Wonder of ScienceA short compilation of astronauts falling over on the Moon during the Apollo missions, showcasing their challenges with balance and movement caused by the Moon's low gravity, bulky spacesuits, and navigating the loose, dry lunar regolith.
JackEnrod@wonderofscience The tiniest pinhole and they would be dead.
waso nytpu@JackEnrod
The Apollo space suits were actually very cleverly designed with the inner pressure vessel being covered by many layers of various protective fabrics (including fiberglass cloth IIRC).
Even if the suit did somehow get a tear, they were only pressurized to 3–5 PSI (the partial pressure of oxygen in air) so if the astronaut found the leak they could probably just cover it with their hand and seal it until they got back to the capsule and could either abort the mission or permanently reseal it (dunno if they had a method of repairing suits in Apollo yet, I'd assume so). They could connect to the other astronaut's space suit as well if their air supply started running out.
keplerniko@nytpu @JackEnrod @wonderofscience Thank you for this insightful and probably-correct post. I went to Space Camp four times and was a space geek as a kid, so I already knew that the suits weren’t pressurised to 1 bar.
Doesn’t change the fact the astronauts were probably had a bit of mild panic at each fall that they could tear some sort of hole in the suit, but you have articulately and clearly explained why that even that fear on the Moon would have been more or less irrational: the chance of a life-threatening situation was fairly low.