[hyzmarca]

hbquikcomjamesl wrote:

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From the early Mercury and Vostok missions, the whole point of wearing a space suit for launch, reentry, and perhaps docking, has been to make cabin depressurization a survivable mishap, rather than an instant fatality. And it's made perfectly clear that the author's aging sidekick is wearing that sort of suit, rather than merely a G-suit. Yet when it becomes necessary to open the hatch on the "stolen with the covert blessings of the Russian government" Soyuz that was boosted into lunar orbit, after having had to jettison the orbital module thereof, the sidekick knowingly and willingly buys the farm. A suit whose whole raison d'etre is to protect against cabin depressurization, that doesn't actually fulfill that function. What a concept.

The advanced crew escape suit and it's predecessors, designed to be worn during takeoff and landing, are not EVA suits. They're high-altitude pressure suits and are not vacuum rated. They will not protect you from depressurization in outer space and are not meant to do so. They're only useful if something goes wrong while you're in the upper atmosphere.