You've booked your seat on the spaceship and passed the medical -- but what to wear for that flight into the final frontier?.
Orbital Outfitters has the answer. The new Los Angeles-based company on Thursday promised to dress the first space tourists and crew members in style.
"When someone puts on an IS3 (sub-orbital space suit), they will be protected by the best technology we cam muster, yet they will look like they've stepped off the set of a science fiction movie," said Orbital Outfitters president Rick Tumlinson.
"With billionaires funding the new space companies and passengers paying up to $200,000 for a ride, safety is important. We intend to also make it chic," Tumlinson said.
Tumlinson said Orbital Outfitters planned to be on the leading edge of space suit fashion in a tourism industry expected to blast off around 2008.
It will deliver its first space suits in 2007 to crews of the California-based rocket powered vehicle company XCOR and then lease custom-fitted suits to the first mass space tourists.
Designs are still in the early stages but Tumlinson said the suits will have a Grand Prix or NASCAR jumpsuit look to them and will bear the colors and logos of the rocket firm on which the passenger is flying.
Safety will be paramount and the suits will be made to protect passengers from extreme cold, a lack of air and atmospheric pressure and provide life-support functions for 30 minutes at 500,000 feet, or 95 miles high.
The cost of leasing the suit for one trip is expected to be about $3-6,000.
20061203
Military radio signal jams garage doors
What do remote-control garage door openers have to do with national security? A secretive Air Force facility in Colorado Springs tested a radio frequency this past week that it would use to communicate with first responders in the event of a homeland security threat. But the frequency also controls an estimated 50 million garage door openers, and hundreds of residents in the area found that theirs had suddenly stopped working.
"It would have been nice not to have to get out of the car and open the door manually," said Dewey Rinehard, pointing out that the outage happened during the first cold snap of the year, with lows in the teens.
Capt. Tracy Giles of the 21st Space Wing said Air Force officials were trying to figure out how to resolve the problem of their signal overpowering garage door remotes.
"They have turned it off to be good neighbors," he said.
The signals were coming from Cheyenne Mountain Air Station, home to the North American Aerospace Defense Command, a joint U.S. and Canadian operation set up during the Cold War to monitor Soviet missile and bomber threats.
Technically, the Air Force has the right to the frequency, which it began using nearly three years ago at some bases. Signals have previously interfered with garage doors near bases in Florida, Maryland and Pennsylvania.
In general, effects from the transmissions would be felt only within 10 miles, but the Colorado Springs signal is beamed from atop 6,184-foot Cheyenne Mountain, which likely extends the range.
Holly Strack, who lives near the entrance to the facility, said friends in the neighborhood all had the same problem.
"I never thought my garage door was a threat to national security," she said.
David McGuire, whose Overhead Door Co. received more than 400 calls for help, said the Air Force may be able to slightly adjust the transmission frequency to solve the problem. If not, it will cost homeowners about $250 to have new units installed.
"The military has the right to use that frequency. It is a sign of the times," he said.
"It would have been nice not to have to get out of the car and open the door manually," said Dewey Rinehard, pointing out that the outage happened during the first cold snap of the year, with lows in the teens.
Capt. Tracy Giles of the 21st Space Wing said Air Force officials were trying to figure out how to resolve the problem of their signal overpowering garage door remotes.
"They have turned it off to be good neighbors," he said.
The signals were coming from Cheyenne Mountain Air Station, home to the North American Aerospace Defense Command, a joint U.S. and Canadian operation set up during the Cold War to monitor Soviet missile and bomber threats.
Technically, the Air Force has the right to the frequency, which it began using nearly three years ago at some bases. Signals have previously interfered with garage doors near bases in Florida, Maryland and Pennsylvania.
In general, effects from the transmissions would be felt only within 10 miles, but the Colorado Springs signal is beamed from atop 6,184-foot Cheyenne Mountain, which likely extends the range.
Holly Strack, who lives near the entrance to the facility, said friends in the neighborhood all had the same problem.
"I never thought my garage door was a threat to national security," she said.
David McGuire, whose Overhead Door Co. received more than 400 calls for help, said the Air Force may be able to slightly adjust the transmission frequency to solve the problem. If not, it will cost homeowners about $250 to have new units installed.
"The military has the right to use that frequency. It is a sign of the times," he said.
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