Cool.
But if you look at the Soyuz pic (post #14) it is being moved horizontally and totally intact (near as I can tell).
Which seems to me there is no pulling parts out and snapping them together on the launch pad. The whole rocket moved as an assembled unit.
The Soviets (and now the Russians) were big fans of horizontal integration, which as noted above has a number of advantages provided that you are willing to invest in developing and maintaining a strongback to erect the vehicle. The early Soviet ICBMs were all liquid fuel and stored in above-ground bunkers which had to be erected and fueled while American boosters after the “stage and a half” Altas were all stored in vertical in-ground silos (Titan II used storable liquids so was maintained in a loaded state indefinitely, and Minuteman and Peacekeeper families were solid propellant) and were the basis for later space launch vehicles for the NASA Gemini program and large surveillance and telecom satellites, so that seems to have influenced the American preference for vertical integration.
Stranger
I suppose it’s worth noting that the only deaths in space (the crew of Soyuz 11) to date were due to non-explosive decompression. That was nearly 50 years ago, and I suppose we’ve learned a few things since then, but still–it’s not an entirely theoretical possibility.
I’m not aware of any space suit design that would protect against explosion, etc. One of the AX-n series hard-shell suits is probably your best bet (if you don’t mind looking like the Michelin Man), but even then the suits were fiberglass to reduce weight–reasonably impact resistant but probably not that great in a fire.
SpaceX doesn’t pretend that these are anything but flight suits. They are fire resistant, but only as much as as a Nomex suit for racing or firefighting: not a lot, but also not nothing (the SpaceX suits use Nomex, too). I’m sure they could deal with a small fire–after all, most fires kill with asphyxiation, not heat.
I don’t necessarily disagree with the thrust of your critique, but it seems strange to focus on SpaceX specifically even though every flight suit is subject to the same critique.
I will say this: while I do think the suits look very cool while seated in the capsule, there is an upper bound to how cool an adult can look while walking around in a diaper. The advantage to the pumpkin suits is that they made the wearer look dumpy in all areas equally.
The shuttle was fueled before the astronauts got on. Falcon 9 is fueled while the astronauts are on. Also the NASA building used to assemble rockets is one of the biggest buildings in the world by volume.
The suits are designed to look good and be comfortable.
They do need to be able to perform their designed function, but if they are ever performing their designed function, all kinds of shit has already gone wrong.
That’s the gist of manned space missions.
If you’re not venturing outside the capsule, what do the spacesuits need to do that isn’t better handled at capsule level? Maintenance of sufficient blood pressure to the brain (like fighter pilots) and measurement of vitals is about all I can come up with but that may be due to my ignorance of these matters.
I am surprised that NASA allows companies to make their own pressure suits, instead of requiring that standard NASA flight suits be used.
If NASA’s got concerns about quality control on the flight suits, then they really shouldn’t be putting people on the rockets made by the same company.
As Stranger on a Train put it: non-explosive loss of pressure a-la Soyuz 11; a ground abort or hard landing where there is a propellant spill, serving as hazmats(*); and some fire retardancy, again in a ground emergency for GTFO purposes.
Since the 60s once you are stable in orbit and not planning any excursions you switch to shirtsleeves or jumpsuits and trust the spacecraft.
(*The 1975 ASTP Apollo module had a mishap in late reentry and chute deployment sequence that led to venting thruster vapors getting sucked into the crew compartment, and it was a nasty day for everybody)
I thought they might object to their astronauts being dressed up like Buck Rogers. 
Ah, I thought your post was about safety concerns.
I dunno, they look pretty good to me. I mean, form can only deviate from function so much.
I always though that their orange suits made them look like they were on a prison work crew. (Once again, form and function, orange being an easy color to see, useful for both runaway convicts and lost astronauts.)
Does NASA even have flight suits anymore? I don’t know what their shelf life is, but I’d think that they’d all be in museums and not really usable anymore.
Years ago I bought a copy of the Imax “Mission to Mir” DVD. I showed it to my wife who complained about how messy my bachelor house had been, to show her Mir and point out “now I have seen the future, and it is messy too.”
In the opening sequence they roll the Soyuz rocket out to the launch pad on a railroad, then tilt it vertical. All sorts of hangers-on are wandering around and alongside the rocket as it rolls out.
Not long after, we took a tour of the Kennedy Space Center, and on the bus tour of the launch sites we were allowed to get off at one point near the beach and told “if you cross that line, the security people have orders to shoot to kill” while in the Soviet Union, all sorts of strange people in civilian clothes just wander around the rocket.
STS-135, in 2011, used the ACES suit (“pumpkin suit”). That’s not really very long ago. Orion crew are going to get a modified version of the ACES suit. I’m not sure what the shelf life of the suits is, but in any case I don’t think NASA ever lost the ability to produce them (via David Clark).
Some interesting videos showed up a few days ago from Soichi Noguchi, one of the ISS astronauts that rode up on Crew Dragon.
They’re in Japanese, but it’s mostly visual. The donning of the suit I thought was especially interesting. It unzips at the crotch and you pretty much slide the suit over your head and zip it up. Seems easy enough for a single person to manage, even in a weightless environment.
