"Space Cadets" (2005 - NOT seen in US) Most Expensive Reality Show Prank in TV History

Space Cadets (UK) was said to be the biggest & most expensive hoax in television history (at the time).



(10 Episodes)

Space Cadets -- Ep 1 Pt 1

Rest of the Episodes:

Cadets 2012



A £4.5m stunt to convince three members of the public they were orbiting the Earth in a Russian spacecraft...
...when they were actually in a state-of-the-art Hollywood simulator for five days near Ipswitch.

. . snip . .

Producers: ‘What if we pretended people were going to the moon?’ We all sort of laughed about it, but over the course of months, we talked about whether it would be possible.”

The team decided that, for it to be a plausible expedition, the potential astronauts would have to be sent to Russia, which they also opted to fake (for cost reasons). They set up an old RAF base, 10 miles from Ipswich, to act as a former Soviet space bootcamp, and scaled back the mission from landing on the moon to orbiting the Earth instead.


.............................

In a blacked-out plane, the crew were flown to Krymsk – in reality they just looped around the UK for four hours – and arrived at STAR, the space camp in Suffolk.

A month-long immersion and propaganda campaign then began with lessons that would falsely explain one of the main lies of the project: there would be no zero gravity on their space mission, because they were going into “near space”, rather than outer space.

Things were slowly getting a little more preposterous, but these fake facts were happily accepted by all....



Article on the show (and YT ending):

Ipswich, we have a problem: Space Cadets, the reality show that never left the ground


"That the series was broadcast before we all lived 24/7 on social media was a blessing..."

That and the fact the nation seems to have collectively wiped Space Cadets from its memory.