I’m never going into outer space or any sphere other than Earth, but I’m really diggin’ this beast. I’ve liked it for a log time but have allowed many other pieces into my collection, primarily because of this watch’s price point. It touches $28,000 USD which, no matter how sick this piece looks, just doesn’t register with me. Yeah, it’s crazy-unique but there are a lot of wristers that I could score for a fourth of that… I still like it though!!!
The Spacewalk was first revealed at Baselworld 2008. It was first used in October 2008 when space adventurer, Richard Garriott, took it into space on his mission to the International Space Station. It had been built expressly for his space flight and was designed to withstand the extreme temperatures, pressures and radiation conditions involved in a spacewalk. It performed flawlessly throughout Richard’s 12-day flight in space. Subsequently, in December 2008, two Spring Drive Spacewalk watches were worn by a Russian cosmonaut throughout a nearly 6 hour spacewalk. During this spacewalk, both the time of day and chronograph functions worked perfectly, even when worn on the outside of the space suit. On their return to Earth, the watches were studied, assessed and tested at Seiko Epson’s facility, and their perfect performance during the EVA was independently verified.
When I last checked, 100 limited edition units of the Spacewalk were produced. The watch was apparently produced to the same specifications as the watch which went to space, with one adaptation; a screw-in crown. The original specification of the crown was not screw-in as the engineers were concerned about the self-winding functionality of the watch in a zero-gravity environment and had chosen a non-screw-in crown for ease of manual winding. However, the perfect operation of the watch, both inside and outside the ISS, revealed that the self-winding mechanism worked flawlessly in space, so a enter a screw-in crown in the commemorative edition to enhance the overall security of the case.
• titanium case
• 53mm diameter
• sapphire crystal with anti-reflective coating
• water resistance
• screw-in crown
• ballistic nylon strap with titanium buckle and velcro fastening
• Spring Drive chronograph, caliber 5R86 movement
• hour, minute and second hands with date calendar
• GMT hand – and 24 hour indices around the dial
• power reserve indicator (VERY CLEAN!!!)
• 72 hour power reserve, with/without chronograph function in use
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