. the oxygen goes to the pressure suit and picks up carbon dioxide and brings it back to the on the local to the umbilical, to the backpack. otherwise, it would be lethal to the man. we have to use a chemical absorption bed. we have a contaminant removal that removes odors and carbon dioxide. to show you then, a cartridge , which is replaceable, we use one in each mission. it can be activated and is completely consumed at the end of the mission. john fitch: looks like an oil filter. ronald: exactly. incidentally it adds heat to the , system.

i should add, that for that to be effective, the fact it is sitting here by itself does not do us any good. we have to come up with a technique to get the co2 loaded oxygen on the helmet to the backpack. for this reason, we use a fan. this is right over here. the fan is powered by an electric motor. we also use a pump to push the liquid cooling. the pump sits right at this point and it is also electric. john fitch: how do you cool what is inside the backpack? ronald: the water is about eight degrees when it goes through the liquid garment, and the oxygen has a lot of moisture. this is all cooled in this box right here, which is a sublimator. a sublimator keeps temperature

constant. the snow goes directly from the ice phase to the gas phase, and it never melts in between. the principle of operation is exactly the same. this is aw you , sublimator. a complete and actual sublimator. the oxygen comes in through here, and it leaves here. the water comes in here and leaves here. the water we are turning into ice that is supplied is coming in from here. what it does is it becomes an isolator in the layers in here . it becomes ice. to enable it to go from ice to gas it must pull away from its pull heat away from its surroundings. it cools the entire assembly down to 32 degrees. in so doing, the oxygen and water that go through here are cooled down to the levels that we have to have. john fitch: that is very interesting. ronald: we have others in the

backpack that are not life-support elements per se. the chief among these is the the communication system. we have a communication subsystem. it sits right on top of the sublimator and is cooled by an -- cooled by it. it has an antenna here. you can talk back to the receiver in the shuttle. that is a transmitter and receiver. let me show you the component there. this is the communication system. john fitch: it is very small. ronald: it is very small and compact. it has channels that are continuously tele-metered if the man desires. he can shut off the telemetry. it is ekg. john fitch: how do you power all of this? ronald: we power electric motors and the communication systems with a battery. it is about a one-shot deal. we have many batteries, they go in here.

we have as many batteries as we are going to run missions. it is five pounds, and is designed with the launch vibration in the vehicle from cape kennedy in mind. it is a very rugged and reliable battery. john fitch: enough to run four hours? ronald: yes, four or five hours. the other thing we have to mention is failure detection. if we need to bring the man back in the event of a failure, the astronaut will have various systems that tell us he has problems if he does. two of them will be low pressure warning device, which triggered this warning advisor if the suit pressure goes below 3.2 psi. john fitch: how would that happen? ronald: if there is a leak in the system or it stops supplying oxygen, it would begin to the play. -- decay. the other thing we would like to tell them about is if you are using too much oxygen.

do something. john fitch: but if he gets into one of these problems? ronald: he has an emergency mode of operation. he has an emergency oxygen system, which is built onto here for exactly that purpose. the emergency oxygen system is 7500 square inch supply. 10's of ans about 2/ pound of oxygen. we can use it in conjunction with the main supply and give us emergency oxygen ventilation and purging of the helmet area, even though the fan failed. that goes up here against the backpack. another emergency system is the communications. we have a redundant communication system. john fitch: to see the rest of the spacesuit to be worn on the moon, we talked again with mr. matthew at the spacecraft center in houston. john fitch: this white garment, what is that for? matt: it is the thermo meteor material garment.

it is made up into layers. these are the layers of materials. this whole garment provides protection against radiant energy. it can also protect the asked not against meteorites. this is the most interesting ventilation. this ventilation only works in a vacuum. it is similar to the material that we have in a thermos bottle on earth. this man is a completely enclosed thermos jug. it has seven or eight layers of this material, and then it is covered with abrasive resistance material we talked about before. it also has the salt layer, this nylon felt, which has bumper protection against meteoroids that we also discussed. on the lunar surface, we have

meteoroids which are , constantly hitting the moon. even if they don't hit the man, or hit close to the man, they travel at a speed of 30,000 feet per second or higher. as they hit the moon, they send off showers of rocks which also have high energies associated with them, and traveling close to the man at high speeds. john fitch: how big are these? matt: they are not large. they run from five microns in diameter upwards. you can't see them actually, and as i said before, 10 times the speed of a bullet. john fitch: they have a lot of energy. matt: they are so fast that you probably could not see it either. john fitch: these are very

unusual shoes that he has on top of regular shoes. matt: no, this portion of the suit protects against radiant energy. the boots provide protection against conductive heat. heat that is lost or gained the sole of the shoe. john fitch: the service of the -- the surface of the moon can be hot to touch? matt: it can range between 250 degrees and minus 230 degrees. so the heat could be tremendous. and then we have these visors, which protect against ultraviolet and infrared rays, resulting from the lack of an atmosphere around the moon. normally, on earth, we have an atmosphere that filters out to a great degree harmful radiation. on the moon, there is no such cover, and we have to provide it. if it was not there, he would become blind. he would have retinal blind -- burns and so forth.

he must have this kind of protection. john fitch: these fold down over his regular clothes? matt: yeah, one for ultraviolet, one for radiation. the visible range. john fitch: like sunglasses? matt: yeah. exactly. john fitch: with all of his material on, we wonder how he can stomp around? matt: he can actually do quite a bit. show him some of the exercises. you can shut your eyes, 3.7. he does quite a bit. john fitch: so that is fine on be earth here, but would it the same upon the moon? matt: it would not be the same on the moon, no. on earth, were this test was just run, which was one g. in order to determine how much effort is associated with working on the lunar surface, we must somehow stimulate the lunar gravity, lunar gravity being

approximately 1/6 that of the earth. we have three ways of achieving this. the first is a 1/6 g stimulator, which we have done here. -- which we have fabricated here. it is levers, balanced with weights, a man hanging on one end. he is like one portion of a giant mobile. by counterbalancing and overweighting one side, we can give him the effect, the effect of 1/6 g. however there is great mass and , inertia associated with this rig. it weighs several tons. in order to overcome this, we use several ropes and men on the end of them so that it will not take over from the man. this is the third one -- the second one. this is the langley simulator

where a large pendulum, a very large pendulum is attached to a man sideways. who attempts to walk as though he were walking on the side of a building. he is held by six or eight tethers and articulation on his body. in this manner, we can vary the point or pivot of the pendulum so as to stimulate once again, , 1/6 on his boot soles. the best way of doing it is in an aircraft, which through scientific parabolic arcs, can simulate 1/6 g. we have done the most effective tests at altitudes in the casey 135 craft. it is provided by the air force. john fitch: when you put it all together, what does the spacesuit cost?

matt: the mercury suit was between $6000 and $7000. the gemini spacesuit will be approximately $35,000, and the apollo suit when it is completed will be somewhere around $150,000, including the portable life-support system. john fitch: and you feel this is the ultimate spacesuit? matt: no, there is another spacesuit being developed, undergoing the same series of tests that have been imposed on the other suits. this is a hard suit. this suit is fabricated of aluminum and honeycombs. john fitch: like a suit of armor. matt: it is indeed a suit of armor, with an exception of the visor, which is a plastic. the joints are covered with cloth, just for purposes of protection, keeping dust and stuff out of them. many of us feel this type is the ultimate in lunar exploration. john fitch: the extravehicular

mobility unit for apollo is not the final word in spacesuit. the search is already underway on even more advanced systems. no matter what they may look like they will benefit from the , experience gained with apollo's emu. today, we visited the manned spacecraft center in houston , texas. i am john fitch, m.i.t.'s science reporter. ♪ [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org]

♪ >> monday, the texas congressman talks about cyber and data security in federal government agencies and the report card released in may on agency management of information. he is joined by cybersecurity reporter tim starks. >> the federal government has almost 11,000 data centers. one of the biggest companies in the world has four. there is no reason the federal government should have 11,000. and you can realize savings. we realized four agencies have realized $2 billion worth of