Space Shuttle & Rocket Booster Costume

This is a pair of costume for my 5-year-old son and his mother (myself).
The concept came from our recent interest in Space Science, and we have seen the real Space Shuttle, Endeavor in person in Los Angeles a few years ago.

Inspired by viewing the video of "Space Shuttle Launch" many times, he wanted to be a Space Shuttle (of course) and I wanted to be a Rocket Booster.
I thought being a Rocket Booster is a metaphor as being a mother, who raise her son to the future and at some point, she will let him take his own way...

The Space Shuttle costume is made of mostly with Foam sheet (black and white) 1/16” material (from art store) with foam glue and hot glue. I had my son draw 'American flag's and 'NASA' Logo and letters ("Endeavour" and "United States")

Having the face out from the bottom (black) side of Space Shuttle was my son's idea. The opening for the costume is also on the bottom side of the space shuttle with 5 velcro spots (so that he can put it on himself).

I found that making a nice round pointy tip at the front (top as costume) was challenging only with foam sheet, so I used a half round capsule (that you get a tiny toy in it from vending machine), painted in black, and glued in.


For Rocket Booster, I used ½” foam materials (to create the core shape with dome/cone shaped at top) and outer skin is made with orange fleece like fabric.

I wanted the two white Rocket Boosters to be functional as my sleeves---, which was the difficult part. I had to carefully adjust the connection area with my own body shape (shoulder height, shape and width).

The pointy cone shapes are made with white foam sheet (hot glued) and jointed with white felt fabric for the middle part of the sleeves.
I used bright orange colored feather as a ‘flame’ at the bottom of the sleeve. The bottom openings were also made with white foam sheet, hot glued with feathers.

I sewed in tapes of Velcro at the joint in between white sleeves and orange body.

Since the ½” foam materials are the more pricy ones, I spent about a little less than $100 for both costumes.