Last week the world celebrated the 60th anniversary of the first manned spaceflight, performed by Yuri Gagarin on April 12 1961. Caviar is marking the occasion with the launch of its “Space Conquerors” line of customized iPhone 12 Pro and 12 Pro Max phones. These not only celebrate the past but also look to the future as well with nods to Elon Musk’s SpaceX (and his ambition to go to Mars) and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin.
The iPhone 12 Pro (Max) Gagarin is made
out of aviation-grade titanium and has a 3D miniature of the Vostok-K rocket
that brought the cosmonaut to orbit. Only 12 units will be made in this design,
each of them containing pieces of Gagarin’s historic mission. For starters,
there’s a Navigator’s watch (engraved with the April 12th date), identical to
the one Gagarin used to track his 108 minutes in space. There is even a genuine
piece of his Vostok-1 capsule. The Gagarin model starts at US$ 8,920.
Caviar also made the Armstrong model,
which celebrates Apollo 11’s landing on the moon and the man who first set foot
on it, Neil Armstrong. A depiction of an astronaut planting the American flag
on the moon is engraved into the titanium back below the date of the landing,
July 20 1969. Only 11 units will be made, starting at US$ 6,450 a piece. This
model has a fragment of the Apollo 11 space craft.
Another model celebrates Sergei Korolev,
the father of practical astronautics, who was involved with the development of
Sputnik, the launch of Laika the dog and then Gagarin himself. The case is made
out of hardened titanium, double electroplated with 999 gold, engraved on the
side is October 4 1957 – the day that Sputnik launched, the first ever
artificial satellite. 99 units will be made, starting at US$ 6,760.
Then Caviar focused on the present and
future. The custom iPhone 12 Pro (Max) Musk depicts SpaceX’s ultimate target,
Mars, and features Elon Musk’s silhouette. Only 19 units will be made, one for
each year since SpaceX’s founding, starting at US$ 6,610. The titanium back is
adorned by pieces of the CRS-14 Falcon 9 rocket and CRS-17 Dragon spacecraft,
which brought supplies to the International Space Station. A Musk superfan
commissioned this next model called Musk be on Mars. It depicts the SpaceX
Dragon, and actually contains a piece of the spacecraft in question.
Then there’s the Bezos model, named after
the founder of Blue Origin, another private company developing rockets. The
back (made out of hardened titanium) depicts a feather – the logo of the
company – and is engraved with the date April 29 2015, which is when the New
Shepard reusable rocket flew for the first time. You can pick up an iPhone 12
Pro Bezos for US$ 5,840.
Next up is a custom watch, the Discovery
Meteorite, named so because it contains a piece of the Tsarev meteorite that
was discovered in 1968. The 42 mm stainless steel case (12 mm thick) contains a
CVR ELT3350A Tourbillon movement (19 stones). The mechanism is wound manually
and has a 38 hour power reserve. The front is protected by sapphire glass, the
22 mm bands are made out of blue alligator leather. 99 pieces will be sold at US$ 4,450.
If shoes are more your thing, you can pick
up a pair of Musk or Bezos sneakers for US$ 990. The Musk superfan also
commissioned a custom pair to go with the Musk be on Mars phone. The Space
Odyssey Mars sneakers will set you back US$ 1,980.
