Spaced Out

I have always wanted to travel to space. But unless I suddenly find a hidden talent for engineering or Russian, floating in a darkened pod of ultra-salty water is probably the closest I’ll ever come to feeling completely weightless. More than 14,000 kilometres away from Nasa’s rocket launch site at Cape Canaveral, a sensory deprivation tank in Hong Kong is my portal to the cosmos for an afternoon.

I’m here for Asia’s first virtual reality (VR) space float experience, ready for blast-off this month at Float Co Midlevels (formerly Float On), Hong Kong’s first centre to offer “float therapy” to the public. Instead of a spacesuit, I wear a bikini—though, “most people float naked,” says Lulu Ward, Float Co’s head of marketing.

In a neon-lit room, I slip into a white, oblong pod partially filled with water. I close the lid, sealing