Tonight’s episode of the CBS TV series “NUMB3RS” will feature a guest appearance by Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin, playing himself (of course), according to a press release issued by Aldrin’s ShareSpace Foundation, a personal spaceflight advocacy organization. That release, as well as companion release, indicates that Aldrin’s appearance is timed with the relaunch of the ShareSpace web site, although as of this writing the ShareSpace site is just a placeholder with the message “our full site is coming soon!” The new ShareSpace site, according to that placeholder, will be “a clearinghouse of resources that will help people of all ages to enjoy, prepare for and literally fly into space.”

I got a call over the lunch hour from someone who said that CNBC, the financial news cable network, was providing some coverage today about space tourism. It wasn’t clear whether it was an isolated segment or a recurring feature today; apparently one segment was about Benson Space Company (which would make sense given the news yesterday that it was hiring former astronaut Hoot Gibson). I don’t have access to CNBC during the day, and I couldn’t find anything on the subject on the network’s web site, so take this with a grain of salt…

Remember the Million Dollar Homepage, an effort by a British student to raise $1 million by selling ad space, one pixel at a time, on a web page. That effort was wildly successful (even if the page looks like a pointillist’s nightmare), netting Alex Tew his $1 million and spawning countless similar, if generally less successful, efforts.

One of the latest efforts is BuyMeToTheStars.com, by Michael Halls-Moore, a grad student working on a PhD in hypersonics at Imperial College London. Halls-Moore is trying to raise £1 million to help pay for a ride into space, either on SpaceShipTwo or its orbital successor. (He acknowledges in the site’s FAQ that he only needs a little over a tenth of that £1 million for a suborbital flight on SS2, but he’d really like to save up for an as-yet hypothetical SpaceShipThree flight.)

Unlike the original Million Dollar Homepage or many of its clones, the site is not filled with a garish collage of tiny ads. Instead, advertisers buy stars or larger nebulae or galaxies. A handful of advertisers have signed up right now, so that most of the constellation Orion is clearly visible, netting Halls-Moore a total of £170. He’s also gotten a little bit of media attention, including a press release from his university this week.