Leonardo DiCaprio will have a companion when he heads out into space — a very rich companion.
DiCaprio auctioned off a chance to accompany the Wolf of Wall Street actor on his voyage into space Thursday at this year’s amfAR Cinema Against AIDS Gala, held at the Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc in France. The opportunity to ride along the actor sold for 700,000 Euros, or around $1 million U.S. dollars.
At last year’s amfAR auction, three other seats on the SpaceShipTwo — which accommodates six passengers and two pilots — sold for a combined $3.8 million.
DiCaprio and his lucky space buddy will fly aboard Virgin Galactic’s suborbital SpaceShipTwo space plane in 2015.
The SpaceShipTwo space shuttle will take its human cargo to an altitude of about 50,000 feet by a mothership named WhiteKnightTwo. The mothership will release the plane, after which the rocket engines will fire up, boosting the vehicle into suborbital space. From there, passengers will see Earth from the blackness of space and experience a few minutes of weightlessness, Virgin Galactic representatives say.
Tickets to ride the commercial space shuttle sell for $250,000, and to date more than 700 people have put down deposits to reserve a seat. One would wonder why someone would pay $1 million when they can get a ticket for $250,000, but it was all about the charity.
Other celebrities who have booked space flights include actors Ashton Kutcher and Angelina Jolie, and singer Justin Bieber.
The cost of the seat on the space plane may seem like a lot, but the work of contemporary artist Damien Hirst is what really brought in the bucks for the charity event. A 10,000-year-old fossil coated in steel created by the artist was purchased for 11 million Euros, or $15 million.
Along with a seat with DiCaprio on the space voyage, the auction also sold a 1967 painting by pop artist Andy Worhol of actress Marilyn Monroe, which sold for around $477,000 as well as a 1968 painting by legendary artist Pablo Picasso, which brought in almost $520,000 for the charity.
Image via Wikimedia Commons
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