Reality World TV Network Program.

There once were a group of people who altogether wanted two things.  First, they wanted their own sitcom show, because they thought that they were so interesting and so clever that everyone deserved to see their every move.  But that wasn't enough.  They also wanted to be in space.

So they got the funding from a network to boost them all into space, like it were a Reality World TV Network Program.  The network gave them the green light, and they got the funding with assistance from their sister organization, the Federal Government, who handed out contracts to private Space Agencies like NASA/NBC (once Microsoft became Nasa).  It could have been a good idea, because while they were in space, Monolith was forming, and I would rather be in outer space than to witness the birth of Monolith.

So the actors got on the spaceship and went into orbit.  The show would have been better if the astronaut reality TV show cast were smart and simply orbited around the world throughout the season.  They could have guest-spots provided by Russian spacemen, aboard the International Space Station, and discuss politics on Earth to an audience of bar attendees on Sunday afternoons before the football games.  But this did not happen.  Instead, they all had secret agendas.

One guy on the show seemed pretty normal, but the whole time, he keeps trying to turn himself into a lizard.  Another one, no one is sure if she's a hologram, a reflection, or a real being.  There's one guy who thinks he controls the ship, but no one has the guts to tell him that the ship has always been on autopilot.  One person dares, and he states, "but why on earth would there be all those controls over there?"

There are several others.  The general atmosphere of the show is that they all eventually go crazy.  They all get a little too nuts.  And the farther out in space they go, the more spaced out the show.

What they also don't realize is that their selfish behavior has caused them to lose their character loyalists back at home, where everyone is supposedly watching.  When, in reality, people stopped watching a long time ago.  In the final episode, they float into the darkness of space, very much less rational and seemingly at a loss of intelligence from the initial episodes, as the world generally forgets about them, and loses interest in space travel, as a whole.

*Monolith:  alluded to in many other ways, the end-all, be-all of all combined corporate entities into one single company, with its own currency system.

**Why Space:  They thought that if the show were in space, more people would watch it because people are basically interested in Outer Space enough as it is.  Plus, the only way to justify the costs associated with being in space would be to promote the show as part social experiment, and partial lab experiment.