Brad Pitt and Angelia Jolie: your fellow passengers into space
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Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are reportedly among the 700 people who have paid a quarter of a million dollars to be on board one of the first Virgin Galactic flights into space. Given that this is likely to involve spending long periods in a cramped space together, it's safe to assume they made these reservations before beginning their divorce proceedings.
If you're keen to join Pitt and Jolie in becoming one of Virgin Galactic's "global community of future astronauts" which is, according to the company's website, "the most exciting club on earth" then you need only fill in a short form on the site. Oh, and tick a box confirming that you have the up-front deposit of $250,000.
Although Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Galactic, "has a history of publicly declaring ambitious timelines for the company", he now predicts that the firm will be able to fly tourists to space as early as 2018, says Calla Cofield on Space.com. Branson's SpaceShipTwo space plane will serve primarily as a vehicle for tourists that will take customers on "brief flights" to an altitude of over 68 miles (over the boundary between the earth's atmosphere and space).
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In April this year Branson told The Daily Telegraph that he would be "disappointed" if he did not get to take a trip abroad a SpaceShipTwo vehicle by the end of next year. Other celebrities who have apparently already paid for a spot on a Virgin Galactic flight include Ashton Kutcher, Tom Hanks, Katy Perry and Paris Hilton.
Branson isn't the only billionaire who plans to fly non-astronauts (with enough spare cash) to space. If Elon Musk's space travel company, SpaceX, bucks the trend set by Musk's other firm Tesla lately and manages to keep to schedule, it will be sending two private citizens on a trip around the moon next year.The company has not revealed the price of the roughly week-long trip, but it says that the passengers have paid a "significant deposit", and Musk called the cost "comparable" to that of sending astronauts to the International Space Station, says The Guardian.
That's not cheap: Nasa pays Russia's space agency around $70m per person to fly astronauts there. But if your budget doesn't stretch that far, there's no need to worry. In an attempt to bring down costs, Virgin Galactic is currently building two more SpaceShipTwo vehicles. "We need to get those price points down," says Mike Moses, president of Virgin Galactic and former Nasa shuttle launch manager. "Space is expensive."
Some of the celebrities who have been named in the Paradise Papers must surely fancy a trip to space right now to get away from the headlines. They include Formula One driver Lewis Hamilton (who apparently avoided a £3.3m VAT bill on a £16.5m private jet imported from Canada by briefly flying it to the Isle of Man to register it there) and three of the stars of BBC sitcom Mrs Brown's Boys (who apparently steered around £2m of their earnings into an offshore tax-avoidance scheme). Still, it is easy to feel the latter are getting treated a bit harshly by the press. Surely starring in that show is punishment enough?
Tabloid money "I can forgive Bono for his tax dodge, but not his hypocrisy"
I can forgive U2 singer Bono who is one of the celebrities exposed in the Paradise Papers data leak for his tax dodge, but not for his hypocrisy, says James Delingpole in The Sun. "In the preachy pop bore's case, it really couldn't have happened to a more deserving person."
Bono is "forever using emotional blackmail to make starstruck governments spend our money on his worthy causes", blaming the poverty of African countries on the fact that greedy companies such as Exxon Mobil are not paying their proper share of tax locally. Bono is a "self-proclaimed philanthropist", conservatively estimated as being worth £531m. "So why won't he put his money where his opinionated mouth is?"
"I was not at all surprised to read that Alex Jones assumed' she was on the same salary as her One Show co-host Matt Baker," says Karren Brady in The Sun. Baker does "exactly the same job" as his female counterpart, but the notorious BBC report on how much its entertainers are paid revealed that he gets paid £50,000 more than Jones. "In a fair world, why wouldn't Alex assume they were paid the same? I hope the situation has now been rectified[but] either way, we need to stop assuming and start asking."
US socialite Heather Kerzner could lose millions after bankrolling disgraced PR firm Bell Pottinger shortly before it went bust, says Sebastian Shakespeare in the Daily Mail. Kerzner is "rebuilding her life" following a "horrendous" time after fianc James Henderson quit his job as chief executive of the company. Kerzner has hired a dispute-resolution lawyer to explore whether she can recover any of the "substantial sum" she has lost. Her options may see her suing Bell Pottinger's former directors, including the man she plans to marry. The couple have since postponed their wedding.
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