Homemade Jetpack for Astronaut Costume

When my son was five he said he wanted to be an astronaut when he grows up and he wanted an astronaut costume for Halloween. To make his experience wearing his costume a little more memorable, we decided to create a homemade jetpack!

When we do DIY costumes for him, we make sure that we use sturdy materials/cardboard knowing that our son would be playing with the costume more than just wearing it for Halloween. We wanted the jetpack to be a bit bigger compared to the size of my son to make a bit more animated.

For the body of the jetpack, we used a cardboard gift box for a tote bag I received as a present. I kept the box to be able to store other items as it is almost as sturdy as a hat box. For for jet engine, we used one 2 liter soda bottles for each side. My husband drilled holes on both box and the soda bottles and used wires to secure the bottles on each side of the box. We had some spare swimming pool filter hose than we attached to the body of the jetpack into the soda bottles by creating a hole on to attach it and then glued to secure them in place. We then spray painted the attached parts with glossy silver paint and made sure it was evenly coated.

For the flames, I cut and layered yellow, red and orange tissue paper and glued them into mouth of the soda bottles. I made sure that each side of the "flames were both layered with all three colors so that it still looked nice on both the front and the back. I then printed and cut the round NASA logo for the body of the jetpack and then printed the words NASA and small US flags that I glued to the sides of the soda bottles. For the buttons of the jetpack, we used caps of empty orange juice bottles of different sizes. We also used an old kiddie backpack that came as a free item from a box of diapers when our son was little. We cut a slit from the back of the jetpack where the straps of the backpack can be inserted out while the backpack remains hidden inside the box. With this, our son can easily take the jetpack on and of like a regular backpack.

Overall the project cost about less than $10 to purchase spray paint and tissue paper as all the other materials were something we already had at home. Our son had so much fun wearing the costume and received lots of compliments for it.