A Wedding Planner for Outer Space
The Space Wedding is an unusual wedding that occurs in outer space. It’s set far in space and has only been seen in an episode of Star Trek: The Original Series. The Space Wedding is set on a massive warship and is platformed above a diamond-rigged battleship as safety and protection. The marriage happens on the USS Enterprise. Marriage proposals can take place on this ship because they are big enough for a ship to hold.
Many space hotels offer the ultimate in relaxation for their guests. The majority of these hotels have their own private space on the board so that the wedding goes on without interference. The only thing they cannot do is broadcast the ceremony, however. If space travel is possible, a passenger could be brought into the system and wed on the USS Enterprise, thus breaking one of the most important laws of outer space. A wedding would also take place in space and thus be completely legal, though it would not be visible from Earth. It is unlikely that such a concept would even make the news.
A space wedding could be something simple, but it could also be very elaborate. A wedding planner can help with this possibility by offering a large number of options for the wedding ceremony. These choices would depend on what is seen by the space vehicle. If a passenger satellite visited the wedding site, it would present the option of a traditional wedding ceremony. If that same passenger visited an alternate system, it might present the option of exchanging vows in a completely virtual fashion.
In addition to the wedding ceremony taking place in outer space, the ceremony would also take place outside on the runway. The capsule would send down news from Earth and thus provide the couples with photos and videos to keep from losing anything on reentry. The capsule may also have a small television inside so that those on Earth could see the event as it was happening.
One issue that has been brought up with regards to a space wedding comes from Russian cosmonaut Valerian Plus. While he was working in NASA, he designed a wedding capsule that was supposed to carry only the bride and groom during a manned space flight. The Soyuz flown Salyut received a great deal of attention at a press conference in 1996, but it never made it to the Russian cosmonauts. A wedding planner from Russia, however, planned a space wedding using a Soyuz capsule in 2021.
One reason why a space wedding might not take place 100 kilometers from the ground is that the wedding would be impossible to video while traveling through Earth’s atmosphere. Thus, any chance of documenting the event would be lost. However, if you did plan a wedding in outer space, you would have a better chance of doing so because of the speed at which the capsules travel through the atmosphere. At approximately 17 miles per second, they can move at speeds of well over seven miles per second. They are traveling faster than the speed of sound!