Superhero costume designer hired for space program: Houston, get ready for Badassness
(Photo: Marvel.com/TheAvengers)
A Small Step for Man, A Giant Leap for Galactic High Fashion
We all remember how Matt Damon escaped Mars by pulling the Iron Man. Looks like someone took the hint. Make astronauts (more) BADASS. SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk has reportedly hired the designer behind Iron Man to create a super-hero inspired, space-friendly suit which astronauts will wear in a space orbit launch scheduled for 2017.
First to clear things up, though SpaceX sounds like an EDM act raving it up in Tomorrowland, they are actually a private institution devoted to revolutionizing space travel. In a joint partnership with NASA and Boeing, SpaceX is set to send mankind’s best(your neighborhood Harvard educated physicists and F-16 pilots that can grow food out of their own feces) to the first of several space missions that will pave the way for commercial travel into space.
Elon Musk as you know brought us Tesla Motors and is a member of the too-cool-for-school PayPal Mafia. We now also know he’s a man with the propensity for flair and sheer awesomeness. He handpicked Jose Fernandez, owner of Ironhead Studios(seriously, what’s with all these uber-masculine names?) and visionary behind costumes that go beyond our wettest super-hero fantasies, to design these next next-gen spacesuits. Apart from his routine work in dressing Marvel’s heroes like Iron-Man, the X-Men, Black Panther and Loki, Fernandez has also produced attire for Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman(YES!) in Batman vs. Superman as well as the timeless S&M glory that is the Catwoman suit(DOUBLE YES!).
When Fernandez was first approached by SpaceX, he confesses that he initially thought it was a film company. Then along came Musk saying “anyone looks better in a tux, no matter what size or shape they are and when people put this space suit on, I want them to look better than they did without it, like a tux.” It’s one thing to embark on the massive mystery of space, it is another to do so looking like Nick Fury’s next recruitment project.
SpaceX is now reverse engineering the designs for this future spacesuit so that vital functionalities can be built in. This includes radiation-nullifying capabilities and enhanced fluidity support for wearers as in space blood tends to monger in the upper regions of the body. This condition results in puffy faces, nausea, muscular atrophy and the inability to get a hard-on. Hate to burst your bubble but the space sex-scene from 007 Moonraker is an impossible feat, so cross it off your bucketlist. All things aside, we have our fingers crossed that the engineers will keep the Iron-Man hand blasters on the essentials list. Here’s to you Mr.Musk for pulling a Stark-level BADASS-NESS.
