Singer Reportedly Outbids NASA for Space Tourist's Seat 242
RocketAcademy writes "ABC News is reporting that Phantom of the Opera singer/actress Sarah Brightman outbid NASA for a seat on a Soyuz flight to the International Space Station. Brightman reportedly paid more than $51 million. If that story is true, there may be some interesting bidding wars in the future."
Music Video (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Music Video (Score:5, Informative)
Relevant: Sarah Brightman & Hot Gossip - I Lost My Heart To A Starship Trooper [youtube.com]
Warning: Extremely cheesy.
Regards,
Aryeh Goretsky
opera eh? (Score:2)
I hope she has magical stones embedded in her body.
Now see this is what happens (Score:2)
When you try to bid against people who actually have money...
In Soviet Russia... (Score:5, Insightful)
.... Capitalism Defeats America?
Re:In Soviet Russia... (Score:5, Insightful)
In Capitalist Russia, we'll gladly take your money regardless of who you are. You wanted us to be capitalist, didn't you? Looks like we've learned well indeed.
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thinking about this the wrong way... (Score:3)
Clearly, there is a market for very wealthy socialites and starlets to go be pretty in outer space with some masterbating russian cosmonauts.
Nasa is currently facing severe budget cuts.
What nasa should do, instead of deploring this incident, is broker a deal with the russian space agency to split the profits from selling the occasiona NASA seat in the soyouz capsule to rich fucks.
Considering the teeny budgets (comparatively) of both agencies, doing this could more than pay for quite a few fantastic developments in space technology and research.
And, maybe some starlets will get to laugh at the lowly members of the mile-high-club, after losing their hearts to a starship trooper.
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Don't you get it? There is no "NASA seat" in the Soyouz. Seats cost $51million and NASA's just another customer.
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What nasa should do, instead of deploring this incident, is broker a deal with the russian space agency to split the profits from selling the occasiona NASA seat in the soyouz capsule to rich fucks.
But, er, it looks like there is no "NASA seat" as such. It's only NASA for as long as NASA pays for it more than anyone else. Why would Roskosmos want to split the profits, if they can just pocket the whole thing for themselves?
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The same reason you would lower the price to sell more units; price elasticity.
NASA is a garanteed repeat customer. $VacuousStarlet is not.
If russia can be assured that there will be a proscribed and agreed upon reduction in launch requests from NASA, as an inside deal to harvest money from the rich and famous, it would be financially lucrative to both agencies. In most publicly traded commoditis markets, this is known as collusion, and is the very thing that RICO act and pals are meant to prohibit, but bei
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The same reason you would lower the price to sell more units; price elasticity. NASA is a garanteed repeat customer. $VacuousStarlet is not.
But NASA is a guaranteed repeat customer regardless of how RK behaves - they simply have nowhere else to go (yet), and they're not going to close down their manned programs altogether because they don't get an occasional seat.
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Not if the NASA/SpaceX relationship fully matures.
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Yes, hence the (yet). But I don't think RK looks that far ahead.
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Quite. I am suggesting that NASA should discretely mention the prospects, in light of SpaceX being awarded a $1.6bn in launch contracts. Spin it as an opportunity to get in on the action.
maybe (Score:2)
This will be the needed bump for the real space race.
A sewing machine company in space (Score:2)
Np. 90% docking fee. (Score:4, Insightful)
Thats cool. Now lets talk about Nasa's new 90% tax on commercial docking commercial flights to ISS...
Re:Np. 90% docking fee. (Score:5, Informative)
WTF is Sarah whatever ? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:WTF is Sarah whatever ? (Score:4, Insightful)
I agree with your sentiments, but the sad reality is that there's zero chance that you will sell 50,000 tickets at $150 a pop to any science fair or astrophysics lecture. Many ball games and concerts can easily generate that kind of revenue even before earnings from concessions and merchandise--and do it several times every year. Modern society places a much higher premium on being entertained than being informed. What's more, the scientist who develops the next wonder drug isn't going to earn lifelong royalties from it--those earnings will line the pockets of the pharmaceutical company which bought and patented it for several years though.
Again a bad sumary... (Score:5, Informative)
Again, a bad summary... Sarah Brightman didn't "outbid" NASA, as they weren't in competition for the same seat. Nor did she "bump" a NASA astronaut from a bought-and-paid-for seat. She paid for a spare seat more than NASA does for it's scheduled seat, in the same way that someone who buys a ticket at the last minute pays more than someone who bought a ticket three months in advance.
So no, this is no indication that there are bidding wars on the horizon. Just more bad journalism and more bad summaries.
Re:More important... (Score:4, Informative)
It would seem she can't afford to go to space.
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Re:More important... (Score:4, Interesting)
times rich list she has around $52 million , her ex husband $1.2 billion. Maybe he is paying the bill.
Re:More important... (Score:5, Funny)
ex-husband...so that means the round trip price is $102 million
Re:More important... (Score:4, Funny)
Maybe her husband is banking on it being an effective one way trip and saving money in the long run?
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Ahah she must be a real pain in tha ass, the ex husband is sending her to space!!!
Re:More important... (Score:5, Funny)
To the moon, Sarah!
Re:More important... (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't suppose we can take this as an example of why we shouldn't ever pay someone whose job is singing or acting or something else that doesn't matter enough money to fuck something like this up?
You realize this dumb bitch bidding up the price of a seat like this is going to force NASA to outbid her, costing the taxpayers (who provide NASA with the money they're going to need to spend to outbid her,) millions of dollars just so she can go play astronaut for a few days. There's a simple solution of course, and that is arrest her, charge her with... whatever, I'm sure she's done drugs at some point... and freeze or confiscate her assets, and then we (the People of the United States,) won't have to try to outbid her.
OR, just fine her the difference between what NASA ends up paying and what they would have paid. Solved.
It's called capitalism. Russia is a hotbed of capitalism.
If you don't like it in the communist states of america, start your own space program.
Re:More important... (Score:5, Insightful)
...So you want NASA a non-policing body, to arrest a Foreign national, for being involved in a transaction in a second foreign country, which is perfectly legal in all three countries ....
Do the words "outside your jurisdiction" and "not illegal" mean anything to you?
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$51M space ticket > Net worth of $45M . Someone was listening to another wild internet rumor when they submitted this story.
Heck, $45M may sound like a lot but you could only get the third biggest Gulfstream for that and then you'd be tapped out.
The entire article is ridiculous (Score:4, Insightful)
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No doubt she make good money selling records, but its also no doubt she's making pennies on the dollar for those record sales. 30 million records does not come close to 30 million dollars. Which is why so many Aging Rockers are still playing Indian Casinos these days.
More worrying is that NASA, a MORE THAN EQUAL partner in the ISS, having built 7 of the 10 modules of the station, is being shut out of seats by Russia simply as a money grab.
Total estimated costs:
U.S.: $100 billion plus 38 billion to build t
Re:More important... (Score:5, Insightful)
No doubt she make good money selling records, but its also no doubt she's making pennies on the dollar for those record sales. 30 million records does not come close to 30 million dollars. Which is why so many Aging Rockers are still playing Indian Casinos these days.
More worrying is that NASA, a MORE THAN EQUAL partner in the ISS, having built 7 of the 10 modules of the station, is being shut out of seats by Russia simply as a money grab.
Total estimated costs:
U.S.: $100 billion plus 38 billion to build the Shuttle.
Europe: $14 billion
Japan: $10 billion
Russia: Unknown, but estimated at 45 billion, mostly launch vehicles.
Canada: $2 billion
Maybe NASA should have planned ahead to make sure they'd have a launch vehicle to reach their expensive ISS?
It's like building a beautiful vacation property on a remote island, then you find out that your 30 year old yacht is too unreliable and expensive to get there. You've been paying a Russian freighter for rides to your island, but when someone else pays them more for your seat, you realize that maybe you should have purchased a more modern yacht before you retired your old one.
Re:More important... (Score:5, Insightful)
That might make sense if the Russian Freighter weren't booking these passengers into YOUR Vacation Home, and paying nothing for the privilege.
Re:More important... (Score:4, Funny)
Oh, snapski!
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I think that the whole notion of "paying for the privilege" is precisely the kind of attitude that you don't want here - it moves the entire discussion into who owes whom what, exactly, and I very much doubt that the agreement as it stands would be in US favor. More likely Russia can send whomever it wants as part of its missions - i.e. it could send one extra cosmonaut, but in this case chose to send a tourist instead.
The situation is idiotic regardless of money issues, though. The purpose of ISS was not t
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The situation is idiotic regardless of money issues, though. The purpose of ISS was not to be a lucrative destination for tourists - it was to do useful research. That Roskosmos wants to charge for the ride, even with some extra to recoup its other losses, is reasonable, but they should just stick to one flat fee, and provide NASA (and other organizations with legitimate scientific missions) a priority. To make an auction out of it is reprehensible.
Agreed... they should simply ban tourists on the ISS,
Re:More important... (Score:4, Insightful)
The reason why it should be a fixed price because it's not a fucking commercial enterprise, it's not supposed to be about profit and supply and demand to begin with. If it were, we'd have corporations doing it, not government. But it wasn't corporations that built ISS in the first place, so...
And if you think that this extra money will really be used to "build better systems", you're very naive - and I'm saying this as a Russian.
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That's not quite right since the "Russian Freighter" docks in the Russian side of the ISS and paying passengers typically are restricted to the Russian segment of the ISS.
You state this as if you had some actual knowledge. Quit posing. You have no idea where they spend their time.
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Maybe NASA should have planned ahead to make sure they'd have a launch vehicle to reach their expensive ISS?
that's ridiculous. if the US is contributing almost 2x the cash of all the others together it should buy them something. if they're going to be denied seats over a few million, screw the ISS ... we might as well build our own space station.
and also screw sarah brightman.
Re:More important... (Score:4, Informative)
Maybe NASA should have planned ahead to make sure they'd have a launch vehicle to reach their expensive ISS?
that's ridiculous. if the US is contributing almost 2x the cash of all the others together it should buy them something. if they're going to be denied seats over a few million, screw the ISS ... we might as well build our own space station.
and also screw sarah brightman.
If it's true that NASA is missing out on a seat that they need over a few million dollars, they should just pay the few million dollars. A space shuttle launch cost $450M ($1.5B if you count the cost of the shuttles themselves). Assuming a 7 person crew, that's $64M/person. But since a typical ISS crew rotation flight only carried 3 ISS crew members, it's closer to $150M per person to get someone to the ISS (granted, there were other mission specialists and equipment/experiments on the flight). So if you look at the per-person cost of sending astronauts on the space shuttle versus Soyuz, NASA is saving money even at $50M/person.
we might as well build our own space station
If it's true that it cost $175B to build the ISS in the first place where do you think NASA is going to come up with another $175B to build their own? That's almost 10 years of 100% of NASA's current budget. And NASA still has no proven heavy lift capability to launch components into space.
Is spending the next decades NASA budget on a low earth orbit space station really a good use of their money? I'd rather see more exploration farther from the planet.
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If it's true that NASA is missing out on a seat that they need over a few million dollars, they should just pay the few million dollars.
They can't, the Russians decided to "auction" it, and the auction is done, with Brightman having won.
Their last bid might have been a few million dollars less, but that does not mean that they would have won if they placed a bid for a few more million.
It's possible Brightman was willing to pay 10, 20, 30, 40 more million.
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Re:More important... (Score:5, Insightful)
No its ridiculous (and yet another example of the idiotic entitlement mentality destroying this once great nation) to think that somehow the US deserves seats on the Soyuz because we helped build the ISS. We (the US) had a ride to space. It was our own pimped out space taxi. We no longer have that ride... by choice, by design, by policy, yada yada. It's not Russia's job to drive us to work just because we decided to scrap our old ride BEFORE building a new one. You want to do something (possibly) productive? Write to your representatives in .gov and tell them NASA needs more $.
Re:More important... (Score:5, Funny)
we might as well build our own space station.
With blackjack! And hookers!
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It is a seat on the flight, not a position on the space station. The Russians can do whatever they want with their launch program. The ISS is different.
Yeah, but the point of the flight, is those on it will have access to the ISS. So... restrict access to step aboard the ISS to scientists, and suddenly, the "tourist" demand for seats on the flight should be zero
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Yeah, but the point of the flight, is those on it will have access to the ISS.
As far as I know, previous space tourists had no access to American part of ISS, only russian one. NASA controls only part of station.
Re:More important... (Score:5, Insightful)
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I'm not necessarily commenting on the ethical implications of downloading or even the ethical implications of the RIAA suing you, but it's worth pointing out that there most professional musicians probably shouldn't be lumped in with mega rich artists.
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Where did you learn that? The data I have disagrees [imgur.com]: income from recorded music is falling, but live shows more than make up for that, leaving artists better off in total.
Do you have contradictory data?
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Where did you learn that? The data I have disagrees [imgur.com]: income from recorded music is falling, but live shows more than make up for that, leaving artists better off in total.
...if they do live shows.
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If they don't... are they still considered to be working to earn their living?
I still wish I could be paid residuals for doing a job once... for the rest of my life...
- Toast
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The fact is people appreciate what she did and are willing to pay for it.
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Re:More important... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Indeed. $50 million could build hundreds of homes for humanity. I guess it's more important to blow the money hauling her worthless ass into orbit. I hope she gets spacesick and dies.
Re:More important... (Score:5, Insightful)
What's this obsession with charity? The $50 million can also pay for hundreds of jobs in the Russian aerospace industry. Those people can then use their salaries to buy houses. Granted, she's quite literally going to be burning a lot of the money, but it's not like it will all just disappear from the economy. Even the rocket fuel is employing oil industry workers.
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It's hundreds of people working just to put one rich person in space. It's beyond extravagant. It's an obscene waste of time, effort and natural resources.
I'm not obsessed with charity, I'm just illustrating the economics of this little joyride.
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It's hundreds of people working just to put one rich person in space. It's beyond extravagant. It's an obscene waste of time, effort and natural resources.
Those hundreds of people who are getting paid to do the work, might beg to differ. It might be extravagant, but Brightman's extravegance means that they get to work and put food on their table, possibly some of those people would be hungry, looking for a job if not for the "beyond extravaganct" person's huge cash purchase....
Actually, that X milli
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They would have the work anyway except they would be doing it for something more useful than pleasing some twit. All she did was deprive NASA of the ability to do science and ensure that the seat will be for naught. You're just trying to rationalize her selfish and wasteful behavior.
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Except they'd be doing it for less. That's kind of how a bidding process works.
But hey maybe one day when you have some money you too can realise your dream and some other sore loser on the net can bitch and moan about you being a drain on society simply because you can afford to do something.
Re:More important... (Score:5, Insightful)
Lots of things are a waste of time and resources - or worse. I drive automobiles, despite the horrific toll they take on the environment and our lives. And this is mostly just to improve my standard of living. I keep my house heated to about 70 degrees, when I don't need anywhere near that amount of heat to survive. I eat meat, which costs something like 7 times the amount of grain that is necessary for me to live comfortably. I run the A/C sometimes in the summer, for no reason other than comfort. Occasionally I take a boat ride, for no reason other than pleasure. I just re-did a perfectly livable room in my house because it looked "dated", and I'm going to pull out a perfectly serviceable bathroom for the same reason. I wash my clothes just so they smell nice. I have clothes that I only wear on special occasions. I buy toys that I don't really need. I use disposable batteries. I post on Slashdot. My engineering job is in the microelectronics industry, which is almost entirely composed of sales of consumer toys. You are playing with one of them right now. I waste resources all the time - who the hell am I to judge Sarah Brightman?
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Yeah, rocket fuel. It's like a form of kerosene. It doesn't have the punch of hydrogen, but it is much more stable. The Merlin engine used on the Falcon 9 uses the same fuel.
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It doesn't have the punch of hydrogen
Yeah, the 7.65 million pounds of hydrogen powered peak thrust from the Saturn V rocket [youtube.com] was truly something to see. It was like nothing else either before or since.
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The tsar bomba's energy output was over 50 terawatt hours (210 petajoules), which equals global electricity generation output for an entire day.
Did this bomb have moving parts? A cleverly assembled explosive device may or may qualify as a machine, depending upon one's definition of the word, but I doubt that this bomb contained any mechanical mechanisms as complex as the turbopumps on the rocket engines for example.
Mod up! (Score:2)
Ignition is a fabulous read. I thought nobody else knew about it. Thanks.
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Yes, I'm $10 guilty and she's $50,000,000 guilty.
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As a ratio of net worth, that probably makes you more guilty than her.
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She did the space opera in Fifth Element
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Oops, no, wait, she didn't... it was some Albanian soprano with a French actress doing the blue Diva thing.
Geez, it's like I'm some sort of repository of common misconceptions on the internet lately...
OK, I'm with you... I have no idea who Sarah Brightman is. But I do have one of her albums "Harem". It's not very interesting compared to Tori Amos or even the real middle eastern stuff I listen to.
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More more importantly... where can I get 0.32% of this kind of money? It would make me debt free and radically change the lifestyle (health, stress, etc.) for my family right now. Hell, 0.1% as an interest free lone would do the same thing but take about 5-6 more years to complete the transition. Straight out giving the 0.1%: 3-4 years.
TLDR; 0.1% of the cost of this joyride could completely change the lives of a family in fairly short order.
Some may find such news items interesting and even exciting, whereas I (and likely the rest of the 97+%) find it extremely depressing.
One way would be to work for a company that is developing a launch vehicle that can take passengers to orbit. Offer to work for little to no wage for now, and take equity in the company instead of salary compensation. If the company succeeds then you'll have your money.
I bet that $50M will enhance the lives of more Russian families than it would if it were split among American families. Much of that $50M is spent on labor to build the spacecraft, extract raw materials, refine rocket fuel, etc. Most American
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you seem to forget the ISS wouldn't exist if it wasn't for the US's contributions (which are nearly 2x everyone else put together). how many russian workers benefited from jobs related to the ISS?
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I bet that $50M will enhance the lives of more Russian families than it would if it were split among American families.
In practical terms, though, I bet $50M given to the Russian space agency will go to about 3-4 families who combined already probably have half the net worth or Russia.
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TLDR; 0.1% of the cost of this joyride could completely change the lives of a family in fairly short order.
That is not how money works.
Start by reviewing the studies of what happens to lottery winners.
Finish by worrying more about the contents of your own bank account and less about other peoples'.
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Start by reviewing the studies of what happens to lottery winners.
Are you referring to what lottery winners choose to do with money?
Because you would not be talking about how money works at all, but human behavior.
Currency is very simple, and obeys basic laws of arithmetic, that is, unless you are a Government or Bank, where you can leverage the money, make virtual money out of thin air, and V2P in the amounts required.
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I bet there's quite a few people who would spend close to their entire net worth to get to space. I probably would. What's the point of having so much money if you can't do something really cool with it?
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NASA does not own space. They don't even own the International Space Station (note the name). They certainly don't own Soyuz.
except, NASA did primarily pay for the ISS. it wouldn't exist if they hadn't funded it.
sure they don't own it, but something is very wrong if scientifically significant personel are bumped for a singer who will contribute *nothing* to the further the science for which the ISS was built in the first place.
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That's obviously not true. First, as a US citizen with at least $50M in assets (or, I suppose, credit) she pays a decent amount in taxes, which are what funds NASA itself (how much goes to it is not her decision). Secondly, she's paying $50M to a Space Agency that NASA nows depends upon, so she's helping fund the necessary traveling arrangements to perform that science.
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Still, there should be a little decency and humility applied. Just because you have the money to think, "Well...NASA could use that seat to further its long term space health effects research...OR I get to say 'Ooooooooh pretty blue ball!'" doesn't mean you should actually do it, let alone that you should be admired for doing it.
So yeah, it's a bit more than egotistical and a lot fucked up. Besides, there other space tourism options out there that don't require bumping legitimate astronauts from doing resea
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"Well...NASA could use that seat to further its long term space health effects research...
It doesn't work that way. To do long-term health research, you need to stay in space long term -- i.e., rotate the crew *less* often.
Besides, there other space tourism options out there that don't require bumping legitimate astronauts from doing research on the ISS.
(Horrible analogy time! It's like if someone outbids someone else for a surgery slot just for the sake of it.
Do you really believe someone is "illegitimate" just because she isn't a government employee? Are you going to drive on your next vacation instead of taking a plane? Because a surgeon might want to occupy that seat, so decency and humility require you to give it up? Or could the airline just sell the seat to whoever's willing to pay the most for it?
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According to TFA NASA wanted to use that seat to send another astronaut up to the ISS for a year long stay. A year long stay seems to qualify for *less* often. It, however, doesn't mention how long this singer was planning on staying up there but I can't imagine she'll want the extended visit.
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I had a dream that we would leave that childish concept of ownership back on earth, and that in space everyone would be provided for according to need.
So did the Soviets, until their economic system collapsed.
Re:How the hell can you bump NASA? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Remember when you were a kid and had to borrow your parents car? You don't like the rules, buy your own.
It's more like: remember when you were a parent, your car broke down and you decided not to replace it, but on occasion you reached an agreement with your next door neighbor, to pay them to take you along on their trip and drop you off in town.
But one day one of your teenaged kids offered to pay them more, and their car had only one seat available, so the kid won you didn't get to go where you
Re:How the hell can you bump NASA? (Score:5, Insightful)
How?
The wonders of capitalism, that's how.
Shouldn't every American commenting in this thread be celebrating that communism is dead, and the invisible hand of the market is guiding the Russians?
Or does that only apply when it benefits the US?
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This is supply and demand in action. The Russians have been granted a (possibly temporary) monopoly on the supply of transport services to the International Space Station. They have in turn, decided to sell seats to the highest bidder. The Russians have been selling access to the ISS for some time now, and it is not their problem that NASA has decided to discard their manned spaceflight capabilities with no alternate method of getting there.
I do not believe that the United States has any kind of say over
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Also, you may be the last generation of nerd who hasn't heard of her:
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She's no Linda Eder [youtube.com] but she's relatively hot and probably got a lot of money from Weber. And as a non-fan I couldn't be happier for his loss. Phantom is the worst insult to music since someone farted Happy Birthday. Which may have gotten better reviews if it had been repeatable.
Last time I transposed, that was a high F#, but if I got it wrong worst case it's an E.
Either way, Russians will take the money and run. Let Congress explain how a Diva can out-bid the fucking "National Aeronautics and Space Adm
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And as a non-Webber fan I couldn't be happier for his loss. Phantom is the worst insult to music since someone farted Happy Birthday.
Phantom was the most successful show in history based on its own artistic merits... e.g., not as a result of some marketing trick, captive audience, vendor lock-in, or government-granted monopoly. Perhaps it is your definition of music (or the standards by which you judge it) that needs to be reassessed. Just because something is popular doesn't mean it is wrong.
(Though if you're feeling snobbish, you might want to dig up Harold Bloom's opinion piece on the Harry Potter novels, entitled "Can 35 Million B
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The money may not all be hers. She may have sponsorship. Some of the citizen explorers who've visited ISS previously had sponsors.
Also, those celebrity wealth lists are not always accurate. Rich people don't provide financial disclosure forms unless they're running for public office.
News stories aren't always accurate, either.