Elon Musk just hired the Iron Man costume designer to make space suits for SpaceX

Just a few days ago, SpaceX landed a reusable rocket on a robotic ocean barge for the second time on 6 May. Barely a month prior, during a space station supply run for NASA, SpaceX had, for the first time, landed a reusable rocket on a floating droneship. SpaceX wasn't sure about its latest landing because of the high altitude needed.

But the wonders never cease with SpaceX, which is why, about a week ago, Elon Musk teased its upcoming plans and they are huge. The company is planning a Mars mission in 2018 with a modified version of its Dragon spacecraft. A full, formal announcement, will come later in the year.

Planning to send Dragon to Mars as soon as 2018. Red Dragons will inform overall Mars architecture, details to come pic.twitter.com/u4nbVUNCpA

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) April 27, 2016

For now though, SpaceX's astronaut gear is getting a major upgrade. Well-known costume designer, Jose Fernandez, the man behind the costumes in Batman v Superman, Iron Man, Tron: Legacy, The Avengers and Captain America, is lending his creative bent to SpaceX.

Fernandez is using his movie, design and tech know-how to redesign SpaceX's spacesuits. For anyone wondering why Elon Musk would look towards a Hollywood costume designer, you clearly don't know Elon Musk and his Tony Stark-like persona. For Musk, Fernandez is the perfect person for the job as he wanted suits that looked "badass", according to Gizmodo.

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"Our spacesuit design is finally coming together and will also be unveiled later this year. We are putting a lot of effort into design esthetics, not just utility. It needs to both look like a 21st century spacesuit and work well."

According to an interview with Bleep Magainze, Fernandez said that he was approached by SpaceX and that the process of getting the job wasn't easy. He was told to design a suit alongside some other companies and was given a very tight deadline of two weeks.

"They had two weeks to present the suit to him and I told them I couldn't do a full suit in two weeks but that I may be able to do a helmet. There were four other companies working on bids as well and at the end of the process, he hated everything except the helmet," Hernandez told D'Marge. "I worked with him for six months and at the end of that, we created a suit that they are now reverse-engineering to make functional for flight."

Fernandez continued, "I worked with him for six months and at the end of that, we created a suit that they are now reverse-engineering to make functional for flight. The look they are going to unveil in the next few months is something we created here in the studio. He wanted it to look stylish. It had to be practical but also needed to look great. It's pretty bad ass."

On the other hand, the European Space Agency (ESA) and NASA have also been working on new spacesuits designs and it'll be interesting to see what they come up with.

It is Musk's dream to be the first to land a manned spacecraft on Mars and if he can do so along with being in tune with the looks of the present, then nothing like it. Hopefully it doesn't go the way the new Power Rangers costumes did.

Edited by Ranjan Crasta

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