There is an America that works and an America that is obsessed with appearances. 

No place is the contrast more clear than comparing SpaceX and NASA. 

As Elon Musk launches and lands rockets, designs and launches the biggest rocket in the world and then literally catches it as it falls to the ground, NASA gets Prada to design its new spacesuits. 

Starship Flight 5 - Cinematic Experience

Took a while to upload this 200GB file so I could even begin editing, but here it is!

Shoutout to @RyanHansenSpace who allowed me to use his footage to fill in the gap in footage when I lost B12 in the cloud exhaust plume cloud. Also to… pic.twitter.com/n53B3PVahl

— Zack Golden (@CSI_Starbase) October 17, 2024

MOONSHOT: If your all-female moon mission is a decade late and billions over budget you might consider the optics of having a women's luxury brand like Prada make couture spacesuits for your mission.

NASA's DEI hires selected the Italian designer to partner with Axiom Space to… pic.twitter.com/iI21W3AD5w

— @amuse (@amuse) October 18, 2024

This is not a joke. Prada obviously didn't design the entire spacesuit, but they apparently did the aesthetics of it. 

During the International Astronautical Congress, Axiom revealed the flight design of its next generation suit, designed in partnership with luxury brand Prada. The company showed off its Axiom Extravehicular Mobility Unit (AxEMU) without the dark layer that covered the spacesuit when it was first revealed over a year ago. Instead, the suit’s final form is that familiar white material that reflects heat and protects astronauts from lunar dust.

In one sense it's not THAT big a deal that NASA made this choice. Obviously looking cool is not a bad thing, and spaceflight should be sexy. 

But NASA is facing one failure after another, delays stretching years, costs billions of dollars over budget, and an inability to even bring astronauts home from the space station without the aid of SpaceX. Boeing, its longtime favored contractor, and ULA, the quasi-government spacecraft maker, are total disasters. 

Without SpaceX, Americans would be almost without access to space. 

I'm not sure that focusing on the aesthetics of the spacesuits is job 1 right now. It is not totally irrelevant--I like cool, too--but it should be about 392nd on the list of important things. Not to mention that SpaceX could probably design a really cool-looking spacesuit. 

With its flight design finally revealed, the modern, sleek look of the AxEMU spacesuit came through. Axiom Space partnered with Prada to draw on the brand’s expertise on design and material, while also trying to provide an aesthetically pleasing look for the astronauts on the Moon. “I’m very proud of the result we’re showing today…We’ve shared our expertise on high-performance materials, features, and sewing techniques, and we learned a lot,” Lorenzo Bertelli, Prada Group’s chief marketing officer, said in a statement.

And why Prada, of all companies? I guess they are higher-end than Ralph Loren. And the Devil wears Prada. 

Maybe they should have chosen Balenciaga if they wanted to go in that direction. 

I don't want to make too big a deal about it, but it just doesn't sit right with me. It seems to reinforce the obvious fact that NASA has lost sight of its primary goal.