Well, it's now Wednesday. The auction ends tomorrow.

A quick visit to the eBay site shows that the bids have dropped from close to $20Mn down to a little over $3Mn.

Interestingly, the reserve has yet to be met (although Mr. Boyle indicated that would be changed), and the descriptive text is unchanged (i.e. grammatically atrocious).

I find it droll that NASA Watch was speculating as to the nature of the bidders based on their handles (beverage*guy and trucknation). That's always a dangerous thing to do, as there are many, many, many millionaires in the US, quietly living next door. Some are beverage distributors, others own small transport firms. The point is that you can't assume dot-commers and movie stars are the only ones with lots of money, and you can't assume a goofy handle belongs to a pimply teenager. The book "The Millionaire Next Door" provides an interesting look at the quiet masses of wealthy individuals in this country.

If not handled properly, this could turn into an awful black eye for the space tourism industry. People associate the space industry with rocket scientists - highly intelligent individuals. Posting a questionable auction rife with spelling and grammar errors calls all of that into question. Space Adventures should have double-checked everything for accuracy BEFORE it was posted. The editing history shows the description was updated three times in quick succession on 5/17, but nothing since then. If I were upper management at Space Adventures I would be terribly embarrased to have my company's name associated with such a puerile effort. Then I would have made sure that it was clear what was being auctioned off, and that the text properly reflected that.

Peace out,
Kadet Ken