Massdrop x Oblotzky GMK Space Cadet Keycap Set

Leave it to Massachusetts Institute of Technology to raise the bar for keyboards. In the early 1980s, MIT students were cranking out complex mathematical equations on Lisp machines. To do so, they needed a keyboard that could keep up. The Space Cadet keyboard (created by Tom Knight) was lauded for its ability to recreate even the most obscure symbols—and it could produce a remarkable 8,000 different characters if you memorized the right combinations. Now, thanks to Oblotzky (who you may know from the Oblivion and Green Screen keycap sets), you can get the original Space Cadet colorway on a keyboard of your own. Featuring brand-new custom legends, the set captures what it was like to have thousands of single-character commands at your fingertips. Put it on a compact keyboard and you can feel what it was like to access different commands by way of the modifiers.

Made in Germany using custom Cherry tooling, GMK Space Cadet is compatible with a variety of different keyboards, including those with non-standard and standard layouts. The keycaps themselves are made from 1.5 millimeter-thick doubleshot ABS for longevity and strength. Comprising gray alphas, saturated blue modifiers, and a mix of black and white legends, it’s loaded with unique symbols you won’t find in any other set. There are Roman numerals, mathematical symbols, and additional modifier keys like Super, Meta, and Hyper, which would have been used to access even more characters when pressed in different combinations.

This is the standard GMK base kit. It offers coverage for standard keyboards and the most popular custom layouts like Winkeyless, 65%, 75%, HHKB layout, 96-key and 1800. The alphas will have brand-new legend plates created for them, so there is no pad printing involved in the making of the set.

This is a standalone ErgoDox kit. It has the standard custom alphas, just like the base kit.

This kit is for ortholinear keyboard like the Planck and Preonic, and other 40% keyboards.

This novelty kit contains custom Roman numeral legends and various hand legends that were found on the original Space Cadet keyboard, along with a couple new legends like the Roman numeral V and a palm that faces you.

Included in this kit are black modifier legends (Shift, Alt, Control, Super, Meta, and a few bottom-row navigation keys) to replace the white-on-blue modifiers found in the base kit. This better mirrors the original Space Cadet keyboard, which had modifiers with white legends on the top four rows and black legends on the bottom two rows.

A simple modifier kit with icon legends instead of text.

This kit has special Space Cadet alphas in blue for those that want an all-blue look.

A kit with spacebars for popular split-spacebar keyboards like the VE.A.

This international kit contains special legends. It will cover keyboards for British, Danish, Finnish, German, Norwegian, and Swedish layouts.

Due to the special sublegends of the set, this kit requires more keys than usual. And to retain the doubleshot technique, even more custom legend plates have to be created.