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During the development of the Apollo moon missions in the early 1960s, the newfangled government agency called “NASA” put out a call for engineering firms to submit proposals for the design and construction of the Apollo “Extravehicular Mobility Unit”—the space suit. Nothing quite like a moon survival suit had ever been built before, so there was considerable variation among the slapdash prototypes that trickled in.
The design deemed most promising by the engineers at NASA—the one which ultimately won the contract—was submitted by Playtex, the widely known manufacturer of women’s bras and girdles. Their institutional knowledge in the domain of rubberized fabrics and clothing led to the most flexible and lightweight of the space suit designs. Every space suit used by the Apollo astronauts on the moon was sewn by hand by the Playtex seamstresses.
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We love Playtex seamstresses.
Playtex? Damn! I was completely unaware of that, and I grew up during the sixties. The space program completely fascinated me, and I read everything that I could find about it. Playtex, though, eluded me.
Got a good giggle from the picture in the upper right hand corner. Someone got one of those “upside down lampshades with a red band” delivered and put in his front yard. Of co9ruse the local one has “USA” parented on the side of it in big letters. Must be a decoration for Halloween!
NASA design team questionnaire (probably):
Now sir please look at these four images. Which of these least resembles the robot sound ‘beep boop’?