The Sydney Morning Herald has a report about the Starwalker reality show and its suddenly press shy “creator” Jonathan Nolan:

Jonathan Nolan had plans for the world’s most ambitious reality show – a global cross-continent space challenge pitting prospective astronauts against each other for the chance to win two tickets into space. He told media, partners and contestants that he had already secured two seats on Russian Soyuz rockets, had a production partner in Britain and had already obtained from foreign investors the tens of millions of dollars required to get the project, dubbed “Starwalker”, off the ground.

Nolan, 42, an Australian, even appeared on Channel Seven’s Sunrise in a three-minute segment, inviting viewers to sign up as contestants on the show’s website. Today, the project appears to be in tatters, its website is offline and questions are being raised over the whole operation. A former employee claims Nolan has failed to pay him a significant sum of money.

It’s good to see the Australian media beginning to cover a fiasco that readers of Parabolic Arc already know all about. Nolan has made all manner of false and misleading claims while charging contestants a $10 (AUS) feed for registering via text message. He dragged poor Stephen Hawking into this mess, falsely claiming he would serve as a judge. Nolan has raised a lot of false hopes around the world while doing real damage to the emerging commercial space industry.

I’m hoping the authorities in Australia will look into this case and take an action that may be appropriate.

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