The Alien franchise is loaded with cool space suits, some better than others. Alien leads the way with the suits the crew of the Nostromo’s uses for surface EVAs. These look appropriately designed for use in a harsh environment, while the space ship comes equipped with another space EVA suit stashed away in its shuttle. The suits in Alien: Covenant, which Adam Savage geeked out over at San Diego Comic-Con, are also dedicated-purpose designs, meant for light EVA and surface work. And then there’s the hard suit that’s used for more heavy lifting, and has a completely different design.

alien

Alien

The Prometheus suits are beautiful: skintight, lightly armored, with a fantastic bubble helmet. But as cool as they look, they don’t seem very functional for serious or unexpected work — and they’re not good at all at keeping alien acid vomit at bay.

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Space suits from science fiction

Martian spacesuit

Space suits are cool — and complicated. Unsurprisingly, science fiction writers, movie directors, and prop-makers also love space suits — you’ll find them everywhere from Robert A. Heinlein’s novel Have Space Suit — Will Travel, to the latest Alien movie. But not everybody does their homework: for every fictional space ...