{"product_id":"spacesuit-fashioning-apollo-9780262015202","title":"Spacesuit: Fashioning Apollo","description":"\u003cb\u003eHow the twenty-one-layer Apollo spacesuit, made by Playtex, was a triumph of intimacy over engineering.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cp\u003e When Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin stepped onto the lunar surface in July of 1969, they wore spacesuits made by Playtex: twenty-one layers of fabric, each with a distinct yet interrelated function, custom-sewn for them by seamstresses whose usual work was fashioning bras and girdles. This book is the story of that spacesuit. It is a story of the triumph over the military-industrial complex by the International Latex Corporation, best known by its consumer brand of \"Playtex\"--a victory of elegant softness over engineered hardness, of adaptation over cybernetics. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePlaytex's spacesuit went up against hard armor-like spacesuits designed by military contractors and favored by NASA's engineers. It was only when those attempts failed--when traditional engineering firms could not integrate the body into mission requirements--that Playtex, with its intimate expertise, got the job. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn \u003ci\u003eSpacesuit\u003c\/i\u003e, Nicholas de Monchaux tells the story of the twenty-one-layer spacesuit in twenty-one chapters addressing twenty-one topics relevant to the suit, the body, and the technology of the twentieth century. He touches, among other things, on eighteenth-century androids, Christian Dior's New Look, Atlas missiles, cybernetics and cyborgs, latex, JFK's carefully cultivated image, the CBS lunar broadcast soundstage, NASA's Mission Control, and the applications of Apollo-style engineering to city planning. The twenty-one-layer spacesuit, de Monchaux argues, offers an object lesson. It tells us about redundancy and interdependence and about the distinctions between natural and man-made complexity; it teaches us to know the virtues of adaptation and to see the future as a set of possibilities rather than a scripted scenario.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eBinding Type:\u003c\/b\u003e Paperback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e MIT Press\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 03\/18\/2011\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN:\u003c\/b\u003e 9780262015202\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 380\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 2.52lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 9.20h x 7.12w x 1.01d\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eReview Citations: \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003ci\u003eChronicle of Higher Education\u003c\/i\u003e 02\/25\/2011 pg. 15\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e 04\/18\/2011\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eLibrary Journal\u003c\/i\u003e 02\/15\/2011 pg. 128\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Nicholas De Monchaux","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42916809769141,"sku":"9780262015202","price":38.21,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0473\/0804\/6492\/products\/img_87a24016-cbb1-496d-bafc-31055ee5214e.jpg?v=1687271339","url":"https:\/\/pastforward.org\/products\/spacesuit-fashioning-apollo-9780262015202","provider":"Past Forward","version":"1.0","type":"link"}