To follow up on yesterday’s report where the cofounders of a social networking startup announced they were going to travel to the ISS, I received a response to some questions I posed the company from one of the cofounders/would-be space tourists, Cherry Mendoza. According to her, while they would start training in preparation for the flights this fall, formal training (presumably meaning actually starting training in Russia) would not begin until next spring. The two (Mendoza and Jennifer Bellofatto) would not fly together on the same flight since “such arrangements more than triple the cost of flight,” according to Mendoza. (Which makes sense given that typically only one seat is open per taxi flight.) One of them would fly in fall 2008 and the other in 2009, she said.
Although a Space Adventures spokesperson told me yesterday that she was not aware of their plans, Mendoza said that they have been talking with the company, but have yet to sign any contracts. The key point here is that, while they said in the press release yesterday that they plan to pay for the flight with money raised from venture capitalists, they are still working on getting the money: “Once we close VC funding we anticipate traveling in fall of 2008,” Mendoza said. And why spend $40 million of VC money—assuming they can raise it—on a pair of ISS trips, when that money could go into building up the business in more concrete ways? “We want to show that women can accomplish great things by supporting each other and working together.” We’ll have to see if that’s convincing enough for VCs to open their wallets…