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Discoblog
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I Take Thee as my Lawfully Wedded Husband—Now Get me Back to Earth

Always dreamed of a wedding in space? It could happen sooner than you think.If you’ve been looking for a little more excitement in your wedding than a string quartet and a giant cake—and you don’t feel like being married by an Elvis impersonator in Las Vegas—a Japanese company might have just the right idea for you: Get married in space.

First Advantage, along with an American aerospace company called Rocketplane, wants to start offering space weddings in 2011. Happy couples will pay more than $2 million for the privilege of exchanging vows in outer space. Well, not exactly “outer” space—after takeoff from an Oklahoma airstrip, the ship should reach about 60 miles above the surface of the Earth.


The ceremony will begin before takeoff, getting some of the preliminary material out of the way so that there’s just enough time to say “I do,” kiss the bride in zero gravity, and look out the window at the outline of the Earth before it’s time to head home.

There’s only room in the rocket ship for two or three guests, but don’t despair—First Advantage will broadcast the video back to the planet’s surface. And the Daily Mail reports that if you upgrade to the premium plan, the company will throw in a free wedding dress and party at the spaceport.

We don’t know whether you get to pick out your own dress, or whether First Advantage has a standard issue bride’s spacesuit. But if wearing the Vera Wang is a huge concern, maybe tying the knot in a spacecraft isn’t right for you anyway.

Image: iStockphoto

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July 1st, 2008 3:38 PM Tags: space flight
by Andrew Moseman in Space & Aliens Therefrom | 2 comments | RSS feed | Trackback >

  • http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/discoblog/2008/07/17/candy-wrapper-sends-french-woman-on-a-space-flight/ Candy Wrapper Sends French Woman on a Space Flight | Discoblog | Discover Magazine

    [...] the same company we wrote about teaming up with a Japanese company to offer space weddings, will train Epron for four days in Oklahoma before blasting her and three others 60 miles up in the [...]

  • Michael Noonan

    Based on an alternate physics it may just be the perfect time for such ventures. Why is time so important? Time controls how gravity is experienced. Mostly we don’t think about it that way but if time dilation is factored in:-

    The advance of the orbit of Mercury is due to Mercury falling into the gravity well of the sun. Well that is normal way to look at it like the sun pulls Mercury around more or the path through the well the distance is shorter and Mercury advances. The other way (based on an alternate time dilation model) is that time is deformed and Mercury experiences more time in the orbit and so there is more time for the linear pull of the sun to deflect the orbit.

    The big thing here is that Mercury as a planet would experience less linear gravity from the planet due to being in a greater time frame so things on the planet would be lighter in the stretched time frame of Mercury’s gravity. It would lead to greater tectonic movement and planetary heating from internal stress differences.

    Significant for us in that if we are to likewise experience a movement through a gravity well brought about by super galaxy structure far greater than the Milky Way galaxy we could then see the Earth experience similar effects. Sure tidal waves, variation on the internal stresses on the planet, tectonic movements, earthquakes and so on. But the plus side is that linear gravity greatly reduces (not to zero) at this time which makes all things lighter while propulsion stays the same for a very brief interval of a few years.

    How do you tell anyone that it may be the years around 2012 that a real window for interplanetary colonization opens in such a way that might not be experienced again for perhaps thousands of years. Imagine if we were not prepared and missed it.





    • About the Blog

      Discoblog is DISCOVER's compendium of quirky, funny, and surprising science news from the edge of the known universe. It's written by Veronique Greenwood and Valerie Ross. Email tips and suggestions to vgreenwood [at] discovermagazine [dot] com.

      Discoblog also includes the daily feature NCBI ROFL, in which two prone-to-distraction grad students post real scientific articles with funny subjects. Email your tips to ncbirofl [at] gmail.com. Follow the ROFL feed here.

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