Apollo A7L

The Apollo A7L was the pressure garment worn by astronauts on the first Moon landings, representing the most complex suit ever built up to that point. Developed by ILC Dover with a Portable Life Support System (PLSS) by Hamilton Standard, it featured 21 distinct material layers including Beta cloth (fiberglass) outer layer as the direct response to the Apollo 1 fire, aluminized Mylar thermal insulation, a Liquid Cooling Garment (LCG) — a spandex undersuit woven with ~91 meters of water-cooling plastic tubing — and a polycarbonate pressure helmet with a gold-plated sun visor. On the Moon, the suit weighed ~84 kg on Earth but effectively only ~30 lb in lunar gravity. Neil Armstrong's A7L (suit number A7L-056) is preserved at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum after a crowdfunded restoration campaign.