2d ago

TIL a TV show tricked people into thinking they'd gone into space

en.wikipedia.org

Space Cadets (TV series) - Wikipedia

The series was a hoax at the expense of its contestants, who were told they were being trained as cosmonauts at a Russian military base before undergoing a five-day trip into low Earth orbit. In reality, the entire series was filmed in Dore, and the contestants did not leave Earth.

16 comments

The Cadets were told that they would be in "near space" (as opposed to "outer space"), causing only a 30% loss of gravity, which was compensated by "gravity generators" built into the ship; this highly improbable explanation was believed.
Mind boggling.
- I...am skeptical that it was actually believed.
  
  I mean 4Chan was possibly able to convince at least some amount of people that iOS 7 update somehow made their iPhone gain water resistance that would trip a hardware "smart switch" built into the phones. Just a numbers game that at least a small amount of people would believe something long enough to not really think about. Though the same can also be applied to convincing folks that other folks were dumb enough to be tricked. Which is still the same result. ¯_ (ツ) _/¯
  
  Gravity at the height of the ISS is still about 90%. It’s only being in orbit that results in free-fall giving a zero-g effect, not so different from those “vomit-comet” flights.
  So if they’d come up with some explanation about it staying up without being at orbital speed it would have been closer to the truth.
  
  Billions of people believe in some kind of magical sky fairy. Just saying.
  
  Yea, me too. More like reality show wannabe's that just went along with it for their 15 minutes.
Wait until you learn about the 'Mars One Project' :)
- Or the "Apollo Project" ;)
Participants: Sarah-Jane Cass, 19, a media studies student from Kent.
I hope she milked the fuck out of that for any papers she needed to write during university, lol. Imagine being able to legitimately cite yourself on a paper.
- Makes me wonder if she knew from the start and went along for the opportunity.
It was a weird show. All the contestants were nice people who reacted well to their situation, and you could see the presenters and guests getting more and more uncomfortable as the week went on - being less and less sure that it actually was funny rather than mean.
The finale was a little anticlimactic as the contestants seemed to have pretty much worked it out. I wonder if they had a little help in that department.
- I ran across a series that used that same idea, only it wasn't a game show https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ascension_(miniseries)
  
  It was a great setup, but ran out of steam in the last episode, I think.
  Also one of Michelle Mylett’s first roles before she went on to star in Letterkenny.

16 comments