Episode 16: The Art and Design of Space Suit Replicas with Ryan Nagata

Written By Emily Olsen

Join us as we chat with artist and prop maker Ryan Nagata about his work replicating space suits and making props for movies. Ryan Nagata is based in Los Angeles and has made spacesuit replicas for various collectors and museums. You may have seen his work with Adam Savage of Mythbusters and tested.com, as well as on movies such as First Man and Fly Me to the Moon.

Show Notes

Transcript

Emily

Hello and welcome to the Art Astra Podcast. I’m Emily Olsen.

Alexa

And I’m Alexa Erdogan. 

Emily

Today we have a wonderful guest with us. Ryan Nagata is an artist and prop maker based in Los Angeles. He has made spacesuit replicas for various collectors and museums. You may have seen his videos with Adam Savage of Mythbusters and tested.com. Ryan has worked on movies such as First Man and Fly Me to the Moon.

Ryan, thanks so much for joining us. Welcome to the show.

Alexa

Welcome!

Ryan Nagata

Thank you for having me.

Alexa

So initially, what was it that drew you to spacesuits and what was it that inspired you to start tinkering with them and making them?

Ryan Nagata

Well, I was always into the space program since I was a kid. I was born in ‘81, so it was the shuttle program was…was the big thing back then. And I knew that we had gone to the moon as a civilization, because I'd seen that famous picture of Buzz Aldrin standing on the moon.

But I didn't really know anything about it. I just knew kind of about the Space Shuttle.

And then I saw the movie Apollo 13 when I was 14 years old.  And it just kind of blew my mind, like seeing the Saturn V rocket. I had seen pictures of that rocket before, but I didn't know that people actually got in it. And then there was a very famous scene in that, like a suit up scene, that was also fascinating to me as a kid because I didn't know anything about the suits.

Like I didn't know they had those bubble helmets, those clear bubbles. Yeah, I didn't know that like the suit that they wear on the moon was the same suit that they wore at launch. They don't do that anymore. They usually have a separate suit for EVAs and for launch entry.

But so I was just captivated by that suit up scene. And so I went home and I wanted to make my own. I always liked making stuff ever since I was a little kid, like making lightsabers and stuff out of wrapping paper tubes and things like that.

I made a Ghostbusters ghost trap when I was a really little kid out of a shoebox. And so I wanted to make a really good replica of one of those Apollo suits. So I bought all the, like The Making of Apollo 13 books that I could, or some books about the actual Apollo program. And I made it from like painter's coveralls. And the little disconnects on the front were like the bottoms of soda cans that I had painted.

I think the ring, the neck ring was the top of a bucket that I had cut off. But actually, it sounds really kind of rinky dink and junky, but it looked really good. [laughs] I had some pretty good skills even then.

And I remember I won like a costume contest at my school. But that was a pretty formative moment of my youth, but I kind of, I paused on that when I went to college, I went to school for biology. I thought maybe I'd be a doctor or a veterinarian. But I've always been a more creative person, I think. So I ended up going to film school and directing TV and movies and stuff for a while.

But I was still always making props and costumes on the side, either for my own projects or for other people's projects. And I think I just decided at one point that I wanted to make a better version of the Apollo suit that I had made as a kid. Because I was, let's see, when did I start this work?

It was like 30, early 30s, mid 30s. I had amassed a lot of fabrication skills, so I thought “I could make a really good suit now.” So I did, I worked on it for several months and I posted it on this forum called the Replica Prop Forum. It's a forum that a lot of people who make replica movie props trade ideas and show off their work.

And there's like a lot of research threads on there. And Adam Savage is heavily involved with that forum. I'd actually had some interactions with Adam over the years. I think we both joined that forum maybe back in like 2002 or so. So I'd known, had some interactions with him over the years, but he saw the Apollo suit that I made and immediately was blown away and wanted me to make him an Apollo suit. He did a little bit of work on a spacesuit for an episode of Mythbusters.

It was the moon hoax episode. Somebody gave him a Apollo suit costume. It wasn't a super high quality one, but he had upgraded it for the show. But he wanted something that was like much more accurate, made from scratch like the stuff I was making. So I made him that suit. And he actually wore it on another episode of MythBusters, the Rocket Men episode in the last season.

And he posted all about it, and we did some videos about it for Tested. And I think it was that in conjunction with going to an event in Tucson called Space Fest. They don't have it anymore, but it was a…an event where a lot of astronauts, including a lot of the Apollo astronauts, would go and sign autographs and stuff.

But it was a very, it was a very cool event. And I met and actually got to know and made friends with several Apollo astronauts and people who worked on the program. And it was, I think, those two things that really got my name out there as somebody who did this kind of work.

So I just started making these suits for other people. Sometimes a full suit, for someone that just, always wanted an Apollo suit and they put it in their office. Sometimes I would just make like the EVA gloves or something or a helmet. And then just over the years doing it, I got to meet tons of people at the Smithsonian, the Air and Space Museum. I have a lot of good friends there. I have friends at ILC Dover, Bill Ary there, who used to be their company historian. He's like literally the guy who wrote the book on the Apollo suit. He has a book called Lunar Outfitters that's very comprehensive.

Bill's a very good friend of mine and he's just given me tons of resources and information about how to make them more accurate. Yeah, and I've just… I'm sort of just driven by making the suits more and more accurate.

I guess I've realized in recent years that I'm very likely on the spectrum and it's sort of an autism thing to want to make like a perfect replica Apollo suit. But that's kind of what motivates me to keep doing it is that I'm always improving them. But anyway, that's kind of how it started and how I got into it as a career. Oh, also the movies started asking me to make these suits as well.

Emily

That's so cool. I especially love just like hearing your whole trajectory and where you're at now with the spacesuits that I've seen. I mean, I found your work through Instagram, but especially…

Ryan

Oh, cool! 

Emily

Yeah, especially what you were saying about how you were first drawn to the Saturn V and then the spacesuits from there. It reminded me of…In August, I got to go to a NASA social for the Crew-11 launch. And it was the first time in over a decade I had been to the Kennedy Space Center. I had been when I was really young and I wasn't as into space as I am today. And I had not realized, I think, how huge the Saturn Vs were.

Ryan

Mhm!!

Emily

And when you go to the Kennedy Space Center, to the Apollo complex, they have that disarticulated Saturn V, and then immediately after that, you go into the room where it goes into the spacesuit development. So you get to see the scale of the spacesuits against the absolutely massive Saturn V.

Ryan Nagata

Yeah, that's a really great exhibit they have there. I've been there a couple of times, and yeah, the Saturn V is super impressive. I would love to have seen it like standing on the pad back in the day, but just to be able to see it lying on its side is pretty cool, too. But yeah, I love that exhibit too, because they've got all those like developmental suits, and like the Litton Industries hard suit. It looks sort of like a robot. Yeah, that's a great exhibit. I love that one.

Alexa

I love your shout out to the RPF as well. And we'll link it in the show notes as well for any like current or aspiring makers to check out.

Ryan Nagata

[chuckles] Yeah!

Alexa

When I used to, I was really big into the Mass Effect game back in the day. I still kind of am. And so I wanted to create, like, replicas of some of the weapons in the game and like the N7 armor that the main character wears.

And those forums were just like a goldmine for so many cool makers to be like, “Hey, I just decided to put all these files up that I created to help you create this prop, or I used this material and this didn't work, but I used this glue instead.” And so it's a great resource. I really love that forum a lot.

Ryan Nagata

Yeah, the RPF is like a super, super exciting when I discovered that. Like early 2000s, and this is like pre-Disney Star Wars. So there weren't a lot of like mass-produced prop replicas like there are today. I think they realized that like there's like a lot of money and people that want to buy like high-end collectibles because like back then you could just basically just had toys or you know like or just sort of like hallmark ornament kind of things [laughs] that look kind of like the objects, but the RPF was the place for people that really wanted to like duplicate these things, using the same materials or found parts. Like Star Wars has a ton of props that were just made of found parts and we would try and research all of that stuff. I remember Adam was actually working on a Hellboy Mecha glove, in the early scene of that movie, like the character's wearing this glove with a bunch of, it was sort of steampunk-ish, and it had a bunch of found parts attached to it.

And I found, like at a hobby shop, like inside one of these little glass domes, there's this brass work. And I realized it was just these photo-etched brass railings for like model ships and stuff.

And I actually found the one that is used in a part of that glove. And so I sent that to him. He's super excited. But there's like hundreds of stories like that about that forum, [laughs] finding little things here and there. But since there's like so many mass-produced, high-quality replicas now, it's not as exciting to me, which is why I don't really do like movie props that much anymore, because it's like, everything's been done. So I kind of like doing the spacesuit stuff.

It's still like not a lot of people do it, so…And there's not really a market, I think, for a huge like high-end replicas as much as like a Darth Vader mask or something. So there aren't a lot of companies making really accurate spacesuit stuff, which is good for me and my business because people come to me for it.

Emily

Speaking of making these suits, though, can you walk us through the process of how you go about building a suit? And do you source beta cloth? What's your research process like?

Ryan Nagata

So it depends on the suit. I do them to different degrees of accuracy. So I made a suit for myself that is like super hyper accurate.

And I… I worked on it for about a decade, really. It's still not completely done. There's some things I want to change, but it's mostly done. But it has like all the disconnects are all anodized aluminum and they're machined. I had to learn how to like mill and lathe and machine parts myself. They're mostly accurate in dimension anyway to all the real parts. The neck ring is almost identical to a real one. I was able to get some access to real parts and take them apart and see the inner workings and measure everything.

My friend Andrew Barth, who I'll give a shout out to, you might be familiar with him. He's another tested contributor and helped with the project egress that they did for the Smithsonian. He helped with that and did all of these CAD files based on all of this information I sent them. So that's all like completely accurate.

The suit material, the outer cover is all beta cloth and Teflon, which is what the real suits are made of Beta cloth you can still buy from, there's some manufacturers that still make it for aerospace. They don't make suits out of it anymore, but for thermal covers for equipment and satellites, they still use beta cloth. It's not exactly the same weave that they used on the suits, but it's pretty close. But yeah, I made a thermal cover for that suit that's all like accurate and it's multi-layered. It has the same materials in the lining. And then I also replicated the pressure garment. So a spacesuit, what you see is that white outer cover is just the thermal micrometeoroid garment. And that goes over another garment that actually holds the pressure.

And there's a pressure bladder and rubber convolutes. And it's a very complex web of cables and straps and things and bearings.

So you can pressurize it and still have mobility. And that's all what's underneath that cover.

So I duplicated the pressure garment as well. And you don't even see it. So this suit that I did for myself. That one is very accurate. It's very uncomfortable to wear. I actually need a ventilation system to wear it because it's just too hot and heavy. I can't pressurize it because I didn't put a rubber bladder layer in there. I wanted it to be a little bit cooler to wear. So you can still pump air through it for cooling, but it doesn't pressurize. The suits that I make for collectors or the ones I do for movies and museums, they look accurate on the outside, but I usually make them out of nylon because most people would not be able to tell the difference between just white nylon fabric or the fabrics that the real ones are made out of.

And usually I have painted resin disconnects that are accurately sized, but they're just not anodized aluminum. I have done some anodized aluminum fittings for some people's suits that requested that, but it's much more expensive, obviously. And those suits to make them look pressurized, they, I usually sew like structures into them, like out of foam and plastic rings and stuff to sort of give it the bulk and the look of the pressurized suits. But it's far from a real spacesuit. People always ask, “Could I wear it in space?” And I was like, “You could, but you'd be dead in a couple of seconds. [laughs]  It's not a spacesuit at all. It's a costume.”

Emily 

It's funny. So in my work at Sotheby's, I help on the science team. 

Ryan

Mm!

Emily

And we had, a couple years ago, an A7L mock-up from ILC Dover that was used in the 60s for display purposes to show people what the spacesuits look like.

Ryan

Mhm!

Emily

And I got to wear it for catalogue photography.

Ryan

Yeah!

Emily

And a couple people would be like, “Oh, could you wear that in space?” And it's like the valves were all wood.

[laughter]

Emily

I would die immediately. It's, like, good for a hot second. 

Alexa

“A hot second…”

Emily

But it was really cool. [laughter] Yeah.

Ryan Nagata

Yeah. Well that’s, you know… So I have a Facebook page and social media. And like, I guess my page gets shown to, like, genuine like space fans, but it also gets shown to a lot of people who are like moon hoax, like enthusiast people.

Emily & Alexa

[sigh] Yep… Yeah

Ryan Nagata

And I used to, when people used to comment on my page, they were like obviously moon hoaxers. They would post links to videos and stuff. I used to just delete that stuff and block those people. But maybe a couple of months ago, I decided, I'm not going to do that anymore. I'm just going to let them talk. Because a lot of people follow me that are willing to engage with moon hoaxers. And I am willing to as well. I'm really not angered by moon hoaxers like some people are. I just, yeah, I just don't have time to like answer people's questions. But I did decide that I was going to, for a while, engage with these people and answer their questions. And I actually successfully convinced a few of them that the moon landings actually happened. So it actually does work to talk to people sometimes without anger and just kind of treat them like people. And because a lot of them just don't know. But the reason I bring it up was that a lot of people don't believe that a space suit is possible, because they see this thing that just looks like a white puffy fabric suit with zippers on it. That's a big thing that the moon hoaxers point to is that they have zippers. So like, how can you wear something with a zipper and have it be able to, you know, hold pressure?

But the reality is that the zippers are really just on that outer cover. There's this whole system underneath that you don't even see, which is really the spacesuit. I mean, the other thing is just like the protection or like the sunscreen, like the real suit and the real ingenuity, like being able to maneuver in something that's pressurized, that's all underneath and you don't really see it.

So, yeah, it doesn't surprise me that people are like fooled into thinking that my suits are real because it's, I just duplicate the stuff that you see. 

Emily

That's a good point. So, over the process of learning how to use the materials to put the suits together and in making these suits and in constantly improving them, were there any aspects of that process that surprised you along the way over time? It could be something that maybe worked in a way you hadn't expected it to or a creative way you solved a problem either in making or even in researching?

Ryan Nagata

Yeah, I mean, it's happened so much over the years. I went into the process of replicating suits not knowing really how everything worked or what every piece was for. But in the process of duplicating the suit, like in every single detail, you start to learn or you force yourself to learn what every single little detail was for.

And there really, I'm learning there really aren't that many people in the world now who know that much about the suit because a lot of people know about space suits because they've read books, but they haven't duplicated every single piece of it. So I mean, I consult with a lot of either movies or video games or SpaceX sometimes. I've worked with them on very, like real spacesuit stuff. And like every little tiny piece I've learned what it was for. And I'll give you an example. Like on the Snoopy cap, there's like a plug that you plug into the suit because it plugs into the suit and then it goes down through the suit and there's like an electrical disconnect on the front. It's that thing that looks like a plug with pins in it. And on that plug, there is machined like this row of like 5 little metal rectangles on one side of the plug. It's just a weird little machine detail on the plug. And I'd seen it for years. I had no idea what that was for. I knew everything had a function on the Apollo suit. There was nothing that was just done for decoration. Like it wasn't just to make the plug look pretty, although it looks cool. 

So I didn't know what that was for until I finally finished my high-end Apollo suit replica, and I put it on, and then I put the Snoopy cap on. And I realized it plugs in underneath your chin and you can't really look down. When you're wearing the suit, you can't really see. And the plug is, what's the word for like one direction? You can't plug it in both ways. There's only one way. And…

And since you can't see the plug, I realized I felt these little rectangles on the side of the plug. I was like, “Oh, that's what those little rectangles are for.” It's so you can feel which side of the plug is which and plug it in correctly. And there's all kinds of little details on the suits that surprised me. Like between the A7L, which is the suit that was worn on Apollo 11 through 14, actually technically 7 was an A7L through 14. And then there's an A7LB, which is like the upgraded suit they used from 15 to 17. There's a lot of differences with that suit, mainly because they had to sit down in the lunar rover, so they had to add a joint in the waist. But there's like a little detail on the chest of that. There's like these things called diverter valves that control the flow of air to the suit versus the helmet. So you can increase the amount of air going just in the helmet, like if it's, you know, the visor's fogging up or to the suit. So there's the diverter valves on the A7L. They’re these little, these little knobs with little, like 4 little circular cutouts around them. And on the A7LB, those little circular cutouts are just a little bit deeper, maybe like an eighth of an inch deeper than that. So, and I realized between the A7L, like when you're operating those little valves with those bulky gloves, like it's just a little easier to turn the valve on the B suit because they just increase the depth of those notches a little bit. So, I mean, there's always like, it's just like hundreds of things about the suit that I've observed. 

Emily

It's so cool to hear about the, like there's the research element and then there's just like the embodied knowledge and just the haptic feedback of working with these suits. It's just truly, it's so cool and not something that, to your earlier point, it's not even knowledge that would be readily apparent if you were to be only studying reading books or seeing it in a museum behind glass.

Alexa

As you were talking about the mental and sort of physical deconstruction of the suits as well, and then reassembly of it, it reminds me a little bit of when people tell you that you're not really an expert in something unless you can explain it at a really basic level when they talk about presenting like science information to a general public. And that sort of perspective or like mental state seems to be very similar to how you're talking about you can't really understand spacesuits in the sense that at the level that you're understanding them, unless you're really looking at each of the components and figuring out, like Emily was saying like through haptic feedback, or like really examining why is this specific thing shaped a certain way, or why is the depth just a little bit different on one version versus another? So it's really interesting. It's like a very intimate way to interact with the material.

Ryan Nagata

Yeah, it's interesting. I had actually never heard that you're an expert on something if you can explain it at a basic level, because I feel like that's what I was doing with these moon hoaxers. And so I guess I am kind of an expert on these suits, because I had to talk like very simply. Like about pressure sealing zippers, for instance, a lot of them didn't think a suit could hold pressure, but they didn't really understand what a pressure sealing zipper was. So… which is, for people that don't know in your audience, those early suits like from like the Mercury suit and the Gemini and Apollo and also like high altitude military pressure suits, they invented a pressure sealing zipper which is a very robust metal zipper with these two rubber lip seals on either side. So when you zip the zipper together, the two walls of rubber are smashed against each other and it holds a lot of pressure. So they invented those for high altitude pressure suits.

And now they use them in scuba dry suits as well. And I had a friend at the David Clark company. They make high altitude pressure suits. They made the Gemini suit and a lot of like the X-15 suits and they made the ACES suits, launch entry suits for the shuttle program. And they're making suits for Artemis. He sent me two pressure sealing zippers from their facility there because they have an expiration date. The rubber doesn't last forever. So after a certain period of time, they can't use them anymore. So he sent me two of these zippers and I posted some images on my Instagram and Facebook. And I got all kinds of comments from people about where they'd seen those same zippers now in like everyday scuba dry suits is the big one. Like a lot of military guys were saying they used them on waterproof bags for military equipment. Guys who, like there were a couple of bagpipers, guys who played the bagpipes, saying that they used a similar zipper system on bagpipes. But yeah, they created those zippers for the space program. And it's just something that's, I guess we use in quote unquote everyday life now.

Alexa

It is truly cool to live in a world where you're working on spacesuits and spacesuit replicas and you have somebody that's just like, “Hey, by the way, I have this extra part that I can't use in space anymore. Would you like to look at it for …just for funsies and also to inform your own like design process?” That's truly so cool.

Ryan Nagata

Yeah, that's, I'm fortunate to have a lot of friends in this world now. That same friend of mine, his name's Tom, he also sent me some aluminized nylon fabric that was probably used on… It was vintage because it was like sage green on the inside, which is a color they don't really use anymore. So it was like the exact same fabric that they used on the X15 suits.

And he said they were just going to throw this roll away. So he sent it to me and I ended up making a Mercury suit replica out of it. It's not exactly the same fabric they used on Mercury, but it's very similar. But yeah, like I have a lot of cool friends now.

[laughs]

Alexa

Earlier too, you touched on a little bit talking about how you've done some work for film productions as well. Could you tell us more about the work that you've done that's been featured in film productions and what that experience has been like?

Ryan Nagata

Yeah, so the first major movie that I worked on was First Man. And I did not do the Apollo suits for that movie. The Apollo suits were made by a company called Global Effects, and they're here in LA. And like 90% of spacesuits, like NASA spacesuits that you see, if you see a spacesuit in a movie that's like a replica of an actual NASA suit, it's probably from Global Effects because they've amassed like a huge rental stock of like all different kinds of suits from different eras so They were even making those suits like when I was a teenager and it was kind of an inspiration for me because they did the suits for ‘From the Earth to the Moon” mini-series about the Apollo program and so I thought that…I think that company is pretty cool, and they did the Apollo suits for First Man, but there's some things they didn't have and make, including the X-15 suit that Ryan Gosling wears in the beginning when he's… when Neil Armstrong was a test pilot. And so they initially asked me to do a few miscellaneous things for that movie. Like I did the Snoopy caps that they wore in that movie. 

And I helped with the in-flight coveralls. That's those white shirt sleeve type uniforms they wore in the capsule, that were not the space suits. But then they needed this X-15 suit. And originally, I was like, “I don't think I can do that.” But as I did a little bit more research on it, and I have a friend who actually owns a couple of real ones, he let me come take a look at him. I realized, yeah, I could probably make a pretty good version of that suit. So I did it in like a month and a half, like the entire suit. I made a couple of helmets and made it all to Ryan's size. And It was a lot of fun. I got to go on set and especially during the X-15 stuff and help Ryan put on the costume and everything. So that was a…let's see, that was 2017, 2018 that I worked on that movie. And that was great.

I really didn't think I would do… I don't love working on movies, even though I went to film school and I worked in Hollywood for many years. Like, I don't love working on movies because the schedules are so stressful. Turnaround time is so fast. But I mean, I do one every once in a while, because it's exciting and it keeps my name out there as somebody who does this kind of work. But I really didn't think I would ever do like something to that level ever again. But I did a couple of small things like there was a movie called Moonfall a few years ago. It was like a Roland Emmerich thing. And they had some vintage-y looking suits. They weren't actual suit designs, but they needed… their costume department was sewing those. They just wanted like the disconnects and all the hardware and the helmets and stuff. So I made those for that movie, but like, I didn't think I'd do a big project ever again.

But it turns out the costume designer of First Man, who was Mary Zofries, she actually was hired to do Fly Me to the Moon, which is another movie that had Apollo 11. And Mary and I got along very well. She appreciated my sort of encyclopedic knowledge of these suits, like whenever she had questions. So she came to me and asked me if I could do all the suits for that movie, including the Apollo suits. And I was like, “Yeah, I would have to work with somebody else.” So I ended up teaming up with Adam Savage's friend, Fon Davis. He has a company called FonCo. here in LA.

And they do some specialty costume work. They do all kinds of things, like they do a lot of miniatures and props and all kinds of fabrication from movies. But they do some costume works, but not a ton. But I really love Fon. I think he's such a nice guy and just very easy to work with.

And not everybody in Hollywood is that way, just between you and me.

So I was like, “I'll do this, but I want to work with somebody like Fon Davis.”

So I went to him and he was like, “Yeah, they would love to do it.” So I.. Fawn Co, they were the bulk of the labor on the project. And they were basically just following my patterns and molds and my designs.  Between the two of us, we made all the suits for that movie.

There were like 6 Apollo suits and six A1C, which is the Apollo 1 suit, which is basically like an adapted Gemini type suit. We made six of those. I can't remember if we did other stuff for that.

But that was actually incredibly stressful. That was way harder than First Man.

And part of the reason was that I didn't really want to like be an on-set person because usually these companies like Global Effects or something, they have like technicians on staff who go on set and help with these suits. Even though they're costumes, they still have like ventilation systems and a lot of the parts function like the real ones. It's not really intuitive. So you need somebody there to help with everything.

And I didn't want to do that because I knew it was going to be like weeks or maybe even months. And I was like, “That's not my thing. [laughs] I'm not going to be this on-set costumer.” 

Since I'm not like a full-time Hollywood effects specialty costume company, I don't have like a staff or like technicians. So somebody from FonCo. ended up going out there to be the on-set technician. And he is a great guy and he's definitely an expert on these suits now, but when he first went out there, like he didn't know anything about it. [laughs]

And so I went out there at the beginning of the shoot for a couple of days. But I couldn't be there the whole time. And it was just like constant like issues with the suits. Like, I mean, it's inevitable when you're doing these kind of specialty costume things. And they're like jumping around. If you've seen the movie, they're like jumping around and they're like on wires and like crashing into each other. We only made six suits. Like, so it was like, constantly needed to be repaired, or they didn't know where certain parts went, where this plugged into that. And so I was just like, they were talking to me. I was on the phone with them all the time.

And it so happened, I was, actually, I had mentioned I was doing some consulting for SpaceX before, and it was around the time I was doing that. I actually had to be on site at SpaceX for a while. So I was doing both. I was kind of like on the set for this movie while I was also doing stuff for SpaceX. So it was just very, very stressful at the time. And also like we were behind making the suits. It's always like a crunch, like a huge crunch time to get everything done. And it ended up getting done in time. It was fine, but it's never easy. 

Emily

That sounds both very stressful and also incredibly surreal, especially if you're doing multiple projects.

Ryan Nagata

Yeah. When I was in my 20s, you know and you're ready to just pull all-nighters and just to burn yourself out or whatever, then I probably would have liked that. But now I'm in my 40's and I don't wanna. [laughs] I got two kids and stuff, and I don't want to do that anymore. I much prefer just working in my studio and making stuff for a museum because it's usually not a hard deadline for that kind of stuff. Or I can set the deadline, you know. With a movie, it's their deadline, so. 

Emily

Yes, Speaking of museums, one of the questions I had for you was, you produced an X-15 spacesuit for Joe Engel that is now on display at the EEA Museum, which is the Experimental Aircraft Association Aviation Museum. What was that like to work on?

Ryan Nagata

Okay, so I met the Engels, Joe and his wife Jeannie. I met them on the set of First Man, actually, because Joe was the technical advisor for all the X-15 scenes. And that was super cool because I was very aware of who Joe Engel was. I made two trips to Atlanta on First Man.

It was the second trip where they were doing all the X-15 stuff. And I saw Joe…

I saw this guy, older guy, definitely not one of the young crew people, like walking. He was just like walking around. And I was like, “Wait, that's Joe Engel!” And so I was totally starstruck. So, I talked to his wife, Jeannie, first, who's just a really nice, wonderful lady. And Joe, he wanted to see the suit, like what the costume was. So I was like, “okay, I'll show you.”  So we took him back to the tent where we had the suit.

And he was just, he thought it was so cool. Like he was, he said, “I want to try it. I want to put it on.”  And he was like trying on the gloves. And he was like, “Oh, you did such an amazing job with the suit.”  And he told me that like, of all the suits that he wore in his very extensive aviation career. So he was an X-15 pilot and he wore high altitude pressure suits. And then he joined NASA during Gemini, but he was slated to be the lunar module pilot of Apollo 17. So he did all the training for it. So there's a lot of photos of Joe with like the Apollo EVA suits, doing the training in Florida, like out in the sun, picking up rocks and stuff. And then he stayed with the program to the shuttle program. So he wore the early shuttle launch entry pressure suits, and he even wore the EMU suit. He had to do training for the shuttle EMU, even though he never did an EVA. I later learned that he had to learn how to use the EMU suit in case there was an emergency or something, and they had to like do an emergency EVA in the shuttle.

He was on the second Shuttle mission. So as early as then, I guess they were carrying that EMU suit on there. But he said of all the suits that he wore, that X-15 suit was his favorite because he just felt like he was like a real spaceman wearing that suit. So we got to be pretty good friends. I stayed in touch with Joe and Jeannie over the next couple of years. And Joe at some point, he signed my, this X15 model I made as a kid. So that was pretty cool. I still have it. And I sent it to him and he signed it. And then when the EAA museum was, they were going to do a Joe Engle exhibit, Jeannie reached out to me and she said, “Joe always loved that replica suit you had made for First Man so much, like, would you be willing to make a replica of his suit for this museum?”

And I was like, “Oh, definitely, I would love to.“ And so I duplicated Joe Engle’s suit, which was similar to the one Neil Armstrong wore. There's a couple of cosmetic differences, like the color of the gloves was different. Joe's suit had a little Air Force decal on the top. It was mostly the same suit, but there's a couple little things that were different.

But I think the coolest part of that story was, or that whole experience was: they wanted the suit to look sort of aged like it had been worn. And so I had the boots, the X-15s boots made by the same guy who made them for First Man. He's a boot maker in Canada. But you know, the boots come brand new when he sends them to you. So I was kind of beating them up and aging them to look like they've been worn.

And I was sort of, I was using Fuller's Earth to make them look a little dusty because, they walked out there on those dry lake beds at Edwards. And Jeannie was kind of following my progress on the suit. And she said, “You know what, I have the perfect thing for you to weather those boots.” Because Joe, he was a very sentimental guy when he left Edwards to move to Houston when he joined the Astronaut Office, I think it was probably around 1966.

He collected a bunch of the dirt from Edwards, the dry leg bed, and he kept it in a jar. And she said, “Yeah, Joe has this jar of dirt that he collected from Edwards right before he left. So I'll send you some and you can like, age the shoes with this dirt.” I was like, “Oh, that's so cool.”

So yeah, she sent me a bag of Joe's dirt. And I didn't need that much to weather these boots. I sent a little jar of it to the museum as well. I think they probably have it. Maybe they have it in the display case there. And then I kept this other jar of this dirt.

And it's Joe's dirt. 

[laughter] 

A lot of little, it's in my old Joe Engle section of my display cases.

Emily

That's such a neat touch. It just, it's the most authentic weathering I think you could get in that situation.

Ryan Nagata

Yeah, it's just dirt from Edwards, but it's the exact dirt that he took in 1966 when he left.

[laughter]

Alexa

Wild. 

Emily

I have so many more questions for you, but we want to be very mindful of your time.

You've mentioned Apollo 13 being one of your primary inspirations as a kid and the work on your first spacesuit. Science fiction has been a noted inspiration for people to get into STEM fields.

And what really struck me about your artistic practice is that it's this incredible intersection of both art and craft and engineering. And I'm curious what you think about the role of science fiction is not only in inspiring a love of STEM, but also in igniting creativity within STEM fields as well.

Ryan Nagata

Yeah, well, I mean, that's definitely the case with me. Like, I love science fiction. And so I grew up on Star Wars. And then I became a huge Star Trek fan. I started watching the show when it aired, Star Trek: The Next Generation. Still, The Next Generation is probably my favorite TV show of all time. But that, like Star Trek's a big inspiration for a lot of people. There's like astronauts and maybe like Mae Jemison might have said being a fan of like Star Trek and Uhura and seeing a black woman like on a spaceship in the 60's like inspired her to become an astronaut. So yeah, science fiction is definitely a huge inspiration.

And you know, it's not… it's not really science fiction, but it's somewhat related. So, the SpaceX Crew Dragon suits that they wear now? They're very different than like any suit that they've made before. They're like very futuristic, like kind of Tesla design looking intentionally. So it is almost like, and having like done some work with those suits and the SpaceX team.  Unlike ILC, or I have friends at all of these companies now, they're all, they're all like functionally, it's all like functional design. They don't care about aesthetics, but SpaceX actually does. It's kind of an Elon thing. Like he wants to look a certain way and like, so they've made these suits like there's a lot of features of the suits that are not necessary. They're just to look cool. And so I was not a huge fan of those suits originally. They've definitely grown on me as I've gotten to like work with them a lot more.

But what I did notice was that on the RPF, for instance, or like a lot of these costuming forums… While I was never into that suit, I saw a lot of like young people thinking that suit was really cool and like wanting to make replicas of that suit.

And I know it's not science fiction, like the Crew Dragon suit is definitely a real suit, but it's a design that's meant to look cool. It does inspire. So I think like science fiction kind of cool design is definitely a gateway for people to get into science and engineering. You guys Star Trek fans at all?

Emily

Yes!

Alexa

Star Trek Voyager is the one for me. I still love it so dearly.

Ryan Nagata

Voyager is great. I watched like half of Voyager at the time and then I kind of like stopped. I was in college and but I went back to it years later and watched the whole series. And I was like, this was really good. They really had it like, it was like kind of the best stuff about the next generation, I thought. They had worked out the formula. That's probably why Star Trek kind of ended for a while at that time too, because they had perfected the formula so much. And whenever that happens, kind of has to die for a while. But then, and then it's come back in various incarnations now. But, Voyager is really great.

Emily

Yeah, it's really cool. So Nichelle Nichols as Uhura was..I'm pretty sure she would go on NASA press tours around the country…

Ryan

Yeah!

Emily

…to inspire people to join. But it's interesting in terms of what I remember when I first saw the SpaceX suits, it reminded me of the suits in the video game Halo. And when you were mentioning working with video games earlier, And in terms of using science fiction to get people excited about space, there was, I feel bad, I do not remember the results of the competition, but the European Space Agency partnered with Starfield and Bethesda Studios to use the spacesuit maker in the game. And whoever won the competition, the European Space Agency would make the suit. I remember the announcement. I don't remember the end of the competition, but I just remember thinking that was such a cool way to get people more involved in just the process.

Ryan Nagata

Interesting, yeah. Well, there's a couple of similar things. Like the SpaceX design was made by a guy in Hollywood who makes costumes like his name is Jose Fernandez, I think. But like they had a couple of different like Hollywood companies make prototype suits. And that's the one that they like the best. And NASA did a similar thing like a decade or two ago with the Z2. Like they had this contest where like people voted on the color scheme for the Z2 suit, which was like the predecessor of the XEMU design. They're very similar. And even the one that Axiom, the lunar EVA suit that they're doing now, they're all kind of derived from these NASA suits, the XEMU and is sort of, I don't exactly know where the design came from. But they had this thing where they were going to do a, like a, you pick the color scheme, and then the one that won was like a Buzz Lightyear style, like, and so they did this version of the Z2 suit that was like kind of white and green. It's now kind of like instantly dated. 

[laughs]

Ryan Nagata

That's the risk of when you do design, like design based things, like they do become dated. Whereas like the functional things like Apollo, they're kind of timeless in a way.

Emily

I remember too, I know that there was an announcement, but I'm not sure what the end result was, but I remember Prada also made an announcement that they were involved in some new spacesuit.

Ryan Nagata

Oh yeah, I think they worked with Axiom. They did a cover layer for that and they changed the a little bit of the design on the surface.

It's funny. When I look back to the movies they were making in the 1960s, like they would always make like Major Matt Mason, I think that was a thing that he was wearing, like the, God, what was the name? It was like SPV 143 or something like that. He's wearing a suit that was clearly inspired by this early ILC prototype suit. And that's like, I guess what they thought was going to be, you know, the suits of the future would be this particular suit. But they change very rapidly. That's not the suit that they wore on the moon. And then there's a movie called Marooned with Gene Hackman, where they're wearing like a suit. It's about an Apollo mission that gets like marooned in space. And they're wearing a suit that looks very much like the Apollo 9 EVA suit with this red helmet that they only wore on that mission. But that was probably, at the time, what they thought the lunar EVA suit would look like. So that's what they made. And so when I see all of these like various iterations, like Axiom has already done several. Like when they did this press conference, it was a black and orange cover layer. And then I think Prada did some white and red version. I just know that these suits are going to, by the time they end up going to the Moon again, if they do (I certainly hope so), I know the suit is going to look different. Like, it's just how these things always go.

When they make a movie, they base it off of whatever is the most recent iteration of the suit.

Alexa

I remember earlier you were talking about how one of your favorite suits, or it sounded like one of your favorite suits, is the one that you built for yourself that I think you said you spent a decade working on and you're still kind of tweaking it a little bit here and there.

Ryan

Yeah, yeah. 

Alexa

I imagine you're still tweaking it in the meantime, but in addition to that, can you talk about anything that you might be working on now? I know you also mentioned that you probably are going to hold off on films for a while, but if there's anything else that you're working on right now that you feel comfortable sharing?

Ryan Nagata

Yeah. Well, I mean, I'm always working on Apollo suit parts and stuff. That's kind of my bread and butter. But that's not super exciting anymore. I just– I recently did a lot of scale models for Vast. Vast Space Station– they're building a commercial space station that will hopefully launch next year. I know the CEO of that company, Max Haot, and he asked me to make scale models of their Haven 1 station. So I ended up doing like a ton of models for them. I made the ones they send out to trade shows.

I've probably made six of them by now. I made this large, huge one that's hanging in their lobby.

And then I did, they wanted a couple small ones for like, I don't know, their desks or something.

[laughs]

Ryan Nagata

I don't know what. I was making a bunch of scale models for them. So pretty much like anything that's art and space related people come to me now.

But what else am I like…? Oh, I'm making a replica of the EMU suit, like the one they wore on the Specifically, I'm making the early Shuttle version, like they wore on early Shuttle EVAs. I'm making a replica of that, and I have some friends who've sent me all the components of a real one. So it's all, like my Apollo suits, it's all based on the real measurements. I'm kind of a third of the way done with that. 

And let's see what else... Oh, I know. Like a few months ago, I made all of these replicas of like Apollo space food packs. I'm also like fascinated by space food. It's kind of a side interest of mine. And so I made a bunch of these replicas of the food packs like that they took on the Apollo missions. And I have a box of like 50 food and drink packs that I made and I simulated all the food and I was going to I was going to sell them from an Etsy store.  I just haven't photographed them yet. I've been so busy and like and like set up my store, but I kind of want to maybe in 2026 set up a like an Etsy store of stuff that's a little bit less expensive than like full suit replicas and that, you know, people can buy, if you don't necessarily have to pay thousands of dollars for them. But yeah, I guess so. I don't know. There's nothing super exciting at the moment, but.

Alexa

I love that you say that after talking about creating space station replicas and working on other spacesuits. It all sounds very, very cool. It probably is because you're so immersed in it.

Ryan Nagata

Yeah, maybe I'm spoiled and I take it for granted that I get to kind of make not… pretty much whatever I want with some like some exceptions like you still have to pay the bills, like whenever you're an artist like there's projects you do for yourself or projects you do for other people.

And sometimes there's an intersection, but sometimes it's not super fun. 

Emily

I wouldn't say spoiled. I’d say maybe desensitized because it's incredibly cool, but it also sounds like an enormous amount of work and it's very detail oriented…

Ryan Nagata

Yeah.

Emily

…Even if you love it.

Ryan Nagata

Yeah. It’s tough, yeah. So like each model has like 4 little like scale astronaut figures standing next to it. And if you do the math, like you add it up, you make 10 models with these, it's like 40 of these little figures. They're just painting like by hand. They're super tiny. And like, you know, my eyes start to hurt painting with these tiny little brushes. I actually realized doing that, too, that I needed reading glasses finally because I got some reading glasses and then I put them on and I was like, it's much easier to see these faces.

[laughter]

Ryan Nagata

I never needed that before, but yeah…

Alexa

So for folks who might be interested in the maker space in general, or maybe specifically spacesuit or prop replica work, would you have any advice to pass along for folks or any resources that you would particularly recommend?

Ryan Nagata

For replica props, definitely the replica prop forum, but you already said you were going to post a link to that. I mean, that's definitely the place to go. I learned so much from that site.

If you want to be an artist and just like make stuff. Well, you have to do something that you're passionate and interested in, because I mean, that's what will drive you. You can't just make something… stuff that you think other people will like, because you'll get tired of it very quickly.

Even if you do make some money doing it, like if you're not interested in it, you won't be driven, I think, to keep going. That's probably why the Apollo stuff worked for me. Like I said, I was just kind of driven by making them more and more accurate. So to this day, like whenever I make like an Apollo glove or helmet, I usually wait like a year or two between when I do these runs of these things. When I do a new, let's say like a Mercury helmet, I'm going to make some new Mercury helmets, like I will change it to some degree and improve it. Either I will make it more accurate or what's also kind of interesting to me is making the process easier in some way, like creating a new mold system, for instance, or something that works better than it did before. Like I do these Apollo suits, the gold visors. Like the last time I did them, I built this machine that…’cause I apply the gold coating with these gold deposition chemicals, which are made for like gold mirrors. And it's meant to sit on a flat mirror for like half an hour. But because the visor is curved, like I have to swish it around for half an hour, which is like very tedious. So I built this machine that swishes it around for me. So when I made these Apollo helmets the last time, I made this machine and that's what kept it interesting.

It was very exciting to make this machine that would swish the visor for me. I could still do it the old way, but that's boring. I would much rather use the creative juice to come up with a new way of doing it. So sometimes that motivates me to do the next round. So I always change it up a little bit.

That's some advice that I'd never heard people give about being an artist, is that you have to change things up every once in a while, make some changes to your process just to keep it interesting, to keep yourself excited about it.

Emily

That makes sense of just innovating not just the artwork but the process as well.

Ryan Nagata

Yeah.

Emily

So as you've mentioned, and as Alexa mentioned, we will be including the link to RPF in the show notes. We'll also be including, you've mentioned your Facebook and your Instagram and your website. We'll include all of those in the show notes as well so that people can find you in your work.

Ryan Nagata

Okay, yeah. That's, yeah, that's. pretty much all I would want to link to, I guess.

Emily

Amazing. Yeah. Wonderful.  Well, Ryan, this has been absolutely a delight. Thank you so, much for chatting with us.

Ryan Nagata

Oh, thank you. It was a lot of fun. I enjoy talking about it.

[interlude music: “Space” by Music_Unlimited]

Emily

Thank you for listening to our episode with Ryan Nagata. Since we recorded our interview, Ryan has launched his Etsy shop and space food replicas. The link to the store is in our show notes along with the transcript on our website at www.artastra.space.

Alexa

If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a rating or review of the show on whatever platform you are using to listen, and tell your friends! This helps other listeners discover the show. 

Emily

If you’re in the DC area and going to Awesome Con this weekend, which is DC’s Comic Con, come find me Saturday morning and say hi! I’m giving my first NASA Solar System Ambassador talk of the year about exoplanets in fact and science fiction. 

Til next time! 

Alexa

Til next time! 

[outro music: “Space” by Music_Unlimited]

Emily Olsen
Next

Episode 15: Science Communication for International Audiences with Dr. Elizabeth Tasker