SpaceX intensified and completely magnified everybody’s love for space. The hope of someday living on Mars converted regular old people into total spaceheads! And this craze has entered the design world as well. Space-themed product designs are becoming a norm now, and not to mention cooler by the day. From a SpaceX rocket-inspired pen to a Buick Electra concept inspired by a spaceship – these innovative space-themed designs will have you going gaga over them!
Inspired by the democratization of space travel and how one private company, founded by Elon Musk is leading the charge to make space travel accessible to all, the Nominal Pen is literally designed to look like a rocket… making it perhaps the most literal take on the ‘space pen’. The pen’s name comes from the term ‘nominal’, often used for when everything’s going smoothly and according to plan. Designed as a celebration of SpaceX’s recent achievements of being the only private company to send humans to the ISS and bring them back (while even retrieving parts of the spaceship to be reused at a later date – something nobody’s ever done), the Nominal Pen models itself on the Falcon series of rockets (the Falcon 9 Block 5 in particular). The pen comes in a similar light+dark metal finish, featuring four retractable legs that open out, allowing it to stand vertically on its own… after all, it would be quite shameful to have to put a rocket-shaped pen in your pen-stand, right? The Nominal Pen’s retractable legs are operated by a twist-to-open mechanism machined right into the pen’s metal body… while the opposite end of the pen features a magnetic crew capsule that detaches from the rocket body!
Traveling in zero gravity at insanely fast speeds already induces so many changes in our bodies despite training and protective suits – can you imagine what would happen to the belongings in your bag? Exoplanet exploration requires luggage that can survive with you. “We didn’t want future travelers to carry a crumpled carrier, with harsh conditions, rugged terrain, and differential atmospheric pressure,” said the designer duo and made sure that Astroneer is modular and has no volume constraints – once again, something we on Earth could also use. Astroneer comes with bags of different sizes that can all compactly be packed into one unit. It also has increased liquidity in the environment with the suspension of wheels so that you don’t have to carry your bags even though they might be lighter in outer space, roll with it…literally.
Meet the HUM! – a reverse humidifier that actually puts all that vapor to good use. The interesting visual scenario of the spaceship with the vapor is a mesmerizing scenario I cannot stop watching! Humidifiers by default are a must-have in our homes, and given the core functionality of the design, we rarely see more than a rectangular box. The usual upward humidifying activity gets inverted here, with the vapor escaping through a perforated bottom. Form follows function, but HUM! is the perfect example of how form amplifies engagement! As an added cool feature, the intensity of humidification increases when you lift the spaceship body, reinforcing the visual of a rocket taking off into space.
Posting to the r/SpaceXLounge on Reddit, the SpaceX Travel card shows the easy and fun interactions in the process of booking a ticket to Mars. Visually the card is similar in size to a credit card and fits in one hand, making it easy to access all the touchpoints on the card. While this is a paper mock-up, we can imagine a slim enough e-ink screen to allow for the technology to carry this. Launch the booking process with fingerprint identification and specify your current location and destination – we may go from the moon to Saturn.
Buick Electra Concept is a four-wheeler that will be propelled by a powerful electric drivetrain that doesn’t take much space – having a man maximum machine minimum philosophy that focuses on passenger comfort and elevated experience of commuting from one destination to the other. If there’s one electric car that you would want to drive after riding your Tesla Model 3 on pure aesthetic value, it would be this one. That superlative association is influenced by the sheer fluidic design of the Buick Electra that’s so subtle and stylish – evoking an instant sense of comfort and safety on a high-speed drive on the freeway. Culminated by pro designer Liang Feng, the concept car is the futuristic ride you’d expect to drive in a distant future where minimalism and function will be the primary drivers for the design language of automobiles.
This special watch pays great attention to detail and you will recognize those little things instantly if you are a space nerd. For instance, it features styling elements from the new SpaceX ultra-modern space suits. Then it takes it up a notch by using the Dragon V2 capsule’s design details – the grey dial ring, white indices, and the unique hands which are modeled off of the capsules white oblong shaped indices and windows. “The minute-hand mimics the path of a gravitational slingshot, and the second-hand is actually a white disc on which a dot rotates to mimic the moon’s movement around the earth. The hour hand continues to nod to the design of the new and improved spacesuit, highlighting the shape and lines of the collar,” says UNDONE. And because space is an infinite black expanse, the watch dial glows in a cool nitrous blue when it’s dark.
Accompanying you on the adventures of fiction, following your journey into parts of your mind that you’ve never visited before, Spacemark is your faithful sidekick that marks your book when you’re done for the day. This metal bookmark resembles a spaceman burying a flag into a planet. The flat, 2D planet slides between the pages, making it look almost like your spaceman sidekick’s marked your book with his trusty-old flag, so you know exactly where to begin from the next time you open the book to dive into your literary adventure!
Designer Denis Agarkov’s thought process behind the ICARUS-4 Space Sneaker is simple. If we’re going to get humans into space, shouldn’t we also have an extraplanetary sense of design to match? The ICARUS-4 are conceptual sneakers for zero-gravity lifestyles… Designed for astronauts to provide maximum flexibility during repairs and maintenance, but cool-looking enough to be a universal fashion statement, the ICARUS-4 comes with a unique aesthetic that’s equal parts suited for a spacewalk and a ramp-walk. You’re looking at a shoe that sports an Ortho-Fabric body (the kind found on EMU suits) and a metal clasp to secure the footwear, with luminescent markers to allow you to wear the shoe in low-light conditions.
The Apollo AR Clock and Saturn V AR Model capture our tryst with space travel in mind-boggling detail. The clock itself is a 12-hour chronicle of every single mission to the moon, leading from Apollo 1, right up to Apollo 17, our most recent moon-bound journey. The clock’s circular shape mimics the design of a porthole window, giving you a glimpse of the moon right outside, while the hands are in fact, a rocket and launch tower, and the numbers on the clock represent the official patches from the NASA Apollo missions.
Meet the AIR6Plus, a tiny purifier that sanitizes the air down to 0.001 micrometers within a space of 360 sqft without generating any sound or even any waste. It comes with a pre-filter that’s washable and infinitely reusable, and the purifier itself can get rid of anything, from the stench of smoke to even actual germs and viruses. The AIR6Plus purifier is about the size of a smart speaker and can be placed anywhere within the house. It switches on with the simple touch of a button on the top, activating the state-of-the-art purification system within with three fan speeds – Sleep, Normal, Turbo.