Centrebet, based in the outback town of Alice Springs, said it had received hundreds of calls from people interested in betting on everything from the final length of the war to the fate of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

"There were a couple of overseas operations that put a lot of bet options on this thing, and invariably when things like that happen we get inundated with requests to do the same," said Centrebet sports betting manager Gerard Daffy.

"Most of them come from outside the country, but we did take hundreds of requests of whether we do it or not," he said.

"I thought it was in pretty poor taste anyway that anyone would even want to ask that.

"Anything at all that's got personal tragedy involved, we wouldn't touch it with a 40-foot barge pole."

SPACE.WIRE