Not to be confused with an umbilical cord, which connects an infant to their mother.
An umbilical cable is a cable that connects a suit (like a spacesuit or a diving suit) to a larger vehicle (like a spacecraft or boat) that supplies it with consumables like air and electricity.
An umbilical cable being used on the first American spacewalk, Gemini 4.
The umbilical cable here connects the Sokol spacesuit to the Soyuz spacecraft. This spacesuit is not designed for spacewalks, but the umbilical cord can provide air if the spacecraft depressurizes.
On some spacesuits (mainly those used in spacewalks), everything needed is already inside the spacesuit, so an umbilical cable is not needed. Instead, these spacesuits will often use tethers to make sure that the astronaut doesn't float away during the spacewalk.
All spacesuits used on the International Space Station today don't use umbilical cables, only tethers.
On very rare occasions where the spacesuit had its own thrusters, astronauts could go on completely untethered spacewalks.
"Umbilical cable" is also used to describe the arms that fuel up a rocket while on the launchpad.
The arms on this launch tower's side connecting it to the rocket are umbilical cables, providing electricity, fuel, and oxidizer to the rocket's many stages.
These arms usually swing out of the way during liftoff.
Pixiv
Twitter
Bluesky
Weibo
Lofter
Tumblr
