Ever dream of being an astronaut when you were a child? Were you always more of a Buzz than a Woody fan? Well now luxury watchmaker Tag Heuer is helping to turn that dream into a reality.
The Swiss timepiece specialist sent the first Swiss watch into space over fifty years ago, when it was worn by American astronaut John Glenn aboard the FriendShip 7 rocket. His first words upon experiencing weightlessness while in orbit – “Zero G, and I feel fine” – have since become famous.
And now Tag Heuer is offering fans the opportunity to experience that same feeling of exhilaration. In partnership with the S3 Swiss Space Systems Aerospace program, the company is offering flights on board the Airbus A340-300 that include a unique adventure in Zero Gravity. The experience, previously only available to VIP clients of the luxury brand, is now open to the public.
Party Zone tickets start at just €2000. However, those who opt for VIP or Premium tickets on board the Airbus will receive an exclusive S3 watch, the Tag Heuer Chronograph Formula 1 watch, which will serve as a boarding pass for the flight.
The watch in and of itself is a thing of beauty: accurate to a tenth of a second, the movement is encased in steel with a titanium carbide coating, with the minute track counting 25 seconds in red – the time passengers spend in Zero Gravity. Emblazoned with the S3 logo on the front, even the back of the watch impresses, etched with a graph representing the flight’s trajectory – a journey that’s set to be quite the roller coaster ride.
Able to withstand depths of 200 metres, the watch is also suitable for scuba diving, showing it to be an excellent lifestyle watch, whether you’re a high flier or a deep sea diver. However, for the purpose of the ZeroG experience, passengers will have to don special flight gear and leave watches, jewellery and all other valuables on the ground before undertaking this trip of a lifetime.
The Tag Heuer-S3 partnership is not your standard sponsorship arrangement. Going far beyond classic advertising, the Airbus A340-300 will bear the Tag Heuer livery when it initiates its ZeroG flights around the world. This is a feat for engineering, science and design.
The first flights will take place in September 2016, launching from Switzerland, before being inaugurated in United Arab Emirates. From then, the service will be rolled out across Asia and North America.
