A Boy and His Spacesuit - Part One.

Space Cadet!

In tribute to Tom Corbett, the original Space Cadet.

Did you ever wonder how big your head is?

In the case of most people, it's not a question that comes up in conversation all that frequently, but when I decided to build a spacesuit for Hallowe'en, I needed to have some idea of how large my head was for the purposes of helmet construction.  Result:  the cardboard mockup to the left.

Originally, I wanted to build something quite elaborate and polished in execution, but I quickly decided that I'd have to be prepared to compromise.  After all, I didn't have access to a workshop, I had neither the facilities or the required skills for building molds or doing vacuum forming - and let's face it, this was just something for one day at work.

Nonetheless, I spent some time looking at source material for inspiration: Star Trek, early NASA suits, Red Planet (not a great movie, but interesting spacesuits), Alien, Armageddon, Prometheus, and so on - as the expression goes, aim for the Moon, which seemed appropriate under the circumstances.

As I pointed out in my original posting, a lot of movie spacesuits consist of a fancy overall and a helmet, accessorized with life support packs, electronics, gauntlets, communications apparatus, and so on.  In fact, in the case of the Defying Gravity suits shown below, there isn't really that much in the way of greebly dressing, just the basics.

I've had a casual desire to build some scale model Warhammer 40K scenery for some time, and as a result there was a collection of odd bits and pieces of plastic and metal tucked away in my storage closet.  I already had a discarded ray gun that had probably been part of some kind of lazer tag game originally, and I found a couple of matching plastic covers of some sort, perfectly sized to be forearm pieces when combined with a couple of empty toner cartridges from work.  However, I knew that I couldn't rely on found objects for the entire costume, so I logged onto eBay in search for some affordable (read "cheap") coveralls.

I was fortunate enough to find something that had a slightly different look to it - coveralls with twin zippers that extended all the way from the neckline to the ankle, thereby giving them a sort of 1960s G-suit feel.  They were a Buy It Now item, so no need to wait out a bidding process, and priced within my modest project budget, so I placed an order for a medium outfit in blue.  (In retrospect, the grey and orange would have worked better with my final colour scheme, but c'est la vie, hindsight is always perfect.)

As I mentioned in my original posting, I had found the website for a company selling acrylic domes, and using the mockup of my head as a reference, placed an order for two 11x14 inch oval domes.  Or at least I tried to.  No ill will toward EZ Tops/Global Plastics, I suspect that most of their orders are for larger quantities than my modest request, but, um, guys? It does no harm to answer e-mails in a timely fashion, and order fulfillment and shipping seems to take an awfully long time as well.

As the delivery of the oval domes took longer and longer, I began to worry that I wouldn't be able to finish the costume, and unfortunately started to procrastinate as a result.  After all, if I couldn't make the helmet, there was no reason to work on the rest of the outfit.  And then one Sunday afternoon as I was making my way home from gym, something odd in a recycling bin caught my attention....

- Sid