The spacesuit designed to be worn aboard SpaceX\u2019s Dragon capsule turns up the coolness dial for spaceflight, as befits a company that\u2019s a corporate cousin of the Tesla electric-car venture.<\/p>\n
\u201cWas incredibly hard to balance esthetics and function,\u201d Elon Musk, the billionaire CEO of both companies, said today in a first-look Instagram post. \u201cEasy to do either separately.\u201d<\/p>\n
Musk said the suit has already gone through rounds of pressure tests in a vacuum chamber. \u201cWorth noting that this actually works (not a mockup),\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n
https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/p\/BYIPmEFAIIn\/<\/p>\n
The suit would be worn by the astronauts who ride SpaceX\u2019s Crew Dragon to the International Space Station and back. They\u2019re analogous to the \u201cpumpkin suits\u201d that NASA used for space shuttle trips, or the Russian Sokol spacesuits that cosmonauts and other spacefliers (including NASA astronauts) wear during trips on Soyuz spacecraft.<\/p>\n
They\u2019re not meant for spacewalks, and thus can be trimmer than the EVA spacesuits that most folks associate with in-space operations.<\/p>\n
If all goes according to the current schedule, SpaceX could start using the suits when the Dragon carries its first crew next year.<\/p>\n
Musk\u2019s reveal of the black-and-white design comes seven months after Boeing unveiled its blue-and-gray spacesuits at NASA\u2019s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Boeing is also due to start ferrying astronauts to the space station aboard its Starliner space taxi next year as part of NASA\u2019s multibillion-dollar commercial crew program.<\/p>\n
SpaceX\u2019s suit looks a little heftier than Boeing\u2019s 20-pound outfit, which incorporates a lightweight, hood-style helmet and visor. But the technical details will have to wait for a future reveal.<\/p>\n
The spacesuit won\u2019t be the only element in the Crew Dragon that\u2019s built with an eye to aesthetics: The spaceship\u2019s touchscreens and form-fitting bucket seats also take a page from the Tesla design manual.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The spacesuit designed to be worn aboard SpaceX\u2019s Dragon capsule turns up the coolness dial for spaceflight, as befits a company that\u2019s a corporate cousin of the Tesla electric-car venture. \u201cWas incredibly hard to balance esthetics and function,\u201d Elon Musk, the billionaire CEO of both companies, said today in a first-look Instagram post. \u201cEasy to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[291,1395,190,316],"class_list":["post-18835","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-commercial-space","tag-dragon","tag-nasa","tag-spacex"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18835"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18835"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18835\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18835"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18835"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18835"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}