There was a surprising press release this morning claiming that the two co-founders of an online social networking startup had signed up to fly to the ISS. Cherry Mendoza and Jennifer Bellofatto of HerOrbit.com will start training in Russia in the fall of 2007 for a future unspecified flight or flights to the ISS (the press release isn’t clear if they’ll fly together on the same mission or on separate flights, the latter being more in accordance with past practice and the use of Soyuz taxi flights for ISS crew rotations.) The $20 million per person price would be paid by VCs who, the company claims in its announcement, “as with MySpace and YouTube, are eager to back promising Internet social networks.” (Are they really that eager to back such companies that they’ll blow $40 million on some space flights?)
Perhaps I’m being overly skeptical, but it’s hard to take this announcement at face value (indeed, had it come out yesterday, I’d assume it was an April Fool’s joke.) Space Adventures has brokered all the previous space tourists to fly to the ISS, yet as of midday today there was no corresponding announcement from them. Also, it looks a little odd to see them posing in blue jumpsuits with NASA patches on them – why would tourists working (ultimately) with Roskosmos be wearing NASA-logoed apparel, unless it was the only thing available for a last-minute photo shoot?
I’ve sent some inquiries to both HerOrbit.com and Space Adventures to try and learn more about this; if/when I hear anything I will post an update.
Update: According to Space Adventures, they have had no dealings with HerOrbit.com. This is looking more and more like a poorly-timed April Fool’s joke (it is, after all, April 2) – hardly a good way to build trust and goodwill in your company.
[…] To follow up on yesterday’s report where the cofounders of a social networking startup announced they were going to travel to the ISS, I received a response to some questions I posed the company from one of the cofounders/would-be space tourists, Cherry Mendoza. According to her, while they would start training in preparation for the flights this fall, formal training (presumably meaning actually starting training in Russia) would not begin until next spring. The two (Mendoza and Jennifer Bellofatto) would not fly together on the same flight since “such arrangements more than triple the cost of flight,” according to Mendoza. (Which makes sense given that typically only one seat is open per taxi flight.) One of them would fly in fall 2008 and the other in 2009, she said. […]
Is this for real? We were approached by HerOrbit.com to advertise with our company, http://applesofgold.com/ with them. They don’t seem like a huge enough website to be getting $40 million in free space flight.
I’m just trying to figure out if my $90 they are asking me for is worth the time!! Is this serious?