this post was submitted on 08 Jan 2026
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HistoryArtifacts
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Why does it have an opening on the belly?
Its about being waterproof. You climb into the suit and you only have two openings. one for your face covered with a hat or secondary hood. the second one is in the chest covered by a rain jacket or poncho. most of the time you are hunched over forward protecting both the head and chest hole. Under heavier rain you can actively protect both openings as they are both within reach.
Its also a suit that a single person can get in and out of without any secondary help.
Its a good system that looks weird as fuck.
I wonder what the waterproofing is? Given the time period, I'm assuming oiled canvas?
Edit: come to think of it, whale oil would be terribly convenient for this.
Having no knowledge of the subject I would also bet that the suit itself is made out of whale which are rumored to be waterproof
You won't believe this but...
You'd have to be brave or stupid to coat yourself in whale oil and wander out into polar bear hunting grounds.
For the arc reactor, obviously
To get in.
Modern dry suits have zippers and a very elastic neck opening.
Back then they had neither.
Whalers were really really big on belly rubs back then, they were willing to forgo a little breathing as long as they could get there belly rubs.
I hope you have many wikipedia edits in your past and future
It’s so your alien chest burster doesn’t ruin your garment when it comes out. The work must continue, no stoppages, throw the next poor sap in the body bag.
I was wondering the same thing. Maybe that's where you get in from?
Basically how you get into a Sokol space suit.
So these suits were for the the historically accurate Whalers on the Moon.
For Kuato.
Man that thing fucked me up when I was a kid. Hated every second of seen it.
I think it is based on Bill Keller, the psychic parasitic twin of young girl Edie Keller in PK Dicks' novel Dr Bloodmoney
Haven’t you seen total recall?
The whalers were Jaffa, obviously.
For peeing
So it doesn’t cover up the mouth.
The technical term is a Brown Waffle
X-men: Zeroth Class suit