Porn site plans to make a porn video in space.

[jwl]

What's wrong with a parabolic flight? Too short? There's already been a swimwear modelling thing in zero-g.

[Elheru Aran]

Probably too short. They only last a few minutes in actual zero or micro gravity, from what I understand. It's one thing to do a Sports Illustrated swimwear shoot or a Hollywood movie (fun fact: the astronaut cast of Apollo 13 had more hours in zero gravity by the time they were done filming that movie than many actual astronauts do), as you can do those in multiple takes. Porn... well you kind of have to get it done without too many interruptions, it's got to be a little more 'natural'. Plus, if you consider the cost of taking a large cargo plane up and down multiple times, they may have figured it would be more cost-effective (not to mention more dramatic) than just blasting up in a rocket.

They've already done naked sky-diving, so I suspect they already flirted with the notion of zero-gee porn via parabolic flight.

[Eternal_Freedom]

While the shortness of free-fall in parabolic flights is an issue, I would expect the main reason it hasn't been done is because it's not "in space." It's just a fancy version of the mile hgh club where you spend 30 seconds or so floating around before falling to the floor.

Since they want to do this "in space" they're limited to a suborbital flight on something like SpaceShipTwo when it gets back up and running, or paying a few hundred million to the Russians or Chinese to borrow one of their Soyuz orbiters. The second option is hardly feasible though.

[Elheru Aran]

Part of the reason that Apollo 13's zero-gee scenes worked was that they did two things: First, there were a lot of rapid cuts that you barely notice because they did a pretty good job of making that movie. Secondly, they carefully inserted a number of scenes where the astronauts are strapped down in seats or against the walls, where they could get away without actually using the Vomit-Comet. All told though, that movie was something of a technical tour de force.

Porn, on the other hand, is visually rather different from Hollywood. While frequent cuts aren't a particular issue in Hollywood if they keep the scene coherent-- say they go from Tom Hanks in zero-gee to Ed Harris in Houston as they're holding a conversation-- you can't do that in porn. You have to stay in the same place, more or less, once the sex scene has commenced. In the higher profile films perhaps they go back and forth, but I can't say that I've seen many that do that.

Add to that the need (desire, rather) to have long lingering shots of the action, and you can begin to see why it might be awkward. Plane goes up, people get ready for action... it dives, the zero gee kicks in... the actor and actress have to get into position, get everything lined up, and start going at it while the cameras roll... and then they ease to the floor as the plane levels out. Yeah, I don't think that's very likely to work out well. It *could* be done, but it would probably require very clever editing, industrial amounts of Viagra, and a lot of dosh.