'Space cadets' prepare for TV hoax blast-off

A new reality TV show is aiming to pull off the biggest hoax in TV history - by persuading a group of Britons that they have been blasted into space.

The new Channel 4 series Space Cadets has been under wraps since the idea first came about 18-months ago.

Nine people will be told they are set to visit the final frontier as space tourists and that in preparation they will undergo intensive training in Russia courtesy of the Space Tourism Agency of Russia, but in reality the groups will be “trained” for space in a disused airbase in a secret location in the UK.

Unbeknown to them, their shuttle will be a Hollywood creation, made originally for the film Space Cowboys.

A giant custom-built screen positioned just outside the shuttle will, it is hoped, provide the illusion of a view of Earth from space including a hurricane over Mexico and a glimpse of the UK on one day when cloud cover parts.

The launch sound has been created by a Hollywood sound specialist while the shuttle will tip and rock in the process.

Channel 4 admits that the joke could be on them if the participants, who are currently being selected from a group holed up in a secret location with no contact with the outside world, cotton on to the stunt.

Three actors have been placed in the group and will be able to report back on whether there are any suspicions.

The final contestants were chosen because they tended not to ask questions, and showed the psychological trait of "suggestibility" during psychological testing.

Participants answered an advert for “thrill-seeking” members of the public to take part in a new TV show.

In order to convince them that they are going to Russia for a fortnight’s training, they will be taken on a helicopter night flight.

But in reality they will fly for hours around the UK, on a carefully mapped flightpath over the sea and unpopulated areas so that they do not recognise anything.

Programme-makers have had to make meticulous changes to ensure their actual destination, the disused military base in the UK, resembles Star City, the cosmonaut training centre in Russia.

Every plug socket, manhole cover and lightbulb has been replaced with the Russian version, and even the smell of cooked cabbage will be introduced.

During their training, 20% of what the participants learn will be fiction and 80% real in preparation for the experiments they will conduct while “orbiting” the Earth.

The producers will not have to worry about recreating weightlessness because they are being “sent” 62 miles (100km) to Near Space, not Deep Space, where the sensation occurs.

Channel 4 took a real astronaut inside the fake shuttle, who told them it looked like the real thing. The cadets will lift off horizontally as on some other space tourist missions.

Programme-makers have created “a cosmos” with the help of Imax technology, but they admit the cadets “may go up there and just say ‘that doesn’t look real’ and have to come back down again”.

The show, presented by Johnny Vaughan, has been created by Endemol, the company behind Big Brother.

Channel 4’s factual entertainment commissioning editor Angela Jain said: “We’ve taken a big risk with Space Cadets, and we don’t know who will have the last laugh.

“But we’re hoping it’s going to be a really entertaining and unique event in the schedule – a real treat in the run-up to Christmas.”

Julian Bellamy, head of factual entertainment, said: “We think this is exactly the sort of thing Channel 4 should be doing.

“We are trying to pull off the biggest practical joke in TV history by convincing them that they will be Britain’s first space tourists.”

Programme chiefs dismissed fears that the contestants could sue as a result of being made the butt of the joke, describing it as “light-hearted fun”.

Sky One recently paid out to contestants of its show Something About Miriam after they threatened legal action for being filmed wooing a pre-operative transsexual they thought was a woman.

Described as a Candid Camera live in space, the cadets will receive £5,000 (€7,300) for every day they spend in “orbit”, but they will not know about the money until the end.

Four of the final line-up will be selected to go on the first “space flight”, including one of the three actors, and more than one flight could take place.

Admitting that the “whole thing could blow at any moment”, the channel has got a stand-in schedule lined up just in case.

The nightly 10-day series begins on December 7 at 9pm.