Seiko Spring Drive Spacewalk Watch (Image courtesy Seiko)
By Andrew Liszewski

No longer is how deep you can dive while wearing it the benchmark for a well-made watch. Seiko’s raised the bar with their Spring Drive Spacewalk Watch which was specifically designed to withstand the extreme temperatures, pressures and radiation involved with taking an EVA or ‘extra-vehicular activity’ spacewalk. It was first worn by private space adventurer Richard Garriott back in October of 2008 who spent 12 days at the ISS, and was subsequently worn a few months later by a Russian cosmonaut on an actual 5 hour and 38 minute spacewalk, on the outside of his suit, performing flawlessly the entire time.

So to celebrate its success, Seiko is making a limited edition version of the watch available to the public. Made of lightweight titanium the watch doesn’t actually have a lot of features to justify its $28,000 price tag, besides a chronograph, date function and oh, the ability to survive the harsh conditions of space! The run is being limited to just 100 pieces, which is probably a safe bet given the price tag, but I’m sure they’ll still sell out.

[ Seiko Spring Drive Spacewalk Watch ] VIA [ Uncrate ]

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6 COMMENTS

  2. To echo, cljohnston108, how is it better than the Casio G-Shock and Timex Ironman which are also approved by NASA for manned spaceflight?

    The Omega Speedmaster was the first NASA approved watch, and was used heavily in the Apollo program (especially on Apollo XIII to manually time the earth orbit insertion burn). But newer watches do just fine for much less with higher reliability.

  3. Maybe if I were planning on walking on the moon in the next couple of weeks this watch would seem like a good buy. But $28,000 seems, um, just a little extreme for something that has the same basic function as the clock on my cell phone– which was free with my contract, thankyouverymuch. I think I'll pass. :o)

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