You didn’t think we would run an article about Kate Upton’s zero-g flight without including a photo of it, did you? (credit: Sports Illustrated)
Did you hear that Sports Illustrated’s latest swimsuit issue features model Kate Upton in weightlessness? If you’ve been paying any attention to the media in the last week and a half, it would have been hard not to hear about this. The issue includes photos of the supermodel, in swimsuits, floating in the cabin of ZERO-G Corporation’s aircraft during a flight last March that features 13 zero-g and 4 lunar parabolas. (And videos, too. Of course, videos.) The novelty of it all guaranteed plenty of attention, for both Ms. Upton and ZERO-G.
But was it good business, as well? Company spokesperson Stacey Tearne said earlier this week that it was still too soon to tell how much of that attention would translate into sales, but that traffic to the company’s website had increased by 1,000 percent since the release of the issue early last week. “They are receiving many individual seat and charter inquiries every day” since the issue hit newsstands last week, she said of the company’s sales team.
The question many were asking, though, was whether Ms. Upton made it through the photoshoot without feeling ill, as some people do on parabolic aircraft flights. Apparently not: “Kate surprised us all with how she handled modeling in weightlessness,” said MJ Day, editor of the issue, in the release. As as the company noted on Twitter last week:
@DaveMosher @SI_Swimsuit @KateUpton She didn't get sick! She was amazing in weightlessness. 17 parabolas, not 17 flights. #nogravity
— ZERO-G (@GoZeroG) February 18, 2014