Today’s high-tech spacesuit materials are a far cry from the cotton and rubber used by early high-altitude pilots. This story appears in the July 2019 issue of National Geographic magazine.

Eager to find out how best to save German pilots forced to eject at high altitude, they placed inmates into low-pressure chambers ... either in aviator suits or naked; they took others outside ...

While the device is deceptively simple, it is possible to get a balloon to very high altitudes without ... Even so, all three of the crew wore pressure suits and parachutes. Control of the height ...

To explore and work in space, human beings must take their environment with them because there is no atmospheric pressure ... the suit facing the Sun may be heated to a temperature as high as ...