5 Minutes of Weightlessness: $200,000; Sharing Spaceflight Rituals with Cosmonauts: Priceless

PHOTO:Virgin Galactic

You’ve probably already heard that the world’s first commercial space flight is here—or will be in a couple of years. If you’re planning on being one of the first tourists in space, you might want to take a gander at this fascinating list of ceremonies that Russian cosmonauts are said to engage in before every spaceflight.

Weird and Wonderful Highlights:

• Everyone watches the 1969 Russian romantic action comedy White Sun of the Desert the night before the launch. As far as I can tell, it’s like an old-fashioned Western set in the Caucasus, with harems. And singing.

• Everyone sips champagne and signs their names on their hotel room doors as they leave for the launch site. As they walk out of the hotel, a song by the Russian band “The Earthlings” is played. It’s called “A Green-Grassed Lawn,” it contains the immortal words “But still we hear space music of romance!” and you can listen to it here!

• The buses that take the cosmonauts to the space shuttle have upside-down horseshoes hung on them for good luck. For even more good luck, when they reach the end of their journey, everyone gets out and pees on the bus wheels! Russian cosmonauts are awesome.

If the Virgin Galactic team in charge of herding tourists onto the SpaceShipTwo is smart enough to steal some of these superstitions for their flights out, I’ll let you know.