Preview: NASA: Conversation with colleague Bob Zimmerman regarding how NASA made a smart decision, after more than a decade of frustration, to outsource the building of a new spacesuit to private enterprise. More tonight.
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 18 October 2024
⏱️ 2 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
1955
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | This is John Bachelor. |
| 0:03.0 | Conversation with my good colleague Bob Zimmerman. |
| 0:06.0 | A new space suit. |
| 0:07.8 | After all these years of successful manned space, the NASA contract went to Oxyos, a private enterprise, and it took two years and |
| 0:18.2 | as Bob delineates the budget to produce a design that they're ready to reproduce. Wonderful. |
| 0:25.0 | Bob also takes time to talk about how NASA took many, many years and spent much, much more money |
| 0:31.7 | and did not come up with a design. The genius here is to switch |
| 0:35.4 | to Commercial Enterprise where the bottom line matters. Bob Zimmerman on the new |
| 0:40.0 | space suit. More of this later. The thing about this space suit that's important to me, John, is that its Axiom is unveiled. |
| 0:48.0 | Axiom got a contract for NASA two years ago to build a space suit for about a quarter of a billion dollars |
| 0:54.0 | two hundred twenty eight million and so in two years they've now released their |
| 0:59.2 | design for this space suit in two years and that means they're ready to start construction of the suit. |
| 1:05.3 | The reason I point this out is this is private enterprise John. |
| 1:08.1 | NASA spent previously 14 years and more than a billion dollars to create PowerPoint presentations of its proposed |
| 1:17.5 | spacesuit. |
| 1:18.6 | And finally, two years ago, it threw that in the garbage, realizing it was incompetent and couldn't do it and so it |
| 1:25.1 | gave it the private enterprise and so even though this is only a space suit is not landing a |
| 1:28.7 | rocket the catching a rocket if it lands this is a demonstration of private enterprise doing things well. |
| 1:34.7 | And yes, the Axiom worked in partnership with the fashion company Prouder to do this, but the real, that's |
| 1:41.3 | just PR. |
| 1:42.3 | The real issue is that it seems to be a smartly designed suit |
| 1:46.0 | to be practical and efficient to use at reasonable costs. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from John Batchelor, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of John Batchelor and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.

