Eleanor Foraker

Eleanor ("Ellie") Foraker (September 2, 1930 – December 8, 2011) was an American seamstress who worked at the International Latex Corporation (ILC) and was involved in NASA's space program. She left the Playtex division of ILC Dover in 1964 and worked on underground inflatable oil tanks and gas masks to aid the development of the A7L spacesuit for the Apollo 11 mission. Her last contribution at NASA before retirement was with the Pathfinder Mission, where she worked on stitching together the airbag system that was used to land the Sojourner rover on Mars.

Early career
Foraker was born on September 2, 1930, in Kenton, Delaware. She worked at ILC Dover for 43 years, collaborating on projects in a seamstress and managerial capacity. When ILC competed for a contract to design and create a spacesuit for the Apollo missions, Foraker was invited to join the team. In 1964, she moved from sewing cloth diaper covers to sewing Apollo-mission spacesuits. From 1968 to 1974, she continued as a supervisor and manager at ILC.

Apollo mission
Foraker's contributions to the development of Apollo's A7L spacesuit for the Apollo program are one of her many contributions at ILC. Designed by seamstresses and engineers of ILC, it differed significantly from suit designs put for bid in competing RFPs. Designs by seamstresses in the Playtex division resulted in a spacesuit with a 21-layer design, sewn and glued together. Its softness and flexibility starkly contrasted the rigid suits put forth by competing military designers and engineers. The spacesuit had to be able to withstand immensely cold and hot temperatures, be flame resistant, and protect the wearer from harmful atmospheric conditions. It had a seam allowance of less than one sixty-fourth of an inch.

Since the suits had to have an impermeable rubber bladder, a misplaced hole or a pin left hidden in the fabric would constitute a serious safety issue. The suits were x-rayed to double-check that no pins had been left in the work. One of Foraker's tasks in her supervising role was managing the use of sewing pins by the seamstresses. Each seamstress was given a set of pins with different colored heads so that Foraker could track who worked on each suit. Anecdotally, if a pin was found in the suit, it would typically result in a pin poke to the behind.



Work culture
The seamstresses and engineers reportedly collaborated with a sense of teamwork and mutual respect while working on the suits. More seamstresses like Foraker were brought over from the Playtex division (all of whom were women) to the project. During the project, they taught the engineers how to sew and suggested ways to improve the suits as they worked on them. The collaborations on the work and contributions from the seamstresses were considered integral to the creation of properly functioning suits. During the final stages of the production, Foraker and the project head of the suit development, Leonard (Lenny) Shepherd, would stay at the Dover plant for many late nights. Sheperd helped Foraker maneuver the bulky suits as she sewed them using one of the two modified singer sewing machines (dubbed 'Big Moe' and 'Sweet Sue'). At this time, Foraker undertook a supervisory role and spent long hours on the project, sometimes only leaving the plant for two hours before returning. Foraker had no days off or vacations for three years, and ended up suffering two nervous breakdowns during this time.

Legacy
Nicholas de Monchaux's book, Spacesuit: Fashioning Apollo, published in 2011, details the making of the A7L spacesuit and acknowledges the seamstresses' role in its creation. While no movie has yet been released, in 2013 Warner Bros. hired Richard Cordiner to write a script for film adaptation of Spacesuit. Inspired by the real events of Foraker's life, a children's book entitled The Spacesuit: How a Seamstress Helped Put a Man on the Moon, was published in 2019 which loosely follows her story working on the A7L spacesuit.