BREAKING NEWS: David Portnoy To Announce Barstool Sports Entrance Into Spaceflight

Slaven Vlasic. Getty Images.

New York, NY (AP) - The name David Portnoy will soon join an elite list that includes Jeff Bezos, Sir Richard Branson, and Elon Musk when he becomes the fourth entrepreneur to attempt space travel in a private rocket with non-professional astronauts.  

Portnoy, Barstool Sports Founder and President, will officially make an announcement early next week about his plans to launch a private rocket into space and that he will be a member of its four-man crew. He has indicated the launch is projected to take place as early as October of 2022.

In 2018, Portnoy began discussing plans to create a vertical takeoff and landing spaceship called Viva La Stool. Plans for the Stool were initially kept quiet, but Portnoy has decided that the time has come to unveil his "space odyssey". 

Portnoy has been working with aeronautic engineers and rocket scientists to lower the cost of spaceflight while also increasing safety, "so that we humans can continue exploring the solar system". His hope is that someday soon, "even the 'common man' will be able to afford space travel". 

In a 2019 memo to Barstool CEO Erika Nardini, Portnoy indicated that he was going to personally fund The Barstool Space Odyssey with the help of other private donors and that it would initially send him and three carefully chosen Barstool employees into space. It is not known who the other three astronauts will be, but Nardini has expressed an interest in spaceflight and is a leading candidate for one of the three available spots.

By late 2020, Portnoy was already projecting that if all test flights operated as scheduled, Barstool Sports could begin flying passengers into space on the Stool in 2022. 

In 2021, there were 16 non-professional astronauts who were successfully launched into space in private rockets: four with SpaceX, four with Virgin Galactic, and eight with Blue Origin. Portnoy is hoping to add Viva La Stool and his name along with three others to that list.

This morning "Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin launched its fourth successful space tourism mission, putting yet another feather in the cap of the company that hopes to make these supersonic joyrides a mainstay of pop culture". In addition to a Blue Origin engineer, there were five other paying passengers aboard the 60-foot-tall rocket that soared to more than three times the speed of sound, or greater than 2,000 miles per hour. 

Portnoy plans on traveling beyond the edge of space and will attempt to send his private spaceship into orbit and remain there for four days, breaking the previous record of three days, set by Elon Musk’s SpaceX in 2021.    

Portnoy will reveal his plans for spaceflight via an announcement on the Dave Portnoy Show next week, sources reported.  

Viva La Stool & April Fools Motherfuckers!