No, it’s not a joke; a German travel agency is now accepting reservations for nude air travel and flights are scheduled to commence this summer. Wired.com is reporting that a new travel agency called Freikorperkultur (roughly translated: Free Body Culture) is offering all-nude air travel to the Baltic island of Usedom.
Although nudism has been very popular in Germany for decades, the new travel agency is the first attempt at nude airline flights in German history. In fact, the flights to Udedom will be the first nude air travel to a European destination. A competing company, Nude-Air, offered a similar nude flight to Mexico back in 2003, and continues to advertise “naked travel” to Mexican vacation destinations.
Enrico Hess, the company’s founder says the idea for the nude flights came from a customer, and is filling an “unusual gap in the market.” The first nude flight will be on July 5 of this year. The cost? €499. The crew on board the flight will remain fully closed for “safety reasons,” according to Hess. And passengers will have to remain fully clothed at the airport, only being allowed to disrobe after boarding the plane.
Hess emphasizes that the nude flight is not an excuse to join the mile high club; “it’s not that we’re starting a swingers club in mid-air or something like that.” Passengers have to remain fully clothed until the plane is boarded, and they must be fully clothed again before being allowed to exit the aircraft.
So why is it that the Germans seem to be so wild about nudism? I suppose there are a lot of theories one could expound upon, but perhaps German culture itself has something to do with it. Germany is famous for being a pragmatic and highly organized society, with strict social rules or “unwritten laws.”
It could be that the German citizen’s fascination with nudism is a type of backlash against the stricter, and more repressive aspects of their culture. After all, what could be more free and liberating than walking around completely nude? Actually, I can tell you what would be more free and liberating: being completely nude on an airplane cruising at 30,000 feet above the Baltic Sea!
So far, there are no attempts to bring “naked air travel” to the United States, though several US nudist organizations have requested that the German travel agency expand into North America. For now, American nudist who want to fly the friendly skies sans clothes will have to take a trip to Europe, where nudist culture is far more common and accepted than in the United States.
Related Business Directory Categories:
Virgin Galactic, Richard Branson’s spinoff company to his successful Virgin airline, has revealed plans for a new “private” spaceship designed for “consumer space flight.” The new spaceship has been named White Knight Two, and is scheduled for test flights to take place this summer according to Virgin representatives.
InformationWeek.com is reporting that the new Virgin spaceship is based on the technology of the Ansari X prize winning, “SpaceShipOne,” which successfully completed three space flights to win a $10 million prize in the Ansari competition last year.
Virgin Galactic claims that the new Private spaceship design will be “environmentally benign,” and that the craft will be constructed from a light weight carbon composite. The ship will use four Pratt and Whitney aircraft engines to launch into sub-orbital space flight, and will carry a complement of up to eight astronauts and a minimal payload.
In a statement released last Wednesday, a Virgin spokesman said, “while the first priority for Virgin Galactic is developing the market for human space flight, the company is already assessing the potential for unmanned launch capability.” The company has already pre-qualified over 200 “consumer astronauts” and accepted registrations of interest from nearly 85,000 others.
Potential passengers must undergo complete medical evaluations, as well as lengthy centrifuge training, to cope with the g-force and low gravity conditions in space. Two prospective passengers have already completed the medical and centrifuge training at the NASTAR facility in Pennsylvania.
Besides the debut of the new Private spaceship, Virgin Galactic also unveiled the final design for their new spaceport, which will be located in New Mexico. The “Spaceport America” will take advantage of geothermal and solar power to minimize it’s environmental footprint, according to Virgin Galactic officials.
While to many, Richard Branson’s dream of a spacebound airline, or “spaceline” may seem impractical and made of the stuff of daydreams, Branson takes a hard-nosed realist position about his fledgling commercial spaceflight company. Virgin Galactic’s goal is to bring consumer spaceflight to the masses, with regularly scheduled flights beginning within the next five years.
Whether Virgin Galactic is able to succeed as a viable consumer spaceflight agency or not is the subject of much speculation, but Branson certainly has a reputation for taking on lofty goals and achieving them.
Branson’s Virgin Airlines was all but laughed at by industry analysts when it debuted, competing against the giant British Airways for transatlantic air passengers between the UK and the U. S. But no one’s laughing these days, as Virgin has become a force to be reckoned with in commercial aviation, and garnered a sizable share of the market.
With a little luck, perhaps Branson’s Virgin Galactic can also succeed were others have dared not to venture: out in space.
Related Business Directory Categories:
Comments