This Arctic

Dec 02, 2023

With fabrics made from graphene, recycled bulletproof vests and literal trash, London-based Vollebak seems set to make good on its promise to create gear fit for the future. Today, twin brothers and founders

Steve and Nick Tidball are looking a little farther with their recently revealed Titan puffer jacket (sold with matching hat and pants). The range is named Titan, Saturn’s largest moon and the only other body in our solar system that’s known to have liquid bodies on its surface and a thick nitrogen-rich atmosphere.

Related: This durable hoodie withstands 75kmph falls and can be dragged on concrete roads

Liquid bodies in Saturn – lakes, rivers and even waterfalls – are all actually made out of methane rather than water. Why? The water’s all frozen solid, since the surface temperature there bottoms out at a bone-chilling -179°C.

Which brings us back to Vollebak’s latest bit of kit. No, their puffer jacket can’t keep you toasty on Titan – but it sure can try.

The weatherproof puffer comes with three layers. The inner and outer layer are made to be super-durable, resistant to extreme temperature changes and most of all, as light as a feather – leaving behind extra weight for insulation, which is what’s actually keeping you warm.

The outermost layer is purportedly made from a high-durability material developed for the British special forces. But the inner coating, after many layers of synthetic insulation hewn from upcycled plastic bottles, is possibly even more impressive.

According to Vollebak, it is made from the same space parachute fabric designed by NASA. That means stopping a probe dead in its tracks as it hurtles through the atmosphere, thereby reducing its speed by almost “98 per cent in just a couple of seconds”.

Interestingly enough, this fabric has already been to Titan some 17 years ago, when it parachuted the Huygens probe onto the frigid surface of Saturn’s moon. That same fabric was most recently used in 2021, when the Perseverance Rover was sent to Mars.

Practically, this means that Vollebak’s puffer is designed to withstand ridiculous temperature changes. It suffered no damage when tested at -100°C in a liquid nitrogen testing chamber (often used for testing electronic components in high-altitude missiles).

It also kept a mannequin (which generates no body heat) nice and warm for five minutes at that temperature. A test at a toastier -50°C saw a “core temperature [that] remained warm and stable”. Pretty good enough for even the coldest regions of Earth, we’d say, since trips to Titan are still in short supply. The only catch: the Titan puffer jacket’s price is a rather brisk US$1595 (S$2159). Brr.

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