NASA rebuked its multimedia partner Dreamtime in a letter Thursday, September 21, saying that the multimedia company "shall, at no time, represent or claim to represent NASA or act as NASA’s agent" after news broke that Dreamtime misrepresented the space agency in high-level meetings this week.

Moffett Field, California-based Dreamtime met with CBS, ABC and Fox networks early this week to discuss plans for a reality-based TV show involving civilians in space.

NASA officials were less than enthusiastic upon hearing about the meetings, firing off a letter to Dreamtime CEO Bill Foster saying that "NASA has no present plan to participate in a Survivor-type television series."

Late yesterday, NASA was concerned about the strain that the misunderstanding could possibly have on its relationship with Dreamtime.

"NASA is committed to making this unique partnership a success," an agency spokesman at headquarters said. "As with any new venture, there are going to be growing pains."

Bill Foster declined to speak over the phone, referring all calls to his public relations company Porter Novelli. He later responded in a terse one-line statement via e-mail:

Dreamtime’s proposal – which it claimed NASA endorsed -- triggered such excitement among the networks that a bidding war broke out Wednesday night for the rights to create and produce a Survivor-type show aboard the International Space Station, sources close to the negotiations told SPACE.com.

But that bubble burst Thursday when NASA denied that it had any knowledge of the meetings and had not given Dreamtime the nod to negotiate such deals on NASA’s behalf.

"NASA does not know about and hasn’t seen any proposal," said NASA spokesman Bob Jacobs. "The news was shocking."

Sources close to the meetings said that Dreamtime said NASA had approved the meetings and told network officials in the Monday discussions that NASA Administrator Dan Goldin "had signed off on the meetings."

"We have not signed off on any meetings," NASA’s Jacobs said.

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-California), chair of the House space and aeronautics subcommittee, defended Dreamtime's actions. "There's nothing wrong with them expressing their ideas in a very aggressive and idealistic way," Rohrabacher said. "I don't think there's anything malicious about this. I think this is creative people getting excited about an idea. These people -- they're not hucksters, they're idealists. They're good people."

Dreamtime, the Silicon Valley start-up NASA hired to commercialize the Space Station and digitize its archives for the internet, has been going through some growing pains since it came on board this past May.

Some top NASA officials were dismayed when Dreamtime didn't show up at the July launch of the Zvezda service module with an HDTV camera to record the historic event. In addition, Carlton Ruthling, a co-founder of Dreamtime and its president and chief operating officer, left the company abruptly last month.

The company has hired staff to begin digitizing NASA archives at Johnson Space Center (JSC). Executives are pursuing investors and partners to cover the $100 million it has promised to spend. But, its May 17 Commercial Space Act agreement with NASA mentions nothing about negotiating for entertainment deals. Rather, the agreement only mentions documentaries and educational programming.

Even if a Survivor-type show was approved by NASA headquarters, JSC would be hard-pressed to squeeze the contestants into the training flow.

Intensive training is currently underway for eight shuttle crews to support the International Space Station within the next year. The schedule won't likely let up until the station is completed sometime in 2006.

JSC's training facilities include a 40-foot- (12-meter-) deep pool at the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory used to train spacewalkers along with shuttle and station simulators. The training areas are in constant use with little or no slack in the schedule.