A spacesuit looks like a clunky outfit, but it’s better described as a single-person spaceship. The version NASA astronauts wear for spacewalks outside the ISS - the Extravehicular Mobility Unit (EMU) - costs around $12 to $15 million each. The price reflects what it has to do.
The suit has 14 separate layers of fabric, foil, and rubber to maintain pressure (so the astronaut’s body doesn’t basically explode in the vacuum) and to block radiation from the Sun. It has built-in oxygen tanks, a water-cooled undergarment, communication equipment, micrometeoroid protection, and a thruster pack in case the astronaut comes detached from the station and needs to fly back.
Putting one on takes about 45 minutes. Astronauts have to pre-breathe pure oxygen for hours beforehand to flush nitrogen from their blood - otherwise they’d get the bends, just like deep-sea divers surfacing too fast. The whole suit weighs around 280 pounds on Earth, though of course it’s weightless in space. New designs for upcoming Moon and Mars missions are slimmer, more flexible, and even more expensive.
