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Science fiction authors have designed imaginary spacesuits for their characters almost since the beginning of fiction set in space. Often, comic book creators seem unaware of the effects of internal pressure which tends to inflate a spacesuit in vacuum, and draw their imaginary spacesuits as hanging in folds like a boilersuit; this can often be seen in the Dan Dare stories, where the artist often drew from actual or photographed posed actors. Many space story writers merely mention a "spacesuit" without considering or describing design details, in the same way as they mention a raygun or a spaceship without considering how its mechanism would work. The breathing apparatus which is part of the Primary Life Support System of real space suits is always a rebreather type system. However, in illustrations in fiction such as comics, a spacesuit's life support system is often largely composed of two big backpack cylinders, as if it was open circuit; at least one fictional scenario has liquid breathing spacesuits. Early concepts Edison's Conquest of Mars From Edison's Conquest of Mars (1898): ...since it was probable that necessity would arise for occasionally quitting the interior of the electrical ships, Mr. Edison had provided for this emergency by inventing an air-tight dress constructed somewhat after the manner of a diver's suit, but of much lighter material. Each ship was provided with several of these suits, by wearing which one could venture outside the car [spaceship] even when it was beyond the atmosphere of the earth...Provision had been made to meet the terrific cold which we knew would be encountered the moment we had passed beyond the atmosphere—that awful absolute zero which men had measured by anticipation, but never yet experienced—by a simple system of producing within the air-tight suits a temperature sufficiently elevated to counteract the effects of the frigidity without. By means of long, flexible tubes, air could be continually supplied to the wearers of the suits, and by an ingenious contrivance a store of compressed air sufficient to last for several hours was provided for each suit, so that in case of necessity the wearer could throw off the tubes connecting him with the air tanks in the car...Inside the headpiece of each of the electrical suits was the mouthpiece of a telephone. This was connected with a wire which, when not in use, could be conveniently coiled upon the arm of the wearer. Near the ears, similarly connected with wires, were telephonic receivers...When two persons wearing the air-tight dresses wished to converse with one another it was only necessary for them to connect themselves by the wires, and conversation could then be easily carried on. This illustration of the suit appears to be skintight (note the wrinkles), and to have a soft hood with a built-in fullface mask, rather than a hard helmet, although according to the story the suits had helmets. This common early idea for a spacesuit would have not worked in reality for several reasons: The suits have no constant volume joints to prevent the suits from ballooning under their interior pressure. The suits have no gloves. The rubberized material of a diving suit would have quickly become brittle due to loss of volatiles in space vacuum; and also due to cold making the rubber brittle when out of sunlight, if they radiate heat away faster than the spaceman's body heat warms them. Skintight spacesuits (skinsuits) appear in the original Buck Rogers comics published from 1929 on. This comic was so popular that expressions such as "Buck Rogers outfit" for real protective suits that look somewhat like spacesuits entered common usage. With the rise of the Science fiction pulp magazines in the 1920s many depictions of imaginary spacesuits were created from scratch by artists such as Frank R. Paul, often appearing on the covers of the magazines. Very often these artists' creations were absurd, with such errors as a helmet whose neck hole is too narrow for the head to get through. Often fictional spacesuits are drawn with two large backpack cylinders as their only life-support gear, as if the exhaled gas is vented to space as in an ordinary open-circuit scuba set. The Lensman series by E.E. "Doc" Smith features armored spacesuits used in hand-to-hand combat. Some especially heavily armored spacesuits in the series use motors to help the wearer move about. In Jules Verne's 1865 novel From the Earth to the Moon, the spacesuits resemble the diving suits in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas by the same writer. After World War II Following World War II, fictional spacesuits were influenced both by the real life pressure suits and G-suits which had seen use during the war for high-altitude aviation and also by the speculative articles on space travel which were published in magazines like the Saturday Evening Post and Collier's Weekly by such space pioneers as Wernher von Braun and Willy Ley and which featured carefully considered spacesuit designs. In comics In the Tintin comic Explorers of the Moon from the early 1950s, the spacesuits are hard armour with bubble helmets instead of lighter cloth. Snowy's spacesuit is adjusted to fit dogs. In films Some early space travel fiction films showed characters in spacesuits much more often than Star Trek and afterwards. The First Men in the Moon In H.G. Wells's original novel, The First Men in the Moon, published in 1901, the Moon has a breathable atmosphere during its two-week-long day and spacesuits are not needed; the spacecraft has an airtight hatch, but no airlock. In the film version, made in 1964, the Moon has no atmosphere and no surface vegetation. Two types of spacesuits are featured. During the events of the story which take place in the 1890s, standard diving dresses, each fitted with a 1960s type aqualung cylinder worn on the back, are used as spacesuits. No provision is made to prevent the suits from ballooning in the vacuum, or to protect the hands from the vacuum. The film depicts the 1960s astronaut spacesuits as close copies of a British high-altitude pressure suit of the sort intended to be used aboard the TSR-1 and fitted with a 1960s-type aqualung cylinder instead of the NASA-type life support backpack which came into common usage a few years after the movie was made. Dan Dare In the Dan Dare comic series, which started in April 1950 in the "Eagle" comic, the standard Spacefleet spacesuit had no backpack, had a corselet as per Standard Diving Dress, and its life-support system was stated to be between the layers of a double-walled helmet.[1] The spacesuits used in the Dan Dare scenario "Operation Saturn" by the villain Blasco are a different design and have small life-support backpacks. The Dan Dare stories also show various alien spacesuits. Have Space Suit, Will Travel Author Robert A. Heinlein's novel Have Space Suit—Will Travel (1958) drew both on these contemporary articles and on his experience designing .... 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