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Buzz Aldrin's moon jacket sells for sky-high $2.8m

leper-colony

Well-Known Member
I could go for one of these jackets.
apewear.jpg
 

Rutger

Well-Known Member
Interesting material the jacket was made of. Makes me wonder why flight crew clothing wasn't made of it as well. Cost comes to mind.

wiki:
Beta cloth consists of fine woven silica fiber, similar to fiberglass. The resulting fabric does not burn, and melts only at temperatures exceeding 650 °C (1,200 °F). To reduce its tendency to crease or tear when manipulated, and to increase durability, the fibers are coated with Teflon.

the manufacturer, Saint-Gobain Coated Fabrics in Manchester, NH USA:
Beta Cloth, aka beta fabric, is a white, PTFE-impregnated glass cloth commonly employed as an outer MLIB (Multi Later Insulation Blanket) layer due to its AO (atomic oxygen) resistance in LEO (Low Earth Orbit). It was heavily used on the Space Shuttle and continues to protect the interior and exterior of the International Space Station (ISS).

Beta cloth products are comprised of a high performance PTFE (Teflon™) and glass composite used as a component for MLI (multi-layer insulation) blankets. Often used as the outer layer, special design of the product provides the strength, resistance to flex fatigue and handle which sets it apart from other standard coated fabrics, and makes it more suitable for space applications. This lightly coated, low outgassing material has a great deal of flight legacy being used in proximity to sensitive components and equipment. In many applications, some properties or values are diminished by end of life as the effects of thermocycling, atomic oxygen, solar ultraviolet radiation, vacuum ultraviolet radiation, and space debris attack the exposed surface. Our Beta cloth fabrics are able to withstand these harsh conditions, serving as a barrier and protecting the inner surface.

This historic material is manufactured by Saint-Gobain Coated Fabrics in Manchester, NH USA and is supplied to the aerospace market exclusively by Bron Aerotech, Inc in Denver, Colorado. Bron Aerotech facilitated the successful re-qualification of beta cloth at aerospace OEMs when DuPont changed the Teflon formulation to reduce and then eliminate PFOA.

We supplied NASA (JPL) with beta cloth that is still protecting the nuclear power plant of Curiosity on planet Mars, 32 million miles from Earth.
 

Kermit3D

Well-Known Member
I have a sample of beta cloth (I worked a few years as a subcontractor at Airbus Defence and Space). It's actually a quite common material in the space industry. the ISS is partly covered with beta cloth.
On the picture, the white cloth is beta cloth, the silver part is MLI (Multi-layer insulation) it's the "survival blanket" you see on many satellites (for example), and the orange part is kapton (another insulating material often in the form of adhesive tape).

Out of subject : the watch is a Poljot "Strela" chronograph (movement 3017) worn by Russian cosmonauts in the late 1960s and early 1970s.


poljot_mli_01.jpg
 
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Flightengineer

Well-Known Member
I have a sample of beta cloth (I worked a few years as a subcontractor at Airbus Defence and Space). It's actually a quite common material in the space industry. the ISS is partly covered with beta cloth.
On the picture, the white cloth is beta cloth, the silver part is MLI (Multi-layer insulation) it's the "survival blanket" you see on many satellites (for example), and the orange part is kapton (another insulating material often in the form of adhesive tape).

Out of subject : the watch is a Poljot "Strela" chronograph (movement 3017) worn by Russian cosmonauts in the late 1960s and early 1970s.


View attachment 81578

This is an export version of this watch with an English dial. Soviet cosmonauts used watches with a Russian dial.
 

Kermit3D

Well-Known Member
This is an export version of this watch with an English dial. Soviet cosmonauts used watches with a Russian dial.

The history of Strela chronographs is actually quite complicated. Basically, there have been two generations of watches.

The first generation, between 1959 and about 1965, were column wheel chronograph that were distributed to fighter pilots, cosmonauts, and some important personalities in the industry/science. There were "СТРЕЛА" (in Cyrillic), Poljot and Sekonda (almost all in Latin alphabet)
For example, it is known that Alexei Leonov wore one of the strela (СТРЕЛА) first generation in a Cyrillic script.


5d9600c715e9f974704f3e6d.jpg



The second generation between about 1965 and about 1980 has a different design (luminous hands) and same movement. It was distributed a little more widely and was even marketed in the late 70s. 99.9% of these models were Poljot or Sekonda in non-cyrillic script. We know for sure that some astronauts have worn them on missions. For example Aleksei Gubarev was wearing a black Sekonda. (Latin alphabet) on the mission Soyuz-28 in 1978. Vladimir Komarov wore a white Poljot in Latin alphabet (the same as my Poljot) on the mission Soyuz 1 which was fatal for him.


GUBAREV_SEKONDA_01.jpg


komarov-jpg.642851



I always found it quite strange, but there have been cosmonauts (and fighter pilots) who wore "3017" chronographs (Strela, Poljot and Sekonda) with Latin writings during their missions.
The watches intended for export were mostly second generation Sekonda.

A picture of all Strela variants :

strela-montage-final-jpg.9736154


A really interesting link on the history of these chronographs :
https://strela-watch.de/company/strela-watch-history/


And to finish a picture of my two 3017 chronographs: A (quite rare) second generation Poljot and a (very rare) first generation Strela in cyrillic, The same as Alexei Leonov.

DSC_0041.jpg


Sorry for this off-topic, but it's the passion that speaks ! :D
 
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