You literally can’t pay Kevin Hart to give space tourism a try right now: the actor says someone offered him money if he’d fly to space, and he turned it down. It’s not safe enough, he explains.
July was the month when the first two commercial flights to the edge of space took place: Sir Richard Branson in the Unity 22 spaceplane from Virgin Galactic, and Jeff Bezos on the New Shepard rocket from Blue Origin. Both aircraft were built with the billionaires’ money (we can’t call them astronauts, the FAA says) and both hope to pave the way for space tourism.
Whereas spots on either aircraft are currently accessible only to the richest wannabe space explorers, it seems that at least one space company is looking to launch celebrities into space – or to the edge of it, more like it. Kevin Hart says that he was approached by one company and offered money to fly with them.
Speaking on his Sirius XM show Straight from the Hart (hat tip to CinemaBlend), Hart doesn’t name the company or the amount they were willing to throw in his general direction. He does say, however, that he would have been training with the team for “like 30, 45 days” for a “60- to 90-minute trip,” so we can safely rule out Blue Origin. Their suborbital flight is only 11 minutes long and training is a matter of a couple of days, since the New Shepard if autonomous.
Hart says the idea was for the company to document the celebrity experience of space travel. He didn’t even consider it because, he explains, space travel is just too damn risky at this moment.
“I said, ‘I would love to know the record of space shuttles that made it versus the ones that didn't. What's the record of success versus non-success?’ And that's my reason. That number's too close. It’s not a crazy upside-down number one way or the other. It’s too f***ing close. And that's that for me,” Hart explains.
Ashton Kutcher also backed out of a scheduled flight for the same reason: he’s a family man and space travel is simply not wise. Like Kutcher, Hart says he’ll reconsider once he’s older and he’s “seen all the flowers bloom.”
Whereas spots on either aircraft are currently accessible only to the richest wannabe space explorers, it seems that at least one space company is looking to launch celebrities into space – or to the edge of it, more like it. Kevin Hart says that he was approached by one company and offered money to fly with them.
Speaking on his Sirius XM show Straight from the Hart (hat tip to CinemaBlend), Hart doesn’t name the company or the amount they were willing to throw in his general direction. He does say, however, that he would have been training with the team for “like 30, 45 days” for a “60- to 90-minute trip,” so we can safely rule out Blue Origin. Their suborbital flight is only 11 minutes long and training is a matter of a couple of days, since the New Shepard if autonomous.
Hart says the idea was for the company to document the celebrity experience of space travel. He didn’t even consider it because, he explains, space travel is just too damn risky at this moment.
“I said, ‘I would love to know the record of space shuttles that made it versus the ones that didn't. What's the record of success versus non-success?’ And that's my reason. That number's too close. It’s not a crazy upside-down number one way or the other. It’s too f***ing close. And that's that for me,” Hart explains.
Ashton Kutcher also backed out of a scheduled flight for the same reason: he’s a family man and space travel is simply not wise. Like Kutcher, Hart says he’ll reconsider once he’s older and he’s “seen all the flowers bloom.”