Discover 3

THE CRUX

14 DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM

TRAVIS STANTON

A DIY Spacesuit

Cameron Smith will put his suit — and his life —

on the line at 50,000 feet.

ANTHROPOLOGIST CAMERON SMITH usually digs

into the past, but these days, he does a lot of forward

thinking. The Portland State University professor spends

his spare time and money designing and building a

spacesuit. He wants to make one with a price

that’s about 1 percent of a comparable NASA

getup, which costs roughly $70,000.

This year, he’ll put his life on the line to

test his design by piloting a hot air balloon

by himself to about 50,000 feet, far above

the altitude of commercial jetliners.

Smith’s designs have attracted the

attention of SpaceX, but the

51-year-old isn’t interested in

profits. He’s committed to

making his spacesuit plans

freely available online.

Discover joined Smith

at his downtown

Portland condo-

and-workshop

to learn

more about

what drives

this explorer.

 KATHERINE KORNEI

Q 

What’s an anthropologist doing

designing a spacesuit?

A 

I grew up in Texas when the culture

of the Apollo missions was still

reverberating. But in those days, the

path to space was military flying, and

my eyesight wasn’t perfect. So I turned

to archaeology and anthropology, which

took me to really wild, remote places. I

built sails for ships as part of my research

and became comfortable working with

textiles. And in the last decade, the

proliferation of the private space industry

prompted me to think about participating

in some way. Many space exploration

technologies can benefit from reinvention

and rethinking — a lot of this hardware

hasn’t been re-evaluated since the 1960s.

Q 

Tell us about your upcoming

balloon flights.

A 

Some of my trained volunteers

and I have done a handful of test

flights, and we’re now pulling together

the resources — money, an RV, a pickup

truck — to stay in the field for weeks

at a time in a “mobile flying camp.”

We’ll be pushing into the 20,000- to

30,000-foot range this year. There may

be things going on with a spacesuit

that you don’t notice until someone is

looking at it from the outside. But I’ll

have to go up to the really high altitudes

alone because my balloon’s volume

provides enough buoyancy to lift only

me and a lightweight life-support system

through that thin air. I’m going to be

very cautious. You’ve got only about five

to 15 seconds of useful consciousness up

there without a spacesuit. I don’t want to

get injured or killed.

Q 

Why not just test the spacesuit

in a pressure chamber?

A 

Space-equivalent conditions,

like those at 50,000 feet, include

a major problem that’s hard to

replicate in pressure chambers: very low

temperatures. Imagine what metals

and adhesives do at minus 100 degrees

Fahrenheit. I want to have my invention

keep me alive in those conditions.

Q 

How many other people

do you know of who are taking

this DIY approach to spacewear?

A 

Every couple of months, I get an

email from someone who wants to

design a spacesuit. I’m happy to share

a lot of what I know, but after a while,

most people start to realize it’s a lot

of work. I don’t know of anyone else

designing a spacesuit privately.

Q&A