It's tabloid trash, it's terrible television, it is everything I hate about poor representation of science on television..

And I'm utterly hooked :)

They gave 3 weeks of 'training' to 12 candidates - of which 3 were planted actors, and one of the actors left quite early as he became unwell.

Then they downselected to a crew of 3 candidates and 1 actor to go onboard the 'shuttle' called 'Earth Orbiter One', with two pilots.

The premise of the vehicle is that it looks a lot like Buran but takes off from a Runway and 'spirals' into space - hence no need to simulate 3G+. They also dont let the 4 'crew members' into the cockpit, as out the front of the shuttle mock up is a large projector screen (it's 3 HDTV projectors side by side I think) onto which they're putting rendered imagery.

They've picked stupid, gullable people to do it, and so far they've bought it hook line and sinker - and to be honest, if you know nothing about space - why wouldnt you buy it? You spend 4 hours flying, land at this airfield, everythings dark, every one's talking Russian. The cars have Russian numberplates, the signs on the doors are Russian, there's missiles parked around, space suits, it would, to an idiot, be totally believable.

The #1 thing that I thought would 'break' the illusion was the view out of the window. I always thought that the moment they looked out the window they'd go "that's a projector, not the earth" - but actually, by keeping them out the cockpit area ( for safety reasons... ;) ) so they cant get too close to the windows - they just have a few 'windows' onto the large projector screen beyond and the footage they showed from inside was actually, quite good. If you were wrapped up in the whole experience, I can see, if one were an idiot, how you would go along with it.

At the end of the experience, the guys dont know it yet, but they get £5k for every day they spend on the mission ( so £25k ), get flown to Baikanour, do some genuine training and fly on a Vomit Comet out there - so it's not all bad.

But then after that, I genuinely feel sorry for these people. They've not done anything wrong, they've just believe what they've been told by important and clever looking people - that they've flown to space in a new type of shuttle craft

But for years, they'll be rememebred as the guys who thought they were in space, whilst sat in a box, in a hanger, just outside Ipswitch. It'll be a pretty harsh experience for years to come.

But in the meantime, it makes great TV and I believe it comes to a conclusion this coming weekend with the end of the mission. Rumours of an EVA being scheduled, and for that they've bought some genuine Russian flight suits ( not the Orlan EVA suits, just the Launch and Landing suits) for them to put on.

Doug