A luxury dating app wants to play matchmaker for space tourists. Photo / Getty Images
A luxury dating app wants to play matchmaker for space tourists. Photo / Getty Images
A luxury dating app is looking to set two singles up on the ultimate 'meet cute': the first date in space.
LUSSO an app for "highly successful singles" wants to help you find the Astronaut of your dreams.
The elitist dating app prides itself on exclusivity, and matching potential power couples. Where better to do this than the International Space Station?
"LUSSO is the most exclusive and most expensive dating site in the world to match highly successful singles outside of their usual circle," says founder David Minns.
"With space tourism very close to launch, at LUSSO Dating we have set the challenge to arrange the first date in space."
Currently the only way off planet is as a NASA-qualified overachiever or with a ticket on one of the first commercial space flights. Currently the entry cost of a seat on Virgin Galactic's 2022 space tourism programme costs US$250000 ($345000).
There are no plebs in space.
LUSSO aims to make history by uniting two singles in space, over a shared interest in the stars.
However, the app is clear that it will not be covering any of the costs of this extra-planetary hook up.
LUSSO says they are looking to be the catalyst for "two like-minded singles who are willing to go into space and have the financial power to back it up."
Neither is LUSSO affiliated with Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic or Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin, their website states.
Instead the promotion appears to be hanging on to the coat tails of billionaire-owned private space programmes.
Still, if you are looking to meet on a dating service with annual fees of $16500, you should have some cash to splash.
A former aerospace and fluid dynamics engineer, CEO Minns made a lateral move from lecturing at the European Space Agency to dating websites. Operating sites for a range of niches, "luxury dating is one of the most exciting," he says.
LUSO, says the app's website, is for "serious singles, rather than people just here to boost their ego".
The 44-year-old invited single women over the age of 20 to apply for a "match-making event", via twitter. The winner of which would be his date on the first private mission to the moon.
However, the playboy tycoon called off the rendezvous in Zero G just two weeks later.
"To think that 27,722 women, with earnest intentions and courage, had used their precious time to apply makes me feel extremely remorseful to conclude and inform everyone with this selfish decision of mine," he apologised.
The 'first woman to the moon' was too valuable a prize for a gimmick, he concluded.
Nasa Astronauts, Mark Charles Lee and Nancy Jan Davis married in secret before their 1992 Endeavour shuttle mission. Photo / Supplied, NASA
LUSSO may already be too late, to launch the first lovers to space.
In 1992 it was revealed that Nasa astronauts Jan Davis and Mark Lee were secretly the first married couple in space. The pair were married in a secret ceremony before their mission on the Space Shuttle Endeavour.
