Anyone in the Market for a Used Space Suit?

If you always wanted to be an astronaut (or cosmonaut, I guess depending on your location) but never quite made the cut for NASA, there’s still a chance you could hang out in a space suit… if you’ve got cash, and lots of it.

In April NASA announced that they would be, ahem, donating four space shuttles to American museums for a cool $30 million each. I don’t think many of us have that kind of moolah hiding out in the sofa cushions, but there are some things you can pick up for a fraction of that at auctions. They come around more often than you think–nearly every year.

A couple of items recently sold at auctions: Alexei Leonov’s suit from the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project (seen above) for $242,000; the Vostok 3KA-2 capsule below, for $2,882,500; a shingle from the Mercury-Atlas 5 (“manned” by a chimp named Enos) for $43,700, and a couple of years ago, a whole bunch of random bags, brushes and pages from the flight plans of Apollo 11.

It’s great that these things are available to purchase, if you can afford them. But it really just makes me wonder who buys space stuff at auction. Do any of you own a cool something-or-other that traveled through space? Where did you get it?

[PopSci]


Geeks are Sexy needs YOUR help. Learn more about how YOU can support us here.