space-clownThe premise for the recently announced space reality tv series Starwalker is nothing short of impressive. Allow entry for anyone on the planet over the age of 18 and offer up a grand prize trip into orbit.

It certainly sounds better then marrying some stupid farmer, winning a couple of hundred thousand dollars or a one hit wonder recording contract.

My first impression upon hearing about the proposed tv series was curiosity. Who was involved, how much would something like this cost and how the hell were they going to pull it off?

With Virgin charging $200,000 AUD commercially for a trip into orbit it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to ascertain that sending people into space isn’t a 2-bit backyard operation job. It costs real serious money and if you’re going to build a television show around a launch, even more money.

In a press release issued about a month ago the people behind Starwalker claimed;

All funds and insurance to cover this “astronomical” cost are in place. Starwalker is thus a television show featuring the most powerful media alliance, largest competition and richest prizes not just in television history but in human history.

It seems whoever is behind the show seems to have somehow secured the co-operation of media companies, space agencies and some massive financial backers from all over the world.

So who exactly is behind Starwalker?

The show appears to be the brainchild of Katherine Bennell, Campbell Pegg and Rogan Shimmin, who are Australian and British postgraduate students. They seem to have come up with the idea during the 2009 International Space University SSP (some convention thing held by NASA).

Of course three university students certainly don’t have the clout to bring international media houses and space agencies together. So how on earth did they manage to get this project off the ground?

Well, they teamed up with Australian director Jonathan Nolan.

You might remember Jonathan Nolan and his business partner Greg Smith from earlier this year when they sued Australian website Zgeek for $40 million dollars.

Z-Geek also have a archived page dedicated to ongoing coverage of the lawsuit.

The action is still ongoing but I’m certainly hoping Nolan and Smith aren’t planning to bankroll Starwalker on the non-existent funds they are hoping to win from the Z-Geek defamation case.

Silly court cases aside though, if the program is genuine then I wish Nolan and Smith (who I presume is also involved somehow financially) the best of luck. On paper Starwalker certainly seems impressive and as much as don’t particularly like reality television, I acknowledge pulling off a project like this is a sizeable contribution to the television industry.

The other scenario of course is that the whole thing is a hoax, and it wouldn’t be the first time it’s happened.

Back in 2005, British media company Zeppotron made television series Space Cadets offering up a trip into space as the grand prize. Unfortunately for the contestants the whole thing was a hoax and through the use of an elaborate set, some actors and a psychological screening process to weed out anyone with half a clue, the show was somewhat of a success.

At a cost of around 4.5 million pounds (~9 million AUD) and shot entirely in Britain with only British contestants you can see that doing something like this on a worldwide scale is going to cost a bucketload.

If the hoax version of the grand prize where nobody actually leaves Earth costs 9 million AUD, firstly just how much would a real space trip cost? Secondly, how the hell did Starwalker secure worldwide funding to cover the entire cost of the show before they’ve even shot a second of footage?

Just who are these ridiculously wealthy financial backers who have guaranteed theoretical gargantuan costs for a show nobody even knows is going to be a success yet?

I’d certainly like to meet them, I have uh… a few ideas of my own.

Interestingly (although plausible that it’s entirely co-incidental), Space Cadets had a 6 month entry period. Applications to enter Starwalker opened mid December and are set to run till May… also approximately six months.

Nolan has thus far appeared on Channel 7's Sunrise spruiking the show and in their press release claim that they have Stephen Hawking onboard along with Dave Mousley and Red Vision (Mousley is the managing director of Red Vision).

Red Vision of course bill themselves as the creators of “award winning CGI and visual effects”.

…you mean the kind of effects necessary to dupe contestants into thinking they were actually in space?

Over at the official Starwalker blog (which is hosted on free blog service Blogger), in the latest post you can read about the 'Space Fashion' contest.

How chic. Whilst novel, designer spacesuits kind of give away their target market.

Furthermore Doug Messier from Parabolic Arc claims that the three postgraduate students who initially came up with the idea have since cut any ties with the show.

Again, if legit I wish the people at Starwalker the best of luck. Part of me however just doesn't see it.

This show, in its non hoax format, requires massive investment and co-operation from worldwide media organisations and government agencies. Then there's the logistics of the flight itself and the fact that the people seemingly behind the series haven't really been involved in anything even close to this in production scale before.

Starwalker - a television hoax by a couple of Australians or a reality series that massively raises the bar in terms of international participation and scope?

At this stage, my money is on hoax.



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