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Thursday, Mar 28, 2024

Firm Suiting Up for New Space Flights

The New Space industry may be on the launching pad, so to speak, but Orbital Outfitters wants to be there when it lifts off. The North Hollywood firm is designing the next generation of space suits targeting crew and passengers taking to the skies through commercial, privately funded space flight. Call it one giant leap for interstellar fashion. “We want to make space safe as well as cool,” said Rick Tumlinson, the company’s chairman and president. “Nobody’s done that before. Put all that in one package and you get Orbital Outfitters.” In the Valley, the company conducts its design and development out of special effects house Global Effects, Inc., whose president Chris Gilman is CEO and chief designer of Orbital Outfitters. The firm also has an administrative office in Washington, D.C. to better deal with the regulations overseeing the New Space industry. That industry is at the stage where companies are staking out their territories of products that will be needed and Orbital Outfitters falls into that, said John Spencer, founder and president of the Space Tourism Society, a professional group promoting private space travel. Infrastructure is what builds and sustains an industry once the entrepreneurs pioneer it and Tumlinson and his team are smart for getting into that end, Spencer said, “An analogy is the Gold Rush in California,” Spencer said. “Most of the miners themselves didn’t do very well. It was the people that provided the infrastructure food, gold panning tools, shovels and picks, and eventually built the towns who built the wealth base.” With the company, Tumlinson enters the for-profit business world after a career in the not-for-profit sector, including founding the Space Frontier Foundation and heading the International Non-Governmental Development of Space. Tumlinson lacks an engineering or science background so what he brings to the executive team is the ability to sense what companies will succeed or fail in the New Space industry. With millionaire Richard Branson preparing to offer $200,000 suborbital flights aboard Virgin Galactic in 2008 and hotel tycoon Richard Bigelow envisioning a hotel in space, the time is right for second tier suppliers to get involved, Tumlinson said. Orbital Outfitters has a contract in place with XCor Aerospace, a rocket manufacturer based in the Mojave Desert out near Edwards Air Force Base. That contract along with money from private investors allows Orbital Outfitters to move forward with development of the crew version of a space suit. Tumlinson expects the suit to cost between $50,000 and $70,000 and be good for six months in space or 100 flights. The passenger version will be identical to the crew suit although looser fitting and good for three to four days or one spaceflight.

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