These Are the Most Expensive Tools Astronauts Use in Space

TL;DR

Astronaut Butch Wilmore breaks down the multi-million dollar suits, drills, and helmets that keep astronauts alive in space.

Key Points

• 1.Space suits cost $5–7 million each and function as one-person capsules with air supply, pressure regulation, CO2 removal, and a water-cooling system to handle temperature swings of several hundred degrees.
• 2.Spacewalk prep takes roughly 5 hours before the hatch even opens — including purging nitrogen from the body to prevent decompression sickness, similar to deep-sea diving.
• 3.The drill carried on spacewalks costs approximately $2 million, and only a handful exist on the entire space station — failure is not an option after a 5-hour prep.
• 4.The helmet's gold visor contains literal gold flakes to block ultraviolet radiation, and Wilmore estimates that single component alone costs several hundred thousand dollars.
• 5.Soviet cosmonauts historically carried pistols in their survival kits for off-course landings in remote areas, but Russia discontinued the practice before Wilmore flew the Soyuz.
• 6.The Soyuz descent module's inner diameter is under 7 feet — three crew members must change from space suits into survival suits inside that cramped space during water survival training.