Spacesuits

Box art referring to Saturn V and Vostok astronauts by Diego Sanchez (Armillary Games)

Most of you have definitely recognized some spacesuits in the game. Especially those of Yuri Newton and Neil Aquila on the box cover, will immediately trigger the thought of the space race era. Not all spacesuits in the game might be that iconic. Some are even inspired by sci-fi films. While writing this blog, still two characters need to reveal their spacesuits: penguin Sphen Easydive (basic character) and tortoise Arman Piñata (special character and solo adversary).

I will take you to a fashion show of historical, cutting edge and fictional astronaut wear. I will try to present the catwalk in chronological fashion, although the setting of the game itself is very anachronic, since several areas since the dawn of spaceflight are represented here. The colonization of Mars is already in everyone's mind since the 2nd (or modern) space race has been initiated in the 21st century, although the colonization of our nearest neighbouring world, Luna, has been paused for almost half a century. Nevertheless, the Earth's moon will be the first steppingstone before concrete spaceflights to Mars. In essence, the new space race is a new attempt to continue where the Apollo program stopped. And this time, not only Americans and Russians are joining the show. The entire world seems to be engaged in this new endeavour of building a lunar base. Because of this continuation, we want to create a link between history and the new space age. In the same way we try to make an historical record of astronomical instruments and technical inventions that has led to our understanding of the universe and to astronavigation.

Yuri Newton: SSSR spacesuit '60

Yuri Gagarin wore this SK-1 pressure suit, manufactured by Zvezda, for his flight on Vostok 1 in 1961. It had a visored helmet which was fixed to the suit. It had an inflatable rubber collar in case of a water landing and an orange nylon external suit with a mirror in the sleeve to help the cosmonaut locate the switches. Connectors for life-support and communications hoses were tightly manufactured with the suit, together with the leather-palm gloves, leather boots, and the leather-covered radio headset. Yuri Newton is the personification of Isaac Newton whose gravitational principles and formula dictates free-fall in spaceflight, and of Yuri Gagarin who was the first man ever to demonstrate it in human spaceflight.