Welcome back.

Welcome back to the tech policy podcast.

I'm Corbyn Barthold.

We pride ourselves on giving you the wonkiest most in the weeds discussions of the legal and policy debates around the regulation of technology.

Well, why do we care about that stuff? Because technology is neat. And so, now and then,

on the show, we like to take an episode to stop and marvel at the discoveries and innovations of our smartest

engineers and scientists. Today, we're going to explore one of the coolest corners of

technological innovation there is. A lot of us have been captivated by recent advances in the space industry.

The Artemis program and SpaceX, rockets and satellites, all the good stuff that we have

discussed on the show before. But how much have you thought about space suits?

Chances are, the answer is not enough.

My guest today is Ryan Chiracro.

She is the spacesuit business development lead at Collins Aerospace.

Collins is an RTX business and it, along with its partners, ILC Dover and Ocean Earing,

is developing a new generation of spacesuits for NASA.

I look forward to learning from Ryan about everything that goes in to keeping people alive in a freezing zero gravity vacuum far outside the biosphere.

Ryan, welcome.

Hi, Corbyn, it is super great to be here.

So this is an opening question that is at once very straightforward and immensely complicated.

How do space suits work? I know there are a lot of ins and outs that people maybe don't think about.

Yeah, thanks, Corby. It is such a great question, and it has so many intricacies, as you just said.

I think the best place to start is when we say spacesuit, I think a lot of people think about a garment,

...