Even in a town that's seen it all, the pitch being shopped around Hollywood seemed almost too good to be true. An astro-tribe of 20 strangers would go through weeks of grueling astronaut training, competing on prime-time, network TV for a chance to fly in space. An identical deal had just been inked by NBC, but the winner of that competition would be rocketing off to Russia's rust-bucket Mir space station. The new show's winner would be riding in comparative luxury aboard NASA's spanking new--if eternally under-construction--International Space Station.
The Survivor-in-space show was being pitched by Dreamtime Holdings, a Silicon Valley...