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Ashton Kutcher, seen here at a Los Angeles Lakers basketball game in February, is the 500th customer to sign up for a Virgin Galactic suborbital spaceflight.
Virgin Galactic says uber-celebrity Ashton Kutcher is the company's 500th customer to sign up for a suborbital trip into outer space.
"I gave Ashton a quick call to congratulate and welcome him," Virgin Galactic's billionaire founder, Richard Branson, said today in a blog post announcing that Kutcher was coming on board. "He is as thrilled as we are at the prospect of being among the first to cross the final frontier (and back!) with us and to experience the magic of space for himself."
Kutcher, who got his start in television on "That '70s Show" and is now one of the stars of the highly rated sitcom "Two and a Half Men," is said to have a net worth of around $140 million. So the $200,000 fare for a ride on Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo rocket plane, also known as the VSS Enterprise, shouldn't break the bank. He's as well-known for his online presence (with 9.8 million Twitter followers) and his gossip-column appeal (due to last year's breakup with Demi Moore) as he is for his filmography.
All this makes him arguably the highest-profile prospective spaceflier confirmed to be on Virgin Galactic's list — although Tom Hanks, Katy Perry, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are reportedly on the list as well. Beyonce and Jay-Z are among other celebs considering a flight. The stars are reportedly all paying their own way, except for physicist Stephen Hawking, who is receiving a free ride courtesy of Branson.
For Stephen Attenborough, Virgin Galactic's commercial director, getting to the 500-passenger point is as big a milestone as getting Ashton Kutcher to sign on. "It's great to get to No. 500," he told me.
It's way too early to put Kutcher's flight on the calendar. SpaceShipTwo is still in the midst of free-glide flight tests, with rocket-powered test flights expected to begin this year. Last year, Branson said he was holding out hope that he and members of his family will be able to take a ride into space as this year's Christmas present. That suggests 2013 could mark the start of commercial service, although Virgin Galactic and its partners at California-based Scaled Composites say the schedule is totally dependent on the outcome of tests at the Mojave Air and Space Port.
In Virgin Galactic's latest showreel, British billionaire Richard Branson talks about the genesis of the company, recent progress and what lies ahead.
The current plan calls for commercial flight operations to be based at Spaceport America in New Mexico. SpaceShipTwo, which is capable of carrying six passengers and two pilots, would be linked up to its wide-winged WhiteKnightTwo carrier airplane and brought up to an altitude of 50,000 feet. At that height, SpaceShipTwo would drop from its mothership and turn on its hybrid rocket engine. The blast would take the craft beyond 62 miles (100 kilometers), the internationally accepted boundary of outer space — a commanding height from which Kutcher and his fellow passengers could see the arc of planet Earth and the dark sky of space above.
There'd be a few minutes of weightlessness, and then the passengers would return to their seats for the descent. After weathering up to 6 G's of acceleration, the fliers would glide down to the landing — and get their astronaut wings back at Spaceport America.
Attenborough said Virgin Galactic is already giving a lot of thought to determining who would fly when. One of the factors in the formula would give priority to customers "roughly in the order that they signed up," he said, but the schedulers also would consider customer preferences and the possibility of achieving firsts in spaceflight (for example, ahem, first prime-time TV star in space). "We're expecting to be able to keep everyone happy," Attenborough told me.
How long do you think it'll be before Kutcher is clicking his camera on the final frontier? And do you suppose there'll be a deal to document everything for reality TV? Feel free to weigh in with your comments below.
More about celebrity spaceflight:
- Fly Justin Bieber into space, scientist says
- Bunnies in jetpacks? It's Playboy Club in space!
- Director James Cameron targets spaceflight
- Celebrities in space?
Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or adding Cosmic Log's Google+ page to your circle. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for other worlds.
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Playground of the rich...
How many poor teenagers in US public school's science classes are simultaneously both dreaming of and writing-off going into space...
or how many college students, professors, physicists, or other scientists would benefit from the knowledge learned first hand from an experience of weightlessness....science itself could be altered from such knowledgeable firsthand observations of professional physicists.
but since NASA is not catching the interest of the average taxpayer, and the commercial space flight industry only caters to the extreme rich....(most of which does not include scientists, physicists, students, or teachers).....
We're instead left with multimillionaire Hollywood wash-ups who'll bring "One small step for mankind" one step closer to "Dude! Where's my gravity?"
"or how many college students, professors, physicists, or other scientists would benefit from the knowledge learned first hand from an experience of weightlessness....science itself could be altered from such knowledgeable firsthand observations of professional physicists."
In case you haven't been keeping up with things, there will be science and research payloads (including scientists to operate them in person, when necessary) on chartered flights of Virgin Galactic, XCOR, and other suborbital providers...and they will pay for those chartered flights, just like any other customer. Science is a market as valid as any other.
Don't take my word for this, Google: manned suborbital science
In addition to their tourist value, these vehicles (and we are talking small fleets, not just one) are also effectively re-useable manned sounding rockets...
"and the commercial space flight industry only caters to the extreme rich...."
That's because it's an expensive service to provide. (even unmanned sounding rockets aren't cheap) Sorry that we can't* give you (or me) $5 rides to 100km, yet...
(* Not won't, can't...and still be profitable. And if there's no profit, there is no ride at all.)
I'll send him into outerspace...to the moon, Honeymooners style.
Is there any possibility he could get into another orbit, maybe to the Sun, and leave Earth forever?
I liked Charlie, Aston ruined the show.
For that kind of money he could do so much good. To blow it like that all in one whack is 1,000 times worse than anything Charlie has done. At least Charlie had fun 1,000s of times with the money he spent on hookers and drugs.
America loves you Charlie !!!
I always thought he might be a space cadet, now he proves it... lol
Check out this link for evidence there are aliens
This link shows the best close up UFO Footage ever
www.turkeyufocase.blogspot.com
yup..some how his announcement doesnt surprise me..
Ground control to Major Tom...
One way I hope !!!!!!!!!!
He should stay in space.......and remake Lost In Space.
Previously on Bill Maher:
Start at 2:16
So, I guess Ashton is against scientific discovery but for sending himself into space? I imagine $200K would buy a lot of mosquito netting.
Whoops, link didn't work. Just search for "Bill Maher - Sonar Exercises and Mars" on YouTube.
The transcript is here. Replace "things" and "stuff" with Kutcher and "Mars" with "space" and you get my point:
"Kutcher: We send things to Mars. But there are thousands of children that are sold into the sex slave trade every single day. But we send stuff to Mars instead of solving that problem. There's Africa where people are dying of Malaria. There's a quantifiable solution to the problem - and yet we send stuff to Mars - instead of getting bed nets for these people."
"But we send stuff to Mars instead of solving that problem."
Where does the 'instead of' come in? Who says that no one is working on these other things? Where does the idea that it's either/or come form? Civilization walks and chews gum and does a great many other things at one time. It has to. Otherwise you'd have to decide between all these 'more important' things as well. (Imagine trying to choose between, say, homelessness and AIDS research...what's that? We should do both? Gee, I guess we can do more than one thing at once.)
Go ahead, shut down NASA and all other space research (this does nothing to suborbital tourism, BTW...that's a business), and see how fast these other things don't change...
Frank, excellent rebuttal to that viewpoint. I also wanted to make sure you didn't think I agreed with Kutcher. :) I'm actually for both suborbital tourism and Mars exploration, I just found it amusing that he denigrates scientific exploration while at the same time he's willing to spend money on a joy ride. I was also rather annoyed by Bill Maher's attitude towards the people that put so much effort in these programs while he gets paid to sit behind a desk and make snarky comments.
"...I just found it amusing that he denigrates scientific exploration while at the same time he's willing to spend money on a joy ride."
Yes, you're right. There is a serious inconsistency there. I have to think he already had it under consideration at the time.
Clearly CBS and Nikon are paying him too much.
I'd sign up to go, but I'm just $199,500 short. If someone can afford it, why not?
Maybe if we all pitch in a dollar or two we can get them to send him to Alpha Centauri or even further...
Give him a one-way ticket so he can go home.
What would it cost me to have him jettisoned once in space?
Now that I've read these hateful comments, mine included, I wonder if he reads these. Will he be reading them tonight while he's alone sobbing while petting some small dog? If so, WHAT UP KUTCHER?!
Who is Ashton Kutcher?
Guys. Those who cant afford 200k in America obviously didn't do well in school. This is why parents, not teachers, are responsible to ensure that their child is getting an education. Teachers help facilitate and foster growth, but it is up to the parents for assurance. Unfortunately that's not the case. Many Hispanic parents don't help thmsselves or their children. That's their problem. Then when they don't go to school and get a low income job, the cycle starts again. Many people, not just Latinos, don't care. Not his problem. Not mine. Get an education, go to school, strive for the best.n put down the remote controller or gamingt controller and do something about your lives.
Where's the idiots whining about "Rich White" people lavishly spending money. How come the OWS idiots don't set up camp at his house protesting. Oh ... cause he's a liberal Hollywood prick.