Dune Costume Designers Break Down Dune’s Stillsuits

[Narrator] In Dune, inhabitants of the desert planet

wear full-body outfits called stillsuits.

The stillsuit is the ultimate survival suit.

[Narrator] The suit captures moisture and recycles it

into drinking water.

It is the thing that allows them to live and

survive in this very arid climate

where water is more valuable than oil and gold.

[Narrator] Jacqueline West and Bob Morgan made

close to 200 suits for the new movie.

Let's break down how the stillsuits were made and what

parallels exist to NASA's space tech.

We are recycling human waste on the

international space station today.

We recycle urine, we recycle the humidity,

you know, your sweat.

[Narrator] Let's suit up for the science and

design of Dune's stillsuits.

Stillsuit is a high efficiency filtration system.

Even this early in the morning,

you wouldn't survive two hours without one of these.

On Arrakis, where most of Dune

takes place, the environment has become so harsh

that a human being cannot survive without being able

to hang on to all of your bodily fluids.

[Narrator] The design team wanted to be

as faithful as possible to the

groundbreaking 1965 novel that the film is based on.

We were all such big fans of the book.

It goes into so much descriptive discussions about

each element of the still suit.

The nose ring, the tubing, the water catchpockets.

[Jacqueline West] The stillsuit, for Frank Herbert,

was a distillery.

And it took your human wastewater

and by a pumping system that starts from

the heel of the foot, keeps the distillery running.

In good working order, your suit won't lose more

than a thimble full of water a day.

[Narrator] Interestingly, the designers drew inspiration

not from the Space Age, but from the Middle Ages.

Our inspirations were medieval knights.

Even the armor, you can see it replicates

some of the Templar armor.

If you look at pictures of the medieval knights,

everything is jointed. Everything is flexible for fighting.

[Narrator] Once they gathered inspiration

and commissioned sketches, it was time to build a prototype.

So they turned to the artist who made suits

for the original Batman movies.

[Bob Morgan] Jose Fernandez. He's actually done

some work with NASA developing new suits and new helmets.

So he built the first prototype for us.

We actually watched all the pieces be cut on the table

and talked about, Does this look like

it would really work?

We called our stillsuit a micro sandwich

because we wanted the different layers to be visual.

So netting over a cotton fabric over a wicking fabric,

like an Underarmour type of thing that breathes

and wicks water and takes it away from your body

like what they use for the football players

today on the field.

We used very flexible materials, even for the hard pieces.

We knew that our actors are really going

to wear these in those conditions in the desert

and their bodies would have to breathe.

[Narrator] So as a result, all suits needed

to be custom-made using molds of each actor's body.

It's basically three pieces.

It was designed in a way that was functional and easy to put

on and off and allowed us to keep them cool

in a very natural way.

Everything on it conceptually would function.

[Narrator] But were they functional on set?

[Jacqueline West] No. They really had

to get out of their stillsuits to the bathroom.

[Narrator] Okay, so although the costumes

didn't actually recycle an actor's waste,

would a real stillsuit be possible someday?

Let's examine how water recycling works in space.

On the space station,

they have a saying that yesterday's urine

is tomorrow's coffee.

When the crewman member goes to the bathroom,

we collect urine separately, sort of in a air funnel.

It goes into the funnel and we add some chemicals to prevent

it from breaking down and making ammonia and other gases.

So the crew members, when they exercise and sweat a lot,

that all goes into the air.

And we're able to remove that humidity

from the air and put that into the water processor

along with the water from the urine processor.

About 50% of the crew members' water

comes from urine and about 50% comes

from sweat perspiration.

[Narrator] The space station acts like one big stillsuit.

But while on Dune...

[Liet-Kynes] Your body's movements provide the power.

[Narrator] on the ISS, machinery powered

by solar energy is needed.

We have electric pumps, electric heaters.

We have a rotary separator that spins it

so all the urine goes to the outside.

We collect that, we add heat and

the water boils off at a low temperature.

And then we condense that water, clean it up farther.

And then we heat it up to sort of oxidize

or remove additional chemicals.

And then we add some iodine, similar to you might add

when you're camping to your water system.

And then it's fit to drink for the astronauts

and make their coffee..

[Narrator] Hmm, sounds efficient.

And with the brand new system recently installed on the ISS,

nearly 98% of astronauts' water will soon be recycled.

That seems on par with the Dune stillsuit.

But why is a real stillsuit powered by our own bodies

still science fiction?

You can certainly capture energy

from body movement.

You may be possible to do some of it,

you do the water recovery.

To recycle human waste requires

a lot of energy and that's typically

more energy than the human body can provide.

If you took in 2,500 calories per day,

you can't generate 2,500 calories of work

because the body's only about 25% efficient.

I don't think it's thermodynamically possible to do what

they're doing in the suits.

[Narrator] The stillsuits in Dune provide

a concept of surviving an uninhabitable desert planet.

With all science fiction, you know,

they're pushing the envelope of what's possible.

Part of the imagination and thrill of space travel is trying

to make some of those things that are science fiction,

what portions of them can we make real?

When people do go to Mars,

they'll probably wear something

very close to the stillsuits.

This book was so prophetic.

I think in LA next year,

we're going to see a lot of stillsuits.

[Bob Morgan laughing]