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I have a lot of time for the products of Japanese shoe company Asics; I wore out two pairs of their shoes when training for the London Marathon and they managed to keep my feet in fairly good shape throughout.

There’s an article in this week’s New Scientist about a pair of shoes they’ve designed for use in microgravity (space shoes, if you will).

Recently Asics also featured on an installment of Discovery Channel’s How Its Made; showing the multi-stage production process of their running shoes, as well as the more TV friendly task of dropping an egg from 30 feet up onto a 1 inch thick mat (made of the special shock-proof gel that goes into their shoes); the egg landed on it’s side, but didn’t break.

On that program they showed the first ever pair of running shoes that Asics made over 50 years ago. What struck me immediately upon seeing the space shoes is how similar they are to the “1953 Marathon Tabi”.

In 50 years, the materials technology may have improved to the point where an egg doesn’t break when subjected to 30 feet of gravity, but take gravity out of the equation and much of the subsequent inventions become irrelevant: the shoes go back to square one (albeit with more breathable, multi-layered construction).