The Bra-and-Girdle Maker That Fashioned the Impossible for NASA

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ssohkamyung 4 days ago 19 commentsRead Article on thereader.mitpress.mit.edu

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neilv•2 days ago

> (The company learned that lesson in 1967, after a single pin was discovered between the layers of a suit prototype, leading to the installation of an X-ray machine on the shop floor that would regularly scan the suits for errant fasteners.)

This is also a thing in consumer mass production now. An outerwear factory that our startup worked with had a needle scanner as the last step of the process, before shipping. There was basically a window that finished units had to pass through, to shipping, so that the needle scanner wouldn't accidentally be skipped.

rcxdude•1 day ago

Also the food industry, especially meat where you want to avoid bones in unexpected places.

amelius•2 days ago

They should do this in the medical world too, where surgery tools are sometimes left inside the patient.

devilbunny•1 day ago

Metal has the marvelous quality of showing up well on X-ray, and clothing has the marvelous quality of never getting cancer from X-rays.

Pieces of cotton do not show up on X-ray, and humans do get cancer from too much ionizing radiation.

Of course miscounts happen sometimes, and sometimes both the initial and final counts are one short of the true number, but the vast majority of undetected retained items are sponges made of cotton. Not tools, not even tiny needles. That’s why there is a radiopaque strip embedded in the sponges intended for use during surgery.

It is not perfect, and cannot be.

inkeddeveloper•2 days ago

That’s an expensive solution for a simple problem. They currently just count all supplies in and all supplies out. It works.

amelius•2 days ago

If it's that simple, why don't they do it in the fashion industry?

rcxdude•1 day ago

Clothing doesn't get cancer. Also a lot of what can get left in a patient doesn't show up super well on x-rays, so more general solutions like counting in and out are preferable.

Chrisszz•2 days ago

Absolutely, this is more common than many think

Neywiny•2 days ago

Great points on the documentation. It's hard to find the perfect balance and I see it from NASA's POV. I've seen countless times where on system level testing a component isn't playing nice and being able to trace which systems have which batches was crucial in finding the cause and remedying it. I'd like to think it's the same for product recalls in the consumer space that only impact specific serial number ranges.

So it's nice that ILC played ball to the level they did. I really didn't expect hiring 56 of their competitors.

mrlonglong•2 days ago

After an “incident” with the first astronaut fitted for the device, the UCD’s designations were changed from “Small, Medium, Large” to “Large,” “Extra Large,” and “Extra-Extra Large.”

I knew it. Serious issues that still persists to this day.

hackeraccount•about 13 hours ago

I won't mention the product but supposedly one brand has the size huge, giant and jumbo.

smallerize•2 days ago

I would like to know what their source is, because different people have different names. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/spacesuit-envy/ Same general idea though.

adrian_b•2 days ago

The labels L, XL and XXL given in the parent article are more plausible than those from your link. Moreover at your link it is even stated that those given there might be nicknames, not the official designations.

As you say, the essence is the same regardless which were the actual names.

Moreover, while this is a story about males fantasizing themselves as being large, a similar story, but in reverse, is told about the labels used in US female clothes, where, due to the increase in average weight of the population, the larger sizes have been renamed as smaller sizes, because overweight customers were reluctant to buy the clothes labeled as extra-extra-large that they actually needed.

LocalH•2 days ago

just like starbucks lmao

susiecambria•2 days ago

I cannot imagine the dedication of the makers. I make quilts, all improv, because the mere thought of following a pattern sends me into a tizzy.

So much admiration for the designers and fabricators.

BiraIgnacio•2 days ago

Does anyone know if these or similar techniques are still used in today's suits production?

smcin•4 days ago

Interesting article. I was expecting a completely different exposé of NASA, based on the title...

neilv•2 days ago

> Those flouting regulations and bringing extra pins from home could, notoriously, find one of them pricked into their backside by an irate supervisor.

Sounds like there's probably a side story here, that even workers who made space suits were still subject to sexist workplace abuse.