Contest wants to send a reality show winner to the ISS

People seem to be getting more interested in the International Space Station in recent months. There's talk of a new venture that would host a reality TV show. The winner of that reality TV show would be sent to the ISS in orbit above the earth. The television production company pushing the contest is called Space Hero LLC.It announced on September 17 that was planning a global, unscripted casting show called Space Hero that would send the winter to the ISS in 2023. It's unclear exactly how the reality TV show would work. The production company has said that the contest would be the "first globally-elected space Explorer."

The company chairman, Mary Pompadur, said that the company aims to reinvent the reality TV category by creating a multichannel experience offering the biggest prize ever. The prize is very big indeed, with estimates that it would exceed $50 million to send a single person to the ISS. That price tag wouldn't include the cost of training the astronaut or the production of the show.

The co-founder of Space Hero, Deborah Sass, said that a 10-day mission could cost as much as $65 million. The TV show is currently in the second stage of fundraising, but there is no indication of how much money it has raised. The production company does say that it is exactly where it should be in its plan and is comfortable with where it is in the process currently.

Space Hero is working with Axiom Space to fly the winner to the ISS. Axiom has announced plans for crude missions in the past and is developing a series of commercial ISS modules that would later form the basis for a private space station.