Space, The Final Shopping Frontier Mir Items To Be Peddled On Television

For the ailing Russian space program, it has come to this: Cosmonauts aboard Mir will appear on a home shopping channel to sell meteorites, spacesuits and other out-of-this-world items.

The cosmonauts will be seen early Saturday on QVC, the channel that sold Muhammad Ali’s Michigan farm and nearly clinched a deal for the Brooklyn Bridge.

Two cosmonauts will appear live by satellite from the orbiting Mir while ex-flight engineer Alexander Lazutkin offers further comments from the stage of a comedy club in Manhattan.

On Thursday, the 40-year-old Lazutkin lounged in a Times Square hotel lobby looking out on the city he previously had seen only from space. “It is one of the brightest,” he said.

He arrived from Russia with a glove - a thoroughly used one from his 186 days aboard the oft-troubled Mir space station. The three spacesuits to be sold on TV also were worn on the Mir, but were obtained from other sources, QVC producer Terry Torok said.

Although the shopping channel paid his way, “I didn’t come here to sell,” Lazutkin said through an interpreter. “I came to educate the public - that’s my primary role.”

Just what the Russians get is unclear. On Thursday, Fred Siegel, QVC’s senior vice president and executive producer, said some proceeds would be donated to the country’s space program, which has been squeezed financially since the downfall of the Soviet Union.

It’s just the latest commercial venture for the Russian space program and cosmonauts who grew up under Soviet communism. In July, a month after Mir collided with a cargo ship, commander Vasily Tsibliyev swallowed a floating blob of milk for an Israeli dairy commercial.

Two days ago, Russian space chief Yuri Koptev told the ITAR-Tass news agency that Mir would be used regularly as an advertising prop.

“It doesn’t make any difference for us what to advertise - cars or foodstuff. The only condition is that advertising doesn’t contradict legal and ethical norms,” Koptev said.

Mir mission control spokesman Vsevolod Latyshev declined comment Thursday. “We just control the flights,” he said.

QVC’s legion of insomniacs and shopaholics will be offered a crack at items like tiny Mars rocks, encased in plastic cubes. QVC claims they are “among 12 known to exist” on Earth.

There are 15 meteorites at prices ranging from $850 to $2,500. And buyers can plunk down $25,000 for each of three Russian-made Sokol KV-2 spacesuits - the type worn by cosmonauts and American astronauts during spacewalks outside Mir. Each weighs 22 pounds and comes with boots, gloves, pressurized hood and “all the fittings,” QVC said.

The least exotic items? U.S.-made “space pens,” already available at some earthly outlets. The Mir cosmonauts’ job will be to demonstrate how the pens write at any angle without gravity.

“We built a 20,000-square-foot house in our studio to demonstrate home products,” Siegel said. “If you want to demonstrate a space pen, where else would you go but space?”

Siegel dreamed up earlier sales ranging from dinosaur eggs and the Ali farm, to $25,000 for adopt-a-highway space on the Brooklyn Bridge. New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani scotched that one, at least temporarily.

Andrew Thomas, the American astronaut now aboard Mir, will not take part in the latest sales promotion.