They are far too expensive to be single use. <img src="/images/icons/wink.gif" /> They're actually very sophisticated devices in their own right -- essentially very small manned spacecraft.<br /><br />Russian EVA suits, called "Orlan", are monolithic. I've seen one once. They open at the back -- basically, the backpack swings open like a door and the cosmonaut slips in through the resulting hole. They are made to fit a range of body sizes, but there is a limit to the one-size-fits-all approach.<br /><br />American EVA suits, called "EMU" (for Extravehicular Mobility Unit -- NASA's a government agency and therefore loves acronyms), are modular. The largest single piece is the Hard Upper Torso (HUT). The various pieces can be mixed and matched to fit a wide range of astronaut body sizes and shapes. So a Shuttle or ISS mission doesn't have just one or two EMUs -- they've usually got enough pieces to assemble the required minimum plus a bit more. This makes them much more versatile in terms of who can fit into them, and also has benefits for on-orbit repair; you can swap out entire components very easily. But it doesn't come cheap.<br /><br />The suits for launch and reentry for both Russian and American crewmen are, I believe, custom-made to fit a particular person. I know the Russian ones are; I'm not 100% sure about the American ones. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p> </p><p><font color="#666699"><em>"People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly . . . timey wimey . . . stuff."</em> -- The Tenth Doctor, "Blink"</font></p> </div>