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Description
One of the unrealized goals of the Soviet Union's space program, which was not as centrally coordinated as the American program was under NASA, was to send cosmonauts to the moon and back. NPP Zvezda designed the Krechet rear-entry semi-rigid spacesuit, which weighed about 200 pounds, as a moonwalk counterpart of the spacewalk-configured Orlan suit. As the Soviet Union never landed a cosmonaut on the moon, partly due to the failure of the massive N1 rockets and partly due to the American manned moon landings convincing the Soviets to focus instead on space stations, the Krechet suit was never used in its intended environment. One of the surviving suits is displayed outside Russia at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C.

Description
One of the unrealized goals of the Soviet Union's space program, which was not as centrally coordinated as the American program was under NASA, was to send cosmonauts to the moon and back. NPP Zvezda designed the Krechet rear-entry semi-rigid spacesuit, which weighed about 200 pounds, as a moonwalk counterpart of the spacewalk-configured Orlan suit. As the Soviet Union never landed a cosmonaut on the moon, partly due to the failure of the massive N1 rockets and partly due to the American manned moon landings convincing the Soviets to focus instead on space stations, the Krechet suit was never used in its intended environment. One of the surviving suits is displayed outside Russia at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C.