I cannot reveal everything about it at the moment. We want curiosity about that question to drive people to our channel to download the show when its available. I can say that, like regular football, it will consist of two teams with several downs in which they can score. Scoring is not like in regular football though, and there obviously cannot be tackling as that would require gravity. Each down is about 30 seconds long, and we want the whole parabolic arc to be used for play. Having a touchdown in the first 3 seconds and not use the remaining 27 seconds for anything would not work for this game. So we will allow continuous scoring by a side until the down is over, so that they have the incentive to keep moving, keep scoring. There is more to the point system, but I shall keep quiet about for now.

We still have to test a few things about the game, including our substitute for tackling, and how many downs to give a team before play switches to the other side. I'd guess at about 3 downs, like in Canadian football. Or it may be just one down. Another question is the game long enough? We might have to fly twice -- two halves of about 30 downs each -- to make up a game with two 15 minute halves. It may be that we'll have two flights per game for the ZGSL, but only a single flight for each game of the Space Champions show. We plan to test all this out in May and June.

One thing we cannot really test until we've had many flights accomplished is if we can increase the number of parabolas per flight. NASA used to fly about 60 to 80 parabolas per flight for their "Vomit Comet". The Zero Gravity Corporation has discovered that above about 40 parabolas a lot of people will lose their lunch. Keep it below that number and the incidence level drops dramatically, to about one in thirty or better. They normally fly 15 to 20 parabolas on their Zero Gravity Experience flights. Our games will have at least 30, and I want to push it to 60 if I can. That will depend on the athletes we get. People who have done multiple ZG flights will get used to it, so they won't likely get airsick. The open question is if that means we can increase the number of parabolas for them. It's going to be trial and error on that, because nobody's every done as many flights for as many parabolas as we want to try. We'll work them up for 20 or 30 parabolas on their first training flights, to 30 and 40 parabolas in their latter games. There are also pharmaceutical solutions to airsickness that anyone may use and are quite effective.

2) How much will operating costs be per game played in zero-G environment?

It's actually not much, if you consider that we don't require a multi-million dollar football stadium. I'm not positive my agreement with ZG will allow me to talk about prices. I purchase flights from them at a discount, and in volume it become even cheaper. By creating this show and this league, we will be more than double ZG's business, and therefore drive down the prices a lot -- permanently. This show will make the individual seat on a Zero Gravity Experience flight, which IPXN also sells, much cheaper than it is currently. I'm excited by how cheaper it will get! It will prove that sports entertainment is the best way to bring about the space tourism market; as more and more people benefit from those lower prices, we will benefit as well. So the operating costs for the game is not a final, fixed price. The production budget for the reality show, on the other hand, if you can exclude the cost of the flights in the equation, will be between $200,000 and $300,000 per episode. Reality shows are really cheap to produce. I expect the entire Space Champions first season to cost no more than $20 million for all 8 teams, plus the cost of the cash MVP awards.

Teams will be created in pairs, so we are starting with the Toronto Astronauts and the Los Angeles Invaders, in about 16 episodes. Three more pairs of teams will take it to 64 episodes. I don't expect everyone interested will watch every episode, so we are going to choose athletes from several countries around the world for the eight teams, concentrating on the American, Canadian, British, French, German, and Japanese markets. We'll probably have two American teams in the first eight, the second one most likely a New York team.

3) What are the salaries going to be for athletes?

I plan to sell off the teams to interested investors, so salaries will be up to the new team owners, while I concentrate on expanding the league. For the Space Champions show, there will be a cash prize for the Most Valuable Player, based on their performance in the game and votes by their fellow teammates. If IPXN retains ownership of any of the teams, we'll offer a fair salary most probably tied to the success of the league, as a percentage of profits as calculated from the previous year's performance. Each team will be run as its own business (to make it easy to sell off teams), so the team's salary will depend on its profitability. This makes local sponsorship and size of the local audience important.

4) Has the league structure been determined?

When the League gets going, it'll be the eight teams competing in a 28 game round robin, then a 7 game elimination tournament, for a total of 35 games in the ZGSL season. As we expand the league the following year, we'll have a longer season, and regional divisions. We hope to create a North American division, an Asian division and a European division, that will feed into a World Championships.

5) What kind of accomodations will be available for spectators, if any?

None, unfortunately. There isn't any room on the aircraft for more than 30 seats just off the end zone, and most of those seats will be taken by the 14 athletes per game, several coaches and production crew. We might be able to squeeze a few spectators in there, but it isn't a priority to do so. Tickets sales to games are not where most of the money in sports comes from. It is logo / product placement, and television advertisement revenue that brings in the majority of money. Ticket sales mainly go to pay for the stadium costs and other operating expenses. I suppose if there are some rich spectators willing to pay $10,000 for a seat I'd entertain the idea. The game is mainly for our viewers on SpaceChannel.TV.

On the other hand, the possibility of broadcasting live from the aircraft down to a stadium full of people watching on a jumbotron big screen could be explored, but this is a huge expense to set up. We might try it for the championships of the ZGSL. If so, then the most likely place to do that is at the X-Prize Cup which is down in Las Cruces, New Mexico every year starting this October. I haven't talk to the X-Prize people about that yet, but I will talk to them about holding the championships there in 2007.

6) Will your P2P network, spacechannel.tv, be the only avenue for IPX programming?

We are open to co-productions with other groups, so that we retain the internet delivery rights and they have other rights, like broadcast, theatrical or DVD distribution, but I haven't approached anyone about that yet. For now, spacechannel.tv will be the only way anyone will get to see Space Champions.

Subscribers will be able to open an account with us for as little as $10, with which they'll get 100 credits they may use to add any video we offer to their library. The cost of each video will depend on the type of show -- reality show, sports game, science fiction film or documentary. We estimate that an episode of Space Champions would cost about 20 credits, which is equivalent to $2 per episode. After they have an account, they may either add additional credits by purchasing them directly, or go to our advertising page to watch video ads in exchange for credits added to their account. We will contract with several ad networks to provide the video ads, and the networks will pay IPXN per thousand impressions. We pay on the equivalent earn in credits directly to the subscriber, who may need to watch several 30-second ads to earn one credit. The amount will fluctuate based on which ad is being viewed. A typical hour of broadcast television has about 15 to 18 minutes of ads, consisting of about 30 to 40 ads, so about 2 ads per credit. We will strive to make it so that viewers may watch fewer than that many to earn enough credits to watch an hour of our programming; for now, it will probably be in the 4 ads per credit range. There will be no difference in a credit paid for by cash or earned through watching ads, so subscribers may do both at any time to top up their account.

7) What TV distributors have you been in contact with?

A few Canadian ones mainly, who are more interest in science fiction rather than space-themed reality TV or documentaries, but I have a few projects in mind that they may be interested in. That will wait on the back burner until SpaceChannel and Space Champions are off to a roaring start.

8) What other content will be produced for spacehannel.tv?

I could tell you some exciting ideas for content, but none of it will go ahead until Space Champions is a success and we have a large enough subscriber base to support additional programs. One thing is I'd like to SpaceChannel to sponsor a team in the Rocket Racing League, and create a reality show around pilot-contestants competing to join our team and race it for us in the league. The other major project, which will require about $25 million to produce, is a science fiction anthology series that... well, I'll have to keep that under wraps for now, but it's exciting. I have a few major scriptwriters, who've worked on popular sci-fi shows in the past, who when I talked to express a lot of interest in the concept and wanted to be a part of it if the money comes together.

There is also several documentaries we have in mind. Currently filming is a doc about a crew that my other company, Interplanetary Expeditions Inc, has sponsored to conduct training and research at the Mars Desert Research Station, in Utah. That documentary will be the first production to appear on spacechannel.tv, and that should be ready in the summer, before our official content launch date for Space Champions.

9) Do you have concrete launch dates for these ventures?

We have a launch date some time in late March, probably March 31st, for SpaceChannel.TV to start taking subscribers.

We have a great promotion to offer to our subscribers that will give them the chance to win a suborbital flight into space. As you may know, suborbital flight is not energetic enough for an spacecraft to stay in space, but it is above the atmosphere of our planet Earth, when space is said to begin at 100 km altitude. A suborbital flight provides about 5 minutes of weightlessness, and a hell of a view. Our Zero Gravity flights are parabolic flights that simulate weightlessness by the flight pattern of the airplane within an atmosphere diving at a 45 degree angle, providing about 30 seconds of weightlessness. So when I mention a chance for at least a half dozen of our subscribers to win a prize of a suborbital flight, I am talking actually going into space on a real spacecraft. That's all I can say for now on that promotion; in a few weeks, we'll be able to announce it with all the details. A few months after that, we will also begin to offer Zero Gravity Experience flights as secondary prizes, to send thousands of our subscribers on frees ride aboard the G-Force-One airplane, the same one that our Paraball games will be played on.

Space Champions will film this summer, and episodes will be made available to our subscribers beginning in September.
Other than that, I can't give concrete dates.

10) How long can a zero-G environment be continuously generated for?

See above. In parabolic flight, it's about 30 seconds.

11) What developments do you see in space tourism and development in the next five years? In the next ten?

As you can imagine, we are working very hard to bring about, with our partners in the commercial space tourism industry, a revolution in the private sector to eventually allow thousands of people to have these kinds of experiences. We're using the economics of the entertainment industry to make space tourism, space exploration, and space entertainment cheap and affordable, and an everyday occurrence. We have bigger things in mind. I believe that space sports and space entertainment will be the primary way to crack open the space tourism market. The success of our business model will is based on offering new experiences for viewers and participants in our sports leagues and reality shows, so we have an economic incentive to dare to create greater, more ambitious entertainment productions as quickly as possible.

In the process, we will be giving away to our viewers rides on suborbital and parabolic flights. In the next five years we will have given away parabolic flights to over ten thousand people, and suborbital flights to about a hundred people or more. Add to that the people given rides by other entertainment companies, and those able to purchase their own flights, then the total numbers will be in the five digits. In five years, the first heavy-life orbital vehicles operated by companies like SpaceX will be available, as well as the first inflatable space stations, such as those now being designed and tested by Bigelow Aerospace. In five years it may be possible to hold the championship game of the ZGSL in space. The broadcast rights would be worth billions of dollars in advertising revenue, and I can see a big television/internet network that loses its bid for the rights to broadcast the Olympics, picking up the rights to air a two week ZGSL championship tournament instead.

There are many private entrepreneurs working on suborbital and orbital vehicles for commercial spaceflight. Not all will succeed, but technology aside, I believe it will only be those who have a suborbital business will make orbital personal spaceflight reliable, affordable and profitable. We need the suborbital business to finance the business of getting into orbit and back. We need the entertainment business to bring in the advertising revenue to support parabolic, suborbital, and orbital personal spaceflight.


Let me speculate what could happen after that. In ten years, suborbital courier delivery will be a common thing, getting an important document or package from New York to Beijing in less than two hours. A fleet of executive class suborbital vehicles could be owned by the CEOs of the world's richest companies to fly themselves across the globe in less than two hours for face to face business meetings. Hundreds of people will have won a ride into orbit, while thousands more will have purchased their own flights. In ten years, IPX Entertainment could be planning a reality show set on the moon, while the International Olympic Committee will be considering bids from alliances of governments and corporations to host the world's first Space Olympics. It would be a great idea to bring the Olympic spirit into space, to build an international community against the potential militarization of space, and open up commercial opportunities for all nations.

12) When can you forsee space tourism becoming accessible for the economic middle class?

Prices for suborbital flight are going for around $200k now, and thousands of people have put a down-payment on these, including a honeymoon couple who are part of the economic middle class. When the price drops to $50,000, which I'd guess would happen in five years, that begins to be in the range that someone of modest means could save up for as a gift to themselves or a loved one for their retirement. To make it really accessible, it will have to cost not much more than a round-trip flight from North America to Australia, which is about $2000. I'd say at about $10,000 there will be millions of people purchasing suborbital flights. I can't imagine when that will happen, but I can say we can hasten that time through the entertainment market. Reality shows, suborbital races, etc., will make it a billion-dollar industry. Corporations such as mine will buy flights as an expense associated with producing those shows, and we'll also continue to give away rides -- driving the price down with volume. Giving away flights are part of our promotion is an easy way to make it accessible. As long as we have subscribers, we'll be able to do this.

I have come up with a way to make an amateur tournament (separate from the professional league) economically viable and affordable to anybody who wants to participate, but it will require a lot of time for those people to invest.

Here's how: at http://coliseum.spacechampions.com we have a forum for anyone to discuss various topics related to space entertainment, space sports, space exploration, space tourism and science fiction -- all the areas that IPX Entertainment concerns itself with. We want to build a community there. We want to reward people participating in that community, those who become through their participation well respected by their peers. We will allow voting by the community to decide which of them should be given a shot to join a team our Amateur Paraball Tournament. As they form teams, each team will be given a different ad-channel to raise money to support the costs. Ads on spacechannel's website are 15 and 30 second video ads which normally earns a subscriber credits on their account. For these special team ad-channels we will create, community members who want to support a team will watch video ads to raise the $100,000 entry fee each team needs to provide, and instead of going into their personal spacechannel accounts, the credits will go to the team's account. At that amount, an 8-team elimination tournament is affordable. $100,000 in ads is about 2000-4000 ads watched by 1000 people. Over a one-year period that is about 5 minutes per day. If there is more than 1000 people supporting the team, then the money would be generated faster. The more people watching the ads, the more each person earns per ad. (This is based on what advertiser are willing to pay.) The first 8 teams to do raise that amount would get to play in the tourament; the other teams would be allowed to keep raising money by getting their supporters to watch the ads, so that they'll be able to play in subsequent tournaments. This idea is not for making profits for IPXN, but just to allow our subscribers a chance to play Paraball themselves. The entry fee will be tied to the cost of the flights required for a 7-game elimination tournament. We will also produce videos for these tournament and make these available on SpaceChannel, and all profits would be given to a team's choice in charities. The only way IPXN will benefit from this is the good will it creates in our subscriber community; how increasing the numbers of viewers watching ads will make our sponsors pay more for our viewer's attention (which benefits our subscribers directly by reducing the amount of ads they have to watch to earn the equivalent in credits), and how the increased number of flights purchased will inevitably drive down the operating costs for them. It's win-win-win for everyone.


There is no cost to join the community as our Space Champions Coliseum. If a large interest from members emerges, we will begin offering the amateur tournaments as quickly as possible.