// Forward Engineering

Development Roadmap

Prioritised from 70 years of operational and failure data. Engineering planning, not marketing.

P1 · Critical 9 suits
Gloves & Dexterity

Hand fatigue, contact injury, cold-object handling and sizing remain the most persistent mission limiter across every program on record.

LINKED FAILURE CASES
FAIL-002 — First US EVA physically exhausting and low-productivity despite suit functioning; glove pr…
FAIL-006 — Numbness, bladder bunching, and palm-bar wear-through into hand across multiple crew membe…
0–3yr

Digital fit library; instrumented torque testing; TMG swap simplification

3–7yr

Active assistance / smart restraint concepts; improved maintainability

P1 · Critical 14 suits
Life Support / Water Loop

EVA-23 (2013) demonstrated contamination sensitivity is life-critical, not a nuisance. Separator blockage allowed free water into Parmitano's helmet.

LINKED FAILURE CASES
FAIL-007 — Water entered Luca Parmitano's helmet during EVA — vision impaired, comms degraded, breath…
0–3yr

Redesign separator; add free-water detection; emergency helmet management

3–7yr

Modular contamination-tolerant water processing; easier on-orbit maintenance

P1 · Critical 0 suits
Mass / Vehicle Integration

xEMU failure demonstrated exploration suit feasibility can collapse on mass allocation alone, not hardware performance.

LINKED FAILURE CASES
FAIL-010 — Suit mass exceeded or stressed downstream lander allocations; requirements breadth and sub…
FAIL-CN-001 — Risk that Feitian Gen-2 orbital EVA success may drive incremental adaptation to lunar surf…
FAIL-ESA-001 — Technically sound rear-entry EVA prototype never operationalized — cancelled when parent H…
0–3yr

Lock mass budgets at subsystem level before elaboration; live allocation model

P2 · High 0 suits
Supply Chain / Digital Thread

Aging Enhanced EMU fleet showed industrial-base fragility can become mission risk independent of hardware condition. OIG 2025 critical flag.

LINKED FAILURE CASES
FAIL-008 — Aging suits, obsolescence, contractor quality issues, supply-chain weaknesses — OIG 2025 f…
FAIL-012 — Repeated orbital use shifted primary risk toward maintenance, drying, recharge, and replac…
FAIL-CN-002 — Suit lifespan initially limited to 15 EVAs over 3 years; exceeded in operations before upg…
0–3yr

Map critical parts, alternate suppliers, refurbishment bottlenecks

3–7yr

Digital lifecycle traceability with predictive maintenance metrics