Elon Musk shows off new astronaut space suit

THE real life Tony Stark has unveiled a fashionable space suit for astronauts on crewed SpaceX flights to the International Space Station.

Space X and Tesla Motors founder and CEO, Elon Musk, has shared a photo of new space suits that he has been designing in recent years. Picture: Benjamin Lowy

THE real life Tony Stark, also known as Elon Musk, has unveiled the rather fashionable space suit he hopes the daring among us could one day wear on a future trip to colonise the cosmos.

Rocket building company SpaceX has unveiled a sleek white spacesuit for astronauts on board its crewed flights to the International Space Station, which are due to start next year.

CEO Elon Musk shared a picture of the suit on Instagram this morning writing: “First picture of SpaceX spacesuit. More in days to follow. Worth noting that this actually works (not a mockup).”

The image shows a SpaceX engineer modelling the suit which, Musk claimed, has been “tested to double vacuum pressure.”

Many on social media have noted the rather fashionable design of the sleek looking suits, with some likening the helmet to those worn by electronic music duo Daft Punk.

According to the Tesla and SpaceX billionaire, the design wasn’t easy to pull off.

It “was incredibly hard” to balance aesthetics and function, he wrote.

SpaceX has been working on the design of the suit for the past couple of years.

To design the suit, Musk hired famed Hollywood costume designer Jose Fernandez, who has created movie costumes for the likes of Wonder Woman, Batman, Wolverine, Spiderman and X-Men.

In an interview with Bleep last year, he talked about Musk’s obsession with the design, saying it needed to be like a tuxedo for astronauts.

“He kept saying, ‘Anyone looks better in a tux, no matter what size or shape they are,’ and when people put this space suit on, he wants them to look better than they did without it, like a tux. You look heroic in it. It’s an iconic thing to be a part of,” he recalled.

SpaceX is currently developing a crew version of its Dragon cargo rocket capsule for NASA astronauts. US astronauts last rocketed away from Cape Canaveral in Florida, in 2011. Since then they’ve been riding Russian rockets to get to the International Space Station.