The date for the world’s first commercial space flight has not been confirmed, but the passengers’ outfits are ready and waiting.
Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson on Wednesday unveiled the custom suits that are to be worn by the first private astronauts.
US sportswear designer Under Armour “worked day and night for about two years on this project,” said Branson, who served as a model at the presentation at a skydiving simulator near New York.
Photo: Reuters
The 69-year-old British billionaire donned the personalized royal blue suit that he plans to wear during his company’s inaugural flight — sometime next year.
“Space suits are a part of the iconography of the first space age. Our visual impressions of human spaceflight and what astronauts wear are inextricably linked,” Branson said. “I love the way the space wear looks and I love the way it feels. I also love the fact that the next time I put it on, I will be on my way to space.”
Under Armour president Kevin Plank said that the suits’ creators approached the design the same way they would think about clothing for extreme sports.
“They approached it just like one of our typical uniform deals,” Park said. “They started with ... understanding the sport, understanding the needs of the athlete, understanding the extreme conditions they go through.”
The material for the suits, undergarments and boots were chosen for their ability to aid in the body’s temperature and moisture regulation.
A transparent interior pocket was added so space-exploring customers can keep pictures of their loved ones “literally ... close to the heart,” a Virgin Galactic statement said.
They are designed so wearers can fit perfectly into the spacecraft’s seats.
Every space tourist is to get their own custom suit that they can take home with them, complete with a label of their name and their nation’s flag.
“To be able to touch the suit is equivalent to touching the spacecraft for the first time,” said Trevor Beattie, one of about 600 clients already signed up for Virgin Galactic’s first flights. “It’s tangible.”
“It’s a new stage that we’re involved in and we’re closer still, but we’re still patient, we can wait,” the Briton said.
Virgin Galactic, which was founded in 2004, has spent years developing its space program and, after a fatal accident in 2014, has twice crossed the barrier into the final frontier, but the company has still not yet piloted a space flight with clients on board.
The company plans to offer weightless flights to six passengers at a time, at US$250,000 a ticket for the first customers.
The client-astronauts would be able to float around the ship’s cabin and look out of portholes to see the curvature of the Earth, all while surrounded by the blackness of space.
‘CHILD PORNOGRAPHY’: The doll on Shein’s Web site measure about 80cm in height, and it was holding a teddy bear in a photo published by a daily newspaper France’s anti-fraud unit on Saturday said it had reported Asian e-commerce giant Shein (希音) for selling what it described as “sex dolls with a childlike appearance.” The French Directorate General for Competition, Consumer Affairs and Fraud Control (DGCCRF) said in a statement that the “description and categorization” of the items on Shein’s Web site “make it difficult to doubt the child pornography nature of the content.” Shortly after the statement, Shein announced that the dolls in question had been withdrawn from its platform and that it had launched an internal inquiry. On its Web site, Le Parisien daily published a
China’s Shenzhou-20 crewed spacecraft has delayed its return mission to Earth after the vessel was possibly hit by tiny bits of space debris, the country’s human spaceflight agency said yesterday, an unusual situation that could disrupt the operation of the country’s space station Tiangong. An impact analysis and risk assessment are underway, the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) said in a statement, without providing a new schedule for the return mission, which was originally set to land in northern China yesterday. The delay highlights the danger to space travel posed by increasing amounts of debris, such as discarded launch vehicles or vessel
RUBBER STAMP? The latest legislative session was the most productive in the number of bills passed, but critics attributed it to a lack of dissenting voices On their last day at work, Hong Kong’s lawmakers — the first batch chosen under Beijing’s mantra of “patriots administering Hong Kong” — posed for group pictures, celebrating a job well done after four years of opposition-free politics. However, despite their smiles, about one-third of the Legislative Council will not seek another term in next month’s election, with the self-described non-establishment figure Tik Chi-yuen (狄志遠) being among those bowing out. “It used to be that [the legislature] had the benefit of free expression... Now it is more uniform. There are multiple voices, but they are not diverse enough,” Tik said, comparing it
James Watson — the Nobel laureate co-credited with the pivotal discovery of DNA’s double-helix structure, but whose career was later tainted by his repeated racist remarks — has died, his former lab said on Friday. He was 97. The eminent biologist died on Thursday in hospice care on Long Island in New York, announced the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, where he was based for much of his career. Watson became among the 20th century’s most storied scientists for his 1953 breakthrough discovery of the double helix with researcher partner Francis Crick. Along with Crick and Maurice Wilkins, he shared the
RSS