The Fabricaciones Tortuga Modular Spacewalking System is a line of commercial-grade spacesuits designed to accommodate many body shapes from across the Sol system. There are a wide range of spacesuit manufacturers native to every starfaring world, but Tortuga spacesuits are exceptionally popular among mixed crews as a mid-range option that is more affordable than species-specific tailored suits and a bit more comfortable to wear than bare-bones economy brands. Being a modular system, the Tortuga spacesuit platform enables starfarers to swap, replace, repair or trade individual components with other crews carrying Tortuga components, which allows suits to be adapted or refurbished in the remote vastness of space. When you're up in the ink you need reliable protection from the freezing, irradiated danger that surrounds whatever habitable little bubble you're traveling in; for many crews, Fabricaciones Tortuga is a brand they can trust with their lives.
The core of the FT-38000 "Caparazón Blando" line is a soft full-body suit with space-resistant hard metal latch points that allow components to be swapped out to meet a starfarer's individual needs. The soft suit is comprised of multiple layers of thermal insulation beneath a radio-reflective mesh weave and a durable fabric outer layer. The FT-38000 line is built to retain the body heat generated by its wearer, and is recommended to be worn overtop of a skintight moisture-wicking body suit. The cut of a Tortuga suit is intended to be a bit baggy, allowing flexibility for a working starfarer to bend over and exert a full range of motion without stressing the double-stitched hems or risking a pull or tear from occurring; to aid in this, each suit core comes with a gusseted crotch and reinforced joints. Elbows on most sleeve models include padding to protect a sensitive working joint from bumps or knocks that a hardshell suit would defend against, but which may cause harm to the wearer through an unprotected softsuit. A Tortuga suit is stepped into from above, and sleeve and boot attachments are attached with vacuum-tight seals secured by locking latch-clasps. An individually-configured suit doesn't need to be reassembled each time, a starfarer can simply pick theirs off a rack and suit up on short notice.
Built on top of the Tortuga's foundation, The FT-38000 system can be fitted with a number of accessories to tailor a suit to a particular line or work and the worker expecting to perform it. At the core of the platform is a rigid pectoral plate that protects the vital organs of most species from abrasive damage and also adapts the main suit to a particular species of starfarer. In particular, a different mounting plate can facilitate helmet styles designed for bipedal Inner Belt species, a quadrupedal Neptunian who needs a wider field of vision to account for standing upright or being on all fours, a Callistan whose head quills require spacial accommodations that other species do not, and so on. In addition to facilitating different helmet shapes, oxygen tank mounting brackets can be matched to a given species in anticipation of their practical needs in space. A starfarer isn't expected to be able to read their own oxygen tank pressure gauge while they're actively being worn, so a bipedal or quadrupedal user attaches tanks with different gauge orientations to allow their teammates to more easily read them in the user's present position. On the other end of the suit's design, a range of boots are available to match the physiology of most starfarers. Every Fabricaciones Tortuga boot design comes equipped with a toggleable magnetic sole, allowing spacewalkers to affix their footing to a starship's hull or interior deck in the absence of synthetic gravity. Magnetic toggles are controlled by a switch in the toe of the boot, and each model of boot has a switch designed to match the shape of each species' foot. Many species share a roughly-similar body shape, but what makes Tortuga stand out is allowing a spacewalker to spend fewer credits to account for the smaller details that make each wearer distinct.
While the whole Tortuga system is worthy of praise, its line of helmet designs stand out in particular. After a spacewalker steps into their suit and pulls it up, their helmet twists into place and remains fixed to the mounting bracket on their upper body. Drawing inspiration from Europan suit design, a polymer membrane forms a seal around the wearer's neck, improving oxygen efficiency by prioritizing the helmet's space for breathable air, retaining body heat in the lower portion of the suit and preventing the unwelcome smell of a hard day's work from passing between the two halves. Regardless of species, all Tortuga helmets come equipped with a shared suite of useful features popular among working starship crews across the Sol system. Built-in radio intercomm headsets allow a crew to communicate in a vacuum over a coordinated, encrypted channel, and a toggleable external speaker enables them to talk while they're suited up in atmo. A head-mounted lamp is fitted to the crown of all helmet models, angled to point down and in front of a spacewalker's working environment, in the space they expect to work with their hands. Diamond-glass face shields are coated on both sides with a moisture-resistant surface treatment, preventing fog from building up within and allowing unwanted goop to be easily wiped off without. Each helmet is fitted with a slide-down electroplated lens cover to protect against direct exposure to Solar emissions, and the helmets' features can all be accessed easily from an external control panel built into the earpiece of each helmet. Press the round red button inward to cycle between comms, external speakers or off settings, toggle a clicky yellow switch to control the head lamp and tap a broad, recessed touch-panel button to let a crew sync up or cycle encryption keys for their voice comm broadcasts- each control has a different shape and a different tactile feel, so it's easy for a spacewalker to tell one control from the other with just their thick gloved hand. They're small details but they're a big help to a lot of crews who find their jobs taking them out into the void of space.
Two crews who are dedicated Tortuga customers are Red Raven Towing & Salvage and Timberwolf Reclamation & Demolition. Both crews appreciate Tortuga suits for their full range of motion and rugged durability, as both crews do a lot of climbing around and crouching down to lift things on their respective jobs. While the salvage rivals are often at odds with each other, they know that they're both Tortuga users, so it's not uncommon for one to barter or trade unused components with the other, often to accommodate the physiology of a contractor joining them on a job. They like to decorate their individual suits with designs and color palettes that make them their own, a practice that makes it easier to tell one spacewalker from another than if they all wore strict uniforms. Red Raven's Amy has a special sleeve fitted to her suit's left-arm harness- since she has a prosthetic arm she can forego an insulated sleeve in favor of a reinforced metal cuff that allows a large grappling hook launcher to be fitted to her suit, integrating its controls into the clockwork of her metal arm. While it's not strictly necessary for either crew's synthetic friends to suit up, the practice is often encouraged for one reason or another. In Haley and Alan's case, they're each perfectly capable of operating out in the void without issue, but when they come back inside their bodies can be extremely cold, with Haley in particular fond of giving her crewmates unexpected "freezer hugs"- wearing an insulated suit prevents her from deploying these surprise chills when she's back aboard the Jackrabbit II. Accra Androids like Clover don't require a suit at all, as they lack the physical bodies to fill one out, but they are still very much a part of the team, so they often like to dress the part to fit in with their crewmates. Clover has a novel suit design she cooked up herself, inspired by the suits in a popular old TV show she found in the Accra Labs data archives called "Rawhide Rocket, Jr. and the Dynamic Desperadoes." There is no reason at all for Clover to wear a suit, but she is often a part of the crew's boarding parties and it's a lot of fun to play dress-up with her hard-light projection. Appearing suited-up is nice for the rest of the crew as well, since it's never fun to see a suitless, unidentified humanoid silhouette approaching you from the belly of an old shipwreck. They tend to pack other hardware accommodations for those and similar unplanned encounters, and sometimes Clover will have fun emulating those bits of kit as well. Pchoo pchoo!