Space, fire, time. These things are elemental, conduits to deep discussions about our place in the universe, and the nature of life itself. What does it all mean? It’s the stuff of 3:00 AM dorm room deep dives, the kinds of conversations that happen after watching 2001 for the first time. Every so often, a piece of art, or an object (or even a watch!) scratches at these ideas. That’s what I started to ponder, anyway, when I first read about the new Fortis Stratoliner S-41 Reentry Edition, a striking new version of their spacefaring chronograph with a unique (literally) dial with one of the more interesting concepts behind it that I’ve seen this year.
The highlight here, as you can likely derive from the images, is the dial that has been heat treated by hand. The inspiration comes from spacecraft reentering the earth’s atmosphere. This happens at an incredibly high rate of speed – roughly 15,000 miles per hour. At that velocity, the friction caused by the spacecraft as it comes in contact with the atmosphere essentially turns said spacecraft into a small, fast moving, fireball. Have you seen Apollo 13? Then you know basically how this works. A heat shield designed to control that burn keeps astronauts on board safe, and the critical structure of the spacecraft intact.
According to Fortis, every Reentry Edition dial is heat treated by hand and completely unique, thanks to the unpredictable nature of the impact of fire on the titanium surface. The heat produces a wide range of tones, including blue, orange, violet, brown, and pure white. It’s quite evocative, to me it looks almost like spilled gasoline on a concrete surface. It’s also a different way to think about patina. Certainly it’s intentional, and it’s quite literally damage, even if it is controlled.
The Reentry Edition is built on the Stratoliner S-41 platform, which features a 41mm stainless steel case with 200 meters of water resistance. The case height is 14.5mm and the lug to lug span is over 50mm – this is a big, imposing watch, and it’s not trying to hide it. It runs on the Fortis Werk 17 caliber, which has gone through space testing (we covered that here). In terms of functionality, it’s an automatic chronograph caliber with 60 hours of power reserve, a column wheel, day-date indicator, and chronometer certification.
This watch really caught my eye as I was somewhat aimlessly scrolling through Instagram earlier this week. It feels like a cousin to other dials with unusual or random color treatments. It made me think of my Acranaut with a Fordite dial, for instance. And I also see a bit of the Oris ProPilot X Laser here as well. These are certainly all watches with a niche appeal, but if you fall in that niche, I feel like you go really deep into this kind of thing.
The Fortis Stratoliner S-41 Reentry Edition is available now on the Fortis website at a retail price of $5,300. Fortis
Zach Kazan
2025-09-19 14:00:00