Not that we wouldn’t have suggested adding some latex textile art, but on the heels of the eclipse Monday, Elon Musk just revealed his “SpaceX” spacesuit across Instagram. And with his usual panache, the billionaire has captured everyone’s imagination with his vision and his style.
If his Instagram posts are to be believed, Musk’s slim sexy suit is not a mockup. “Already tested to double vacuum pressure. Was incredibly hard to balance esthetics [sic] and function,” he wrote with the picture of the suit (included here). The Musk suit was designed by Hollywood major player Jose Fernandez (who thought SpaceX was a film when first contacted by Musk) best known for outfitting superheroes with body-hugging costume designs. The white suit with grey accent piping is space haute couture at is finest. Accessorized with a full visibility helmet, it seems the idea here is to go simple, go functional…and then go home (or to whatever planet one might be visiting).
By all assumptions, this new Musk suit will not actually be worn by crew members looking to take a spacewalk (they seem too thin for that). But they will keep astronauts protected in cabin-during a loss of air pressure for instance-and most likely be worn on SpaceX’s commercial Crew Dragon space craft. Musk has postulated that Crew Dragon will rendezvous with an International Space Station as well as travel to destinations yet undetermined.
He also plans to send private (and paying) citizens to the moon in 2018.
With such media starry-eyed notables like Neil deGrasse Tyson bemoaning the loss of American space adventuring, investors like Musk putting their money where their flight is might spark some real space exploration again. Boeing introduced their own formfitting brightly-colored suit at the beginning of 2017, giving rise to the term ‘Athleisure for space.’
So between Musk, Boeing and all our dreaming, fashion has caught up with space exploring in a very real way.
