Sarah Brightman Replaced By Kazaknaut
Dragon CRS-5 spacecraft berthed at International Space Station. (Credit: NASA)
This is a bit of a letdown, going from international recording star Sarah Brightman singing on orbit to Kazakhstan’s third ever space traveler:
Kazakhstan’s third ever cosmonaut is set to replace would-be space tourist Sarah Brightman, a British singer who recently backed out of a $52 million seat aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft blasting off in September.
Russian federal space agency Roscosmos confirmed on its official Twitter account Monday that Kazakh cosmonaut candidate Aidyn Aimbetov would be the third man on the short 10-day flight to the International Space Station….
Aimbetov’s journey to space began in 2003, when the Kazakh government began grooming him and another homegrown hopeful for a mission to the ISS. In 2007, the two were sent to Russia for training under Roscosmos’ tutelage, but funding cuts at Kazcosmos grounded them in 2009.
7 responses to “Sarah Brightman Replaced By Kazaknaut”
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Maybe it is good that Sarah didn’t turn into a bolide over Siberia. With people watching it saying:
– Wow, that’s bright, man!
Hehe, that is just… terrible! Very terrible 😀
LMAO.
England and space have a funny relationship. The old empire once wanted to do space by themselves. Now they have odd stuff like Skylon, sub-Virgin, the Beagle crash and a potential singer space tourist. Americans who complain about USA’s space efforts could make themselves feel relatively happy by contemplating for a moment the hopeless mess which is the English correspondent.
Bit of an odd diatribe there comparing one private individual paying for a tourist flight to the space station with the space efforts of an entire nation state.
The UK has never been in the limelight for space matters, but it’s still one of the largest contributors to ESA (with increased commitments to the ISS, the Orion Service module and ExoMars) and has a pretty thriving role in satellite manufacturing as yesterdays news of the Urthecast/SSTL deal shows.
No. According to Jeff Foust’s FIRST UP, he’s still in the rotation, but won’t fly for two to four years.
http://spacenews.com/kazakh…
I can’t seem to find out if she pulled out completely, or just referred her flight. My guess is on the former.