You won't believe how snazzy SpaceX's spacesuit looks
Elon Musk's space transport company SpaceX will one day start carrying humans into space, and now we know what their spacesuits will look like.
Musk shared a photo of the spacesuit on his Instagram feed Wednesday, noting that it's a photo of the actual suit and not a mockup.
"Worth noting that this actually works (not a mockup). Already tested to double vacuum pressure. Was incredibly hard to balance esthetics and function. Easy to do either separately," Musk said in the photo's description.
The suit is definitely more elegant than NASA's classic designs, and (judging solely by looks) handily beats Boeing's spacesuit designs, which the company showed in January. Musk noted we'll see more of the suit "in days to follow."
Musk's words echo the comments he made during a Reddit AMA interview back in January 2015. He then wrote the spacesuit "needs to both look like a 21st century spacesuit and work well," noting that it's "really difficult to achieve both."
As for when they may be put to use, there's no exact date yet, but we know that SpaceX plans to send humans to orbit in its Dragon spacecraft, which was first tested in May 2017. In 2018, the company aims to send two humans around the moon, and they would presumably use this spacesuit.
Together with Boeing, the company has been awarded a government contract to fly astronauts to the International Space Station starting this year, but it may not happen until 2019. Those astronauts, however, are likely to wear NASA-constructed suits.
Stan is a Senior Editor at Mashable, where he has worked since 2007. He's got more battery-powered gadgets and band t-shirts than you. He writes about the next groundbreaking thing. Typically, this is a phone, a coin, or a car. His ultimate goal is to know something about everything.
