Humanity will soon take another step toward establishing an off-Earth economy, if all goes according to plan.
The Florida footwear company Syntilay aims to design a shoe in space by mid- to late 2026, showcasing some new technology and blazing a trail for others to follow.
"The purpose of this is to push the boundaries of what's possible," Syntilay founder and CEO Ben Weiss told Space.com.
"We've heard about making new materials in space and stuff like that, but the average consumer hasn't really benefited from a lot of these innovations yet," he added. "We can, I think, incentivize and increase the interest in this category and make it more practical for people, which is something that I think has been missing."
Syntilay — whose name is based on the word "scintillate" — already uses artificial intelligence (AI) and 3D printing to develop and produce its shoes here on Earth. So moving the design process to low Earth orbit (LEO) shouldn't be too much of a stretch, Weiss said.
The company is part of a commercial mission led by OrbitsEdge and Copernic Space that will take crypto mining and accessible AI-powered computing into the final frontier, via a satellite that will launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket in early 2026.
Syntilay will use AI agents on board that satellite to design a shoe in microgravity — something that has never been done before. That design will be beamed down to Earth, where it will be manufactured to create "an exclusive 3D-printed shoe collection, each pair tokenized and authenticated via the Copernic Space platform," OrbitsEdge and Copernic Space wrote in a statement.
"I think it's going to produce something that's truly amazing, that breaks the mold of what's possible. And I think we're really excited to see what it makes," Weiss said.
The goal is to have the space-designed shoes ready to sell by September 2026 at the latest, he added.
The new space project could also help Syntilay carve out a bigger niche for itself in a competitive market, said company advisor Joe Foster, who co-founded Reebok back in 1958.
"It's, 'How do we find a different way in?' and it was the same when we started Reebok," Foster told Space.com.
"We were very small," he added. "We had to look for what we call white space. White space was somewhere where we could make a difference, where we could be part of it, as against just chasing the big boys. And so this is looking for white space that is actually in space. So what better space can you get?"
