posted 07-13-2025 02:50 PM               

Space Cover 814: Apollo spacesuit cutaway

Starting in 1969, the NASA Apollo Program A7L spacesuits were designed and produced by ILC Dover, which was a division of Playtex.

The A7L was the model used on the Apollo 7 through Apollo 14 missions, then with Apollo 15 through Apollo 17, Skylab and Apollo-Soyuz, the A7LB spacesuit was used. The name given for the suit during Apollo and Skylab was the Extravehicular Mobility Unit, or EMU.

During Apollo the unit had the classic "backpack" look which was the astronaut's Portable Life Support System, commonly known as the PLSS. For Skylab, NASA used an umbilical life support system named the Astronaut Life Support Assembly.

Each astronaut had three custom fitted spacesuits — one for training while on Earth, one for flight, and one as a mission flight back-up.

As can be imagined there was an incredible amount of design and engineering that went into each spacesuit. Other informative websites go into great detail about the modifications from suit to suit, the layers of each suit, and the challenges faced during the design process to create a suit that could be worn on the Moon and in space. I am a visual person so for me nothing sums this up better than my father Paul Calle's 1969 acrylic painting, Apollo Space Suit cutaway. The painting shows each of the layers of the A7L and appeared in a Time-Life book illustrating the complexities of the space suit to be worn on the moon.

The printed image in the book also has text describing the various features. My father traveled from his studio in Connecticut to Dover, Delaware and over the course of a day photographed an ILC suit tech trying on each layer of the spacesuit. Later back in the studio he used these photos to create a sketch and then the final painting.

In the late 1990's, I found a cover with a cachet depicting my fathers painting from the book on a First Day Cover for the 29-cent 1994 25th Anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon Landing stamp (Scott number #2841), which was jointly designed by me and my father. The cachetmaker is unknown.

This cover with a cachet showing an Apollo/Skylab astronaut in a space suit has text reading, "Skylab Astronaut Space Suit Fit-Check." The envelope is signed by Apollo 12 and Skylab 3 astronaut Alan Bean.

As the spacesuits were custom made for each astronaut, and the customization process required exact measurements to conform to each astronaut, multiple fittings would have been essential. This cover is dated October 12, 1972 and cancelled in Dover, Delaware home to ILC Dover. It is likely that all the Skylab astronauts visited ILC Dover for Space suit fit checks and the date here fits with Bean's Skylab mission which launched on July 28, 1973.

After finding this cover in a dealer's box at a recent local stamp show I began to wonder if there are other similar covers out there perhaps signed by Bean's Skylab 3 fellow crew members Jack Lousma and Owen Garriott. While Bean and Garriott have passed away I decided to go directly to the source so I contacted Jack Lousma. I have known Jack for many years through my father who accompanied Jack and the rest of the Apollo-Soyuz "astronaut team" to Star City in 1974 for Apollo-Soyuz training, and then with my involvement in the NASA Fine Art Program. Lousma was backup docking module pilot. While Jack did not recall ever signing a similar cover he did confirm the visits to ILC Dover.

If anyone finds one of these covers, signed or unsigned please let me know! Check out collectSPACE this week for a very special ASTP Calle-Lousma announcement...