“This is the only thing we have left from the first space suit in history.”

“Where do we have that cape with which great-grandfather wanted to travel into space?” This, or a very similar question, was the question Selena Herrera asked her mother in their central Madrid apartment a few minutes before pulling a shiny, metallic-looking cloth out of a drawer. What he carefully takes out and holds in his hands is the cape with which Emilio Herrera Linares tried to protect himself from radiation during his ascent into the stratosphere in 1936, a historical piece forgotten for decades. is gone, despite being the only element that remains from that adventure.

Because not only did Herrera Linares try to ascend into the stratosphere wearing the first ‘space’ suit in history, but he planned to do so with a cape, which would undoubtedly have given him a very strange, almost superhero-like appearance. In his induction speech to the Royal Academy of Sciences in 1933, the Grenada scientist and pilot had put forward his intention to enter “the mysterious region of the unknown” and to climb, in a free balloon and in an open boat, to a height of 1,000 feet. 25,000 meter “stratospheric diving suit provided.” In the following years he designed and tested every element of the equipment that was to protect them in the limits of the atmosphere and left everything ready for ascent in July 1936. But the outbreak of civil war foiled the greatest achievement. Spanish aeronautics in history.

“The ascent was not made; Herrera wrote sometime later, “The balloon was cut into pieces from its fabric (rubberized silk) to make raincoats for the soldiers, and the diving suits, with all the equipment, fell into the power of the enemy, in Cuatro Vientos. ” For almost a century, the ghost of that space suit, which faded into history and was later recognized by NASA as a source of inspiration, went on without almost anyone noticing that Herrera had designed and built another important protective Element: Stratospheric layer.

“A Layer of Silver Tissue”

Herrera noted in his memoirs, “If I feel excessive heat due to sunlight, I also have a layer of silver tissue ready, which reflects with it.” This is the only explicit reference to the Cape in his writings. Until today, only a few historians and the most direct descendants were aware of the existence of this garment, which passed before their eyes from the missing suit, which probably prevented them from paying attention to its symbolic value. “It’s the only thing we have left of the space suit,” admits historian Emilio Atienza, who has been documenting Herrera’s life for years. “I have not found any objects related to that project, the only thing I saw is the cape, which the family of his grandson, José Miguel Herrera, had in their home.”

It is in this house where José Miguel’s widow, Eulalia, and her daughter Selena dust off the old clothes and unfold them before our eyes. Illuminated by spotlights and in the darkness of the room, the cape glows like an object from another world, a survivor of the darkest period in Spain’s history. It’s not clear how it was saved from destruction, Iulia admits, all she knows is that more than 30 years ago the Gudín sisters – friends of the family in Granada – gave her the material, as well as “Don Emilio” aviator suit. Other objects he jealously guarded after the end of the war and during his long exile.

If I felt excessively hot due to sunlight, I also had a layer of silver tissue ready to reflect it,” Herrera noted in his memoirs.

The delivery of the cape took place in the mid-90s, the same dates when the newly created Emilio Herrera Linares Foundation compiled its archives for preservation and dissemination. All three sisters have already died, but their nephew Louis remembers their noble deed very well. “They put it in because they wanted the story to be told,” he told elDiario.es over the phone. “His parents were shot and he wanted to do his part to preserve their memory.”

against cosmic rays

“To protect himself from the intense radiation of the sun, Herrera initially proposed the possibility of placing white or silver curtains on the nacelle,” says aeronautical history expert Carlos Lázaro Ávila. “Later, however, to better manage the balloon string and ballast, he added to his complex personal equipment a silver lamé cape, which covered three-quarters of his body.” According to rare documents that have been preserved about the project, he explains, the stratospheric team had to allow Herrera complete freedom of movement in the balloon’s basket so that he could carry out all the experiments he planned to do during the ascent. The stratospheric diving suit was subjected to a series of tests in a vacuum chamber at the Cuatro Vientos Aerodynamic Laboratory.

“The idea was to put a cape over the suit to protect against solar radiation,” says Atienza. “But this was not only to deal with the heat that it could generate, but above all to avoid cosmic radiation, which was one of the things he wanted to study,” he explains. “Unlike the stratospheric ascents that Auguste Picard did in a closed cabin,” explains Lázaro, “what Herrera wanted was complete freedom of movement because this way, in the open basket of the balloon, he could carry out all his experiments. ”

metallic thread satin

What is the cape made of and what properties does it have? Herrera only mentions “Silver Tissue” in his autobiography and no one has analyzed it in detail. Lázaro Ávila believes that the material of the cape was “largely the same as that used to protect the upper part of airships and prevent them from being scorched by sunlight.”

Other sources assure that the garment fulfilled the role that the aluminized nylon exterior of the first astronaut suits later played. “When I saw and touched it it reminded me of a cloth that is made today, called mylar”, Atienza assured. “It’s like a silver cloth, a very shiny thing. I think it was made from some kind of aluminum fiber, a fiber that allowed weaving. And then, inside, it had a lining like velvet, which was designed to protect from the cold, like a kind of red wool.

Looking at photographs of the cape’s details, Juan Gutiérrez, head of the contemporary fashion collection at the Costume Museum, believes that an aluminum cloth is compatible with the textile technology that was used at the time. “Metallic thread is basically a wound of a metal sheet on a textile fiber core,” he comments. “But it is far from being compared with mylar Or other modern material, my impression is it’s metallic thread satin,” he says. “What I can assure from the photographs is that they are woven threads, and the technique appears to me to be satin, what it does is create a smooth and reflective surface, like in a satin dress, which causes the type of shine. No fiber.” , but because a very smooth surface is created which reflects light. The thing that raises the least suspicion is the inner layer. He says, “It looks like woolen fabric, which makes much more sense than a velvet lining, among other things because it’s warmer.”

What I can assure from the photos is that they are woven threads, and the technique appears to be satin to me, making it a smooth and reflective surface.

There are still many open questions about the layer, which further research may help resolve. For example, if the slave never left Spain, as Eulalia and her daughter Selena suspect, or why he suffered such a different fate from the space suit, which disappeared when it fell into the hands of the coup army. “The suit was in Guadalajara, where I planned to climb,” says Atienza. “And the cape probably survived because he took it somewhere else.”

Now that its existence is once again coming to public light, it is likely that some science museum will take an interest in it and attempt to display it, a possibility to which Selena Herrera is open, given the interest in recovering her memory. Great grandfather watching. Science historian and RAE member José Manuel Sánchez Ron also believes this recovery is timely. Focusing on this layer unknown to the general public seems to him an opportunity to “recover the image of an admirable character, who contributed much to technology and science in Spain and who ended up in exile due to the vicissitudes of politics. , with whom his memory has unfortunately been dissolved.”

“A prince in shirt sleeves”

Herrera’s resume is so impressive that any brief description would fall short and fail to do him justice. He was one of the first balloon, airship and airship pilots in Spain, the first to cross the Strait of Gibraltar in an airplane, he founded the Cuatro Vientos Aerodynamics Laboratory and the most sophisticated wind tunnel of the time, as well as the Higher School of Built. Of aerotechnics. In 1930 he piloted the Graf Zeppelin across the Atlantic Ocean and was hailed as a hero in New York, while he devised a transoceanic airline to carry passengers by aeroplane. transarea cologne, which will link Europe and the Americas with a stopover in Seville. On one of those voyages, which was to cover the Berlin-Seville-Pernambuco-Baltimore route, journalist Corpus Barga described him as “always making the right calculations” on board, as if he was directing the ship. ” and defined him as “a prince in sleeves.”

After the war, and already in exile, Herrera was the first scientist to publicly predict the creation of an atomic bomb, writing to the French Air Ministry about an artificial rocket using one of the V-2 rockets confiscated from the Nazis. It was proposed to launch the satellite. He actively corresponded with Albert Einstein and became president of the republic’s government in exile.

But above all, as Emilio Atienza has underlined, he was a man of great integrity and honesty. Despite his conservative ideology and his friendship with King Alfonso, the historian highlights, “Don Emilio was an extremely honest man, very consistent with his values ​​and ahead of his time in everything.” “In aeronautical science and other scientific aspects, but also as a person, a character who is a source of pride to his country and is not adequately remembered.”

He was a man of great integrity, deeply committed to his values ​​and far ahead of his time, a character who is a source of pride for his country.

After the outbreak of the Civil War and his plans to climb to the stratosphere initially failed, Emilio Herrera made one last attempt to fulfill his dream and requested authorization to climb from the then Minister of Air, Indelício Prieto, Because the material was still ready. “He asked me why I wanted to climb in those circumstances,” Herrera wrote in his memoirs, “and I told him to show signs of normality; To which Preeto replied to me: And who are we going to fool? Of course you would like to go into the stratosphere now, and I more than you, but I don’t think Spain is in a position to do balloon ascents.”

That opportunity passed and Spain once again missed out on a future train or lift. We now know that, had circumstances been different and had he been able to accomplish his feat, Emilio Herrera would have done so with the first space suit ever built. And his shiny hat would be shining in the dark.