
SpaceX and Elon Musk have teamed up with legendary costume designer to create a brand new space suit.
NASA may have the coolest space suits on the block, but that may all b about to change. According to a report from Gizmodo, private space exploration company SpaceX has announced an intriguing new partnership with legendary costume designer Jose Fernandez to develop custom-made spacesuits for future missions.
The spacesuits in the movies always tend to look cooler than a real-life functional space suit would, and many suspect that Musk’s partnership with Jose Fernandez will incorporate new elements of style and appearance with the functionality needed from a space suit.
Fernandez’s previous work involved designing costumes for high-octane action movies such as Batman v. Superman, Oblivion, Tron: Legacy, The Avengers, Iron Man and Jupiter Ascending among others. Fernandez has a unique ability to design a suit that can handle the most intense of stunts and look cool and dangerous at the same time.
But will the focus on aesthetics take away from the new space suit’s functionality? Musk has said previously that design would be a priority in the development of the new space suits – he even used the term “badass” to describe his vision. “Our spacesuit design is finally coming together and will also be unveiled later this year,” he said. “We are putting a lot of effort into design esthetics, not just utility. It needs to both look like a 21st century spacesuit and work well.”
While Fernandez hasn’t made a suit that can withstand the conditions in outer space, he is certainly up to the challenge. “They had two weeks to present the suit to him and I told them I couldn’t do a full suit in two weeks but that I may be able to do a helmet,” he said. “There were four other companies working on bids as well and at the end of the process, he hated everything except the helmet. I worked with him for six months and at the end of that we created a suit that they are now reverse-engineering to make functional for flight.”
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