“Just imagine Dua Lipa singing ‘Levitating,’ while actually floating in zero gravity.”
Levitating
Zero-G, the tourism firm that has famously offered commercial “zero-G” flights without actually going into space, has announced its next exciting venture: private concerts.
Although the firm says it has experimented with a rave flight once before, it’s hoping to turn “zero gravity concerts” into a permanent, year-round fixture.
“From the artist’s perspective, it’s a way for them to push the boundaries of what’s been done in live performances,” Greg Melon, director of marketing and sales at Zero-G, told Space.com.
And if footage from the first event is anything to go by, it looks like it could be one hell of a good time. Concertgoers tumble weightlessly, while the DJ helplessly floats into the air, barely grasping onto a knob he attempts to adjust on his turntables.
“Zero gravity concerts offer an unforgettable experience for both the artist and their closest fans,” said Zero-G COO Allison Odyssey in a statement. “Just imagine Dua Lipa singing ‘Levitating,’ while actually floating in zero gravity. As a musician how do you even begin to top that?”
Moments of Bliss
Like all of Zero-G’s flights, the experience won’t be one of nonstop zero gravity. Instead, weightlessness will be doled out in exciting — and nausea-inducing — bursts of roughly 30 seconds each.
To achieve the effect, the company’s G Force One airplane flies in a pre-determined parabola, inducing temporary weightlessness as it makes its sharp descent. On a 90-minute flight, passengers can expect these bursts of reduced gravity around 15 times.
Melon says that a selection of three to four songs will be played, timed to the moments of zero gravity. That won’t exactly make for a jam-packed set list, so it will be interesting to see how artists work around that limitation.
On the upside, a Zero-G concert will be a pretty “intimate” affair, according to Melon, since a flight only takes 28 passengers at a time. Performing artists will also only be roughly a foot away.
Unsurprisingly, a ticket to one of these concerts will be extremely expensive. According to Melon, Zero-G is treating the events like any of its other flights, which will set you back over $9,000.
At that prohibitively high barrier for entry, it may not make for the coolest crowd, but the novelty of experiencing weightlessness with some live music to boot is hard to turn down — if you can stomach the price.
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