The first International Space Summit opened in Paris on Wednesday with the Grand Palais stripped of its exhibition floor and fitted with 4,000 reclining deck chairs, each equipped with a neck pillow and a personal telescope, so that delegates from 120 countries could conduct the entire two-day programme while lying flat on their backs and staring at the heavens through a newly installed retractable glass ceiling.
Organisers confirmed that every working session, from the opening addresses to the bilateral investment talks, will now be delivered in the supine position, with microphones suspended on counterweighted cables above each lounger. President Emmanuel Macron is scheduled to deliver his keynote while strapped into a zero-gravity training chair borrowed from the French space agency, which has been bolted to a raised platform in the centre of the nave so that he can address the assembled delegations without ever lifting his head from the cushion.
Delegates have been issued laminated star charts and red-filtered torches to follow the presentations, and catering staff have been trained to serve the working lunches in spill-proof sippy cups that can be consumed without sitting up. The German co-chair, who insisted on the reclining format after a test session in Cologne, has ordered that all negotiation documents be printed in large type on ceiling-mounted screens, so that no participant is forced to break the collective gaze at the firmament.
American firms SpaceX and Blue Origin declined to attend, with one organiser noting that their representatives preferred to watch the summit from their own orbital capsules, where the view is admittedly better. The summit will close on Thursday with a group photograph taken from a drone hovering above the glass roof, capturing the 4,000 delegates in perfect horizontal alignment, their telescopes pointed at the same patch of sky.