The Soyuz rocket can take only three people up into space at a time, and two have to be cosmonauts. You can't build something overnight. Kathuria cited the bureaucracy among NASA officials as the prime reason MirCorp could not work with the space agency, echoing the sentiments of many space enthusiasts and observers. The Space Island Group is not the only company with ideas for commercializing space. Much of the promotion is a marketing gimmick, though.
Users join a buyer's club and are then sent e-mail solicitations by businesses.
If users read the e-mails and visit the firms' Web sites, they get eSpaceTickets in return. The retailers pay fees to the company for sending visitors to their sites. The drawing of lots for the ride on the jet is scheduled between October 4 to 10.