Steal a Scene From 'Gravity': 17 Space-Theme Ideas for Events

For Fox's premiere of its new show Cosmos, the network's creative services team produced an event in a transformed parking lot in Los Angeles's Griffith Park. In a Classic tent set as a screening room for the show's first episode, Kinetic Lighting created a cosmos-like look with full LED star draping. A Q&A session with the big-name folks behind the show, including Neil deGrasse Tyson and Seth MacFarlane, followed the screening.

After the California Science Center scored one of NASA's coveted orbiters, the museum made the Endeavour the centerpiece of its Discovery Ball last year. The event, which took place under the wings of the retired space shuttle, also displayed projections designed to transport guests into space.

Centerpieces on some dining tables at the Science Center's ball looked like mini solar systems in glass bowls.

The 1960s, the height of America's fascination with space travel, inspired the cocktail reception at the California Science Center ball.

In 2012, Toronto's Ontario Science Centre hosted its fund-raiser, the LG Innovators' Ball. In honor of the new exhibition “Beyond Planet Earth: The Future of Space Exploration,” the sixth annual gala had a retro “Fly Me to the Moon” theme. New sponsor Google created a Google Earth activation, where guests zoomed in and out of cities, shown on a series of screens.

The all-white lounge furniture included rocket-ship-inspired ottomans at the Innovators' Ball.

At the LG Innovators' Ball, motorized solar systems served as centerpieces for the high-top cocktail tables.

At a 2011 launch party for the book Sex on the Moon in Boston, space-suit-clad servers circulated with food. Held at the W Boston and co-hosted by Doubleday, the soiree took on an outer-space theme that echoed the book's subject—the true story of a NASA scientist, Thad Roberts, who served jail time for stealing moon rocks.

At the Sex on the Moon book party, the "Cosmo-naut" cocktail was alcohol-injected gelatin floating in a liquid chaser.

New York's Rumsey Playfield was the backdrop for the 2009 installment of the Central Park Conservancy's Halloween Ball. Large disco balls set atop urns reflected hundreds of spots of light onto the tent ceiling. The starry-night look was reinforced by projections of lightning bolts.

The opening gala for the Toronto International Film Festival in 2011, held at the Liberty Grand, took its space-age theme from the festival's opening film, From the Sky Down, a documentary about U2. Band members Bono and the Edge were among the attendees at the event, where audiovisual and lighting components served as decor focal points, thanks to a collaborative effort from Westbury National Show Systems and ESG Show Services. On TV screens, a looped video depicted surreal images of things like a mirror ball, the galaxy, and static.

A Star Trek-theme vintner dinner, part of the 13th annual Naples Winter Wine Festival last year, turned the living room of a private Florida home into the Starship Enterprise Control Room.

The celestial look for the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences' Emmy Governors Ball in 2010 borrowed from the night sky. Starry decor transformed the West Hall of the Los Angeles Convention Center for about 3,600 guests. Sequoia Productions, headed by Cheryl Cecchetto, produced the ball, where astrological signs inspired some of the decor elements.

At T-Mobile's “Tone-Def After-Party” during Coachella in 2009, Polite in Public set up a space theme—props included—at its photo station.

In 2006, the National Geographic Channel presented a crowd of 400 media buyers a space-theme event in New York to promote the channel's space-related programming. A lunar rover and a life-size astronaut served as the focal points inside the venue.

Produced by Empire Entertainment, the National Geographic Channel's 2006 upfront also had an orbitron similar to the ones used in the Russian space program, which spun guests around to produce the same dizzying zero-gravity effect. (The activity was noticeably less crowded as the night wore on and more cocktails were consumed).

Sequoia Productions produced and designed the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' Governors Ball after this year's Academy Awards. The event drew inspiration from nature, interpreting the theme into a glamorous look that included massive vertical garden walls from Mark's Garden and a starry ceiling designed by Larry Oberman in association with ELS.