spacetoday.net: A new contestant in the space flight game show race?

Posted: Sun, Jan 14, 2001, 6:16 PM ET (2316 GMT)
The venerable BBC may be the latest network to show interest in space flight game shows, according to a British newspaper report Sunday. The Independent reported Sunday that the BBC may sign a deal in the next few weeks for "The Great Space Adventure", where 500 ordinary people would compete for one trip into space. The winner would fly in 2004 on an unspecified commercial spacecraft on a suborbital flight, although given the current state of the industry, 2004 might be an overly optimistic date. This news comes a month after a German television company, Brainpool, announced plans to send several people to the International Space Station between 2002 and 2008 as part of "Space Commander", a television program the company is developing. The space travel/reality TV craze got started last year when American TV network NBC announced it was buying the rights to "Destination Mir", modeled after the hit series "Survivor" and produced by the same person, Mark Burnett. That show's fate is uncertain, however, since after March, Mir won't be a destination at all...