DailyDirt: Ready For A Trip To Space Yet?

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Tue, Feb 5th 2013 5:00pm — Michael Ho

The opportunities to hitch a ride to space are growing by leaps and bounds now. Just a few years ago, you needed to be a multi-millionaire with the right stuff to buy your way on a rocketship to space. Now, you just need to be some kind of marketing phenomenon that can help with a marketing campaign (or have a few hundred thousand bucks to spare). Here are some examples of some ordinary folks who will be going up in space (suborbital) in the near future.

In case you missed it, an Axe marketing campaign during the Super Bowl is looking for people willing to sign away their publicity rights for a chance to ride on a sub-orbital spaceplane. The marketing is aimed at men, but women can apply, too. Ultimately, who ever wins this competition will have to pass all of the physical training and tests before going. [url]
Coco Brown, an American porn actress, is spending $100,000 to get on a SpaceXC commercial flight. She'll be the first porn star in space, if she completes the training, and expects to go up in 2014. [url]
Ashton Kutcher has been promised the 500th seat on Virgin Galactic's spaceplane service. Virgin tickets usually cost about $200,000 -- so if you want to buy the 501st seat next to Ashton.... [url]
Becoming a female taikonaut has two additional requirements that men don't have: being a wife and mother. Chinese astronauts have a pretty long list of disqualifiers, including: bad breath, cavities, a thick regional accent, scars, snoring, etc, etc. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post.

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Filed Under: ashton kutcher, astronauts, coco brown, space, taikonaut
Companies: axe, spacexc, virgin galactic

4 Comments

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Bergman (profile), 5 Feb 2013 @ 5:07pm

I expect...
To hear at least three different 100-mile-high club jokes about that porn star in space thing...
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Anonymous Coward, 6 Feb 2013 @ 1:22am

Re: I expect...
That porn star doesn't seem to be riding on Virgin Galactic... there's some joke there, I'm sure.
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Anonymous Coward, 6 Feb 2013 @ 2:28am

"Just a few years ago, you needed to be a multi-millionaire with the right stuff to buy your way on a rocketship"

actually 'the right stuff' is simply the willingness to folk over a large amount of your millions to buy your way..
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DB Cooper, 6 Feb 2013 @ 4:47am

Female Chinese astronauts
Funny, Many of the same things that disqualify a chinese woman from being an astronaut would also disqualify them from being a girlfriend: Bad Breath, Snoring, heavy regional accent, bad teeth etc. Why would I want to marry a female version of myself! :-)
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