Some friends and I built a combustion PVC potato cannon (or spud gun) and named her Charlotte.

In my own revolt against crappy and overpriced astronaut costumes, I made a homemade Apollo astronaut suit for Halloween.

The suit itself is made from a painter’s tyvek cover-all suit (~$10) with some patches (~$10) sewn on.

The helmet is the most expensive part of the costume–it’s a 16″ clear acrylic globe for outdoor lighting from Amazon and set me back about 40 bucks. I cut the top rim off an orange Home Depot utility bucket and hollowed out the lid so I’d have two locking rings–one I epoxied to the globe (after carving out a spot for my head with the dremel) and one I kinda sewed to the tyvek suit. There’s no picture of it, but half of an empty tinted beer ball stuffed inside words nicely as a shade.

The backpack (life support system!) is a hiking backpack frame with an under-bed tupperware bolted to it. Inside is a boom box for blasting glitchy space beatz, the 2001 theme, and Space Oddity. A FUBARed voice changer with a mic extended to a computer headset lets me talk out of a crackly speaker with the helmet on.

The boots are vintage snowboarding boots from eBay (~$14)–not only do they look like space boots, but they force you to walk in a slow, awkward moon gait. The gloves are normal ski gloves ($0). My roommate’s lacross shoulder pads (borrowed) added some bulk, and some white duct tape (~$4) on the shoulder straps cleaned up the look. I threw some pipe fittings on the front for oxygen, too.

Not a super expensive or difficult project if you’re handy and willing to put in some time. So worth it.

Any other tips for DIY Astronaut costumes? If you make one of these, please post a picture below. I’d love to see how it turns out.

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