Swedish Blåkläder announces partnership with American space travel pioneer XCOR Aerospace.

Swedish work clothing producer Blåkläder today announced a partnership with American private spaceflight and rocket engine development company XCOR Aerospace, with plans to take Blåkläder’s garments into orbit – and beyond.

Svenljunga, Sweden, March 10, 2016

Swedish based Blåkläder, widely respected as one of the world’s best producers of quality work clothes, is accustomed to finding its customers at high altitudes and in hazardous work conditions, but the company has been limited to providing clothing for earth-bound humans. This is all set to change with the announcement of an exciting new partnership with American space travel pioneer XCOR Aerospace.

XCOR develops and produces propulsion systems and space technology for both aerospace contractors and governments, as well as building its own line of space vehicles. The XCOR® Lynx® Mark I and Lynx Mark II are designed to carry private passengers out of the earth’s atmosphere and into space, making XCOR one of the first companies in the world to enable private citizens to realize their dream of space travel. Passengers will ride with the pilot in the cockpit, under the large transparent Lynx canopy and experience the weightlessness, silence and views of earth that only 500 people have ever experienced. The trip will take approximately one hour and cost approximately 150,000 USD.

Blåkläder’s Head of Marketing, Kalle Larsson, claims that the partnership is not as odd as it might seem on the surface and sees the two companies as similar in numerous ways. “Blåkläder has always had extremely high demands on function, quality and design. In this way, we’re a lot like rocket scientists! And since we also like to celebrate ‘everyday heroes’, we are naturally thrilled to produce clothes for a company that is going to turn ordinary earthlings into bonafide spacemen.”

Michiel Mol, Member of the Board at XCOR, agrees that Blåkläder is well suited for the task at hand. “Our engineers often work in challenging conditions. The extreme heat of a booster rocket test firing, the extreme cold of a liquid nitrogen installation, and of course the specific conditions at our Mojave facility in the middle of the desert. We want our people to be safe and agile. And because our people always make our company look good, we of course wanted to reciprocate. Blåkläder does a great job, ensuring that we are not just the best protected rocket scientists, but also the best looking ones ever!”

The collaboration will also bring with it some other, more exoteric, benefits, Larsson explains. “We will have the opportunity to send some of our customers into space with Lynx Mark I and Mark II, and the very idea that we can be able to say this is rather surrealistic, to say the least! At this point in time, however, we don’t know how we will arrange this. That’s something we will come back to”.

Blåkläder will provide work clothes that ensure that XCOR’s rocket scientists (as in, real life rocket scientists) can work under the best possible conditions, with garments that meet and surpass their precise and unique demands. Blåkläder will also design a one-of-a-kind training suit for all the company’s space travelers. This suit will be worn during all stages of the training that prepares passengers for the extreme mental and physical conditions (like 4G pressure and weightlessness) that they will experience.

Blåkläder is one of a few select partners, all world leaders in their fields, including KLM, Philips, Unilever, Luminox and Heineken, that have been selected by XCOR to participate in the program.

About XCOR Aerospace

XCOR Aerospace is based in Mojave, California and is currently creating a Research and Development Center in Midland, Texas and an operational and manufacturing site at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida with the assistance of Space Florida. XCOR builds safer, more reliable, and reusable rocket-powered vehicles, propulsion systems, advanced non-flammable composites and rocket piston pumps. Through Amsterdam based XCOR Space Expeditions, a wholly owned subsidiary of XCOR, the company offers space-focused training programs with a variety of medical screening and specialty training missions for future XCOR Lynx flight participants.

Learn more at www.xcor.com

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