<blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr /><p>I *believe* that I recall reading in a story a couple of years ago that the suit and airlock capabilities/connections do not match between the US and Russian segments (i.e. the Russion suits cannot be used from Quest and the US suits cannot be used from Pirs).<p><hr /></p></p></blockquote><br /><br />That is precisely correct; the suits need certain servicing (for loading oxygen and recharging batteries, for instance) and this means they need to be compatible with the airlock. Orlan suits (the Russian suits) would be used for any EVAs out of Pirs and probably also if any "internal EVA" was required. (I think they're a bit skinnier than the EMUs, and thus should fit better inside the station.) EMUs (the US equivalent) would be used for any EVAs out of the US airlock Quest. I believe Quest was supposed to be able to service Orlans as well originally, but that this was abandoned at a late stage for some reason; maybe there's just no point, given that Pirs is a perfectly good alternative.<br /><br />To eliminate some confusion, these are not the suits used for launch and entry. They are far too bulky. The Russian suit for launch and entry is called "Sokol" and is white with blue accents. I think it looks rather nice, actually. It's a partial pressure suit which interfaces directly with equipment in the Soyuz descent module. That equipment provides oxygen in the event of a cabin depressurization. The suit is engineered to work with the Soyuz; you have to use it and no other suit.<br /><br />The American launch and entry suit is a blaze orange full-pressure suit, which means it would let the crew bail at a higher altitude than the Sokol would, although realistically with Shuttle the odds of survival in a bailout situation are pretty much nil. (That's probably true of Soyuz too, actually, given the sheer forces involved at reentry and descent.) It's probably a bit more generic than Sokol, simply because the Shuttle seat <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>