crew quarters to the outpost last July. Part two of that deal called for the cosmonauts to film and shoot still photos of what turned out to be Usachev's "Pizza Party in Space."
Total cost? "A lot, but less than you'd imagine," Sullivan said.
"We're not disclosing the amount of the contract. That's proprietary," she added. "But the whole relationship -- from putting our logo on the rocket to staking a claim that we are the first company to deliver pizza to the International Space Station or outer space -- is less than an ad for Super Bowl advertising."
When the CBS television network broadcast Super Bowl 35 this year, the going rate for a 30-second spot during the game was about $2.3 million.
Meanwhile, NASA is barred from entering the marketing game.
Space agency officials were approached about the possibility of having U.S. station astronaut Jim Voss take part in the Radio Shack commercial. After all, the company also was sending the American flight engineer a Father's day gift: A talking photo frame with a photo of -- and message from -- his 21-year-old daughter, Kristie.
But NASA's quick but courteous reply was "nyet," said Gump. In a letter obtained by SPACE.com, NASA spaceflight chief Joe Rothenberg told Gump that the agency "remains committed to enabling the commercial development of space and the International Space Station" and that it is "eager to evaluate new approaches."
However, longstanding regulations administered by the U.S. Office of Government Ethics prohibit all federal employees -- including NASA astronauts -- from appearing in commercial advertisements or endorsing commercial products, Rothenberg wrote.
That regulation and other related policies, meanwhile, are under review by both NASA and the Bush administration, which took office in January. The aim: to conduct "an agency-wide evaluation of commercialization activities for the purpose of creating an enhanced commercialization strategy for the agency," Rothenberg wrote.
"Until that review is completed," he added, "our current policies necessarily must remain in place."
At present the only apparent American road to getting products on the space station is via family "care packages" shipped up to U.S. station astronauts during lengthy tours aboard the outpost.
NASA recently rebuffed the tiny Internet company, Beefjerky.com, when it submitted a request to send a small package of Final Frontier Beef Jerky up to the station aboard a visiting U.S. shuttle in April.
"We were deeply embarrassed to look like clowns in the eyes of the rest of the ISS crew."
-- Yuri Baturin, Cosmonaut and Popular Mechanics pitchman
Owner Gregory Nemitz had flown 40 ounces (1.1 kilograms) of his premier product aboard shuttle Atlantis during a 1997 flight to Russia's Mir space station, and he offered to pay $1,000 "postage" to send some beef jerky and a note up to the new station for Tito.
"That's all I wanted to do: Wrap a 1-ounce (28-gram) package up in a piece of paper that had an e-mail printed on it," Nemitz said. "You know, something like, `Here you go, Dennis. Good luck. Chew at the window and enjoy it.'"
NASA declined, but as luck would have it the nephew of one of the U.S. astronauts now on the station ordered some Final Frontier Beef Jerky from the company. He liked it and recommended it to the astronaut's spouse, who included some of the jerky in a family care package that was shipped up to the station on a Russian Progress space freighter that arrived at the outpost May 22.
"I can't really say who it is because it could be considered an endorsement, and it could get the astronaut in trouble," Nemitz said.
There's really no big mystery here, though. Voss is the only married American now on the International Space Station. Fellow flight engineer Susan Helms is single.
Next page: Come one, come all
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