For years, SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk has been trying to develop and perfect consumer-grade space travel, launching one rocket after another to hammer out all the kinks. On Sunday, however, he went a step further in unveiling some of his company’s less technical, more fashionable work, publicly revealing the design of SpaceX’s spacesuits for the very first time.
The new design is slimmer and less bulky than what one typically thinks of when hearing the words “spacesuit,” but there’s a good reason for that. The suits are reportedly intended for in-vehicle use, a means to protect people within the highly pressurized interiors of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsules. It is not, in other words, the kind of suit that allows someone to actually leave their craft and float around in the vacuum of space.
Musk commented that it was difficult to balance the aesthetics and the function of the suit, but based on the images he posted to Instagram, it seems like things are going well on that front.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BYIPmEFAIIn/?taken-by=elonmusk
The look of the suits are visibly related to the black-and-white exterior of the company’s Crew Dragon capsules, which are meant to carry people to, among other places, the International Space Station. The capsule design itself is pretty slick and impressive, and the new spacesuits only further that aesthetic.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BYyvO2WA3Ra/
Assuming the suits perform as advertised―and safety-testing is no small matter when you’re talking about gear and technology intended for space travel―you have to hand it to SpaceX. From the looks of things, they’re creating an in-flight spacesuit that looks, for all intents and purposes, like something you’d see in a sci-fi movie or a video game. And what’s the harm in looking cool while taking the ultimate vacation?