It had to happen eventually. Someone has finally gotten a space lottery “off the ground” as it were:
There will be 10 lottery or raffle winners selected to participate with the training. The individual who trains the best (one out of ten) then receives the trip on the Russian Soyuz rocket. The nine winners who pass the miniature cosmonaut training program – yet do not liftoff on the Russian Soyuz will journey into space via Interorbital Systems Neptune Orbital Space Liner, TGV Rocket or another RLV.
I hope the Internet Is With Them and that millions of people take them up on this.
It gets even better. They are out to water the sprouts of the new space tourism industry:
Twenty percent (20%) of the ticket price (less card processing fees) goes directly to the private aerospace companies or space tourism related organizations of choice.
Among the beneficiaries will be Mir Corp, the company which tried to save Mir, the Worlds first permanent manned space station, the true “Alpha Station”.
The space lottery idea has been around for perhaps twenty to twenty-five years. In all that time I know of only one truely serious attempt to do it, and that was by Jim Davidson when he still lived in Houston… before he went off to enjoy life in the anarchy of Somalia where he now resides. Jim unfortunately was taken on by a Texas Prosecutor who had political designs. In the end the entire incident was nothing except extortion and a shake down by the State. Jim was “allowed” to not go to jail so long as he didn’t complain about the money they stole from him. Thus ended the first Space Lottery attempt.
But good ideas never die, so here we are another 14 years on with the idea finally up and running. I’m not the betting sort. I can walk through a Las Vegas Casino, put one coin in one slot machine… and walk on. Just so if someone asks me if I gambled in the casinos, I can truthfully say “yes”. I know far too much Probability and Statistics to enjoy gambling unless I wanted to put in the time to learn card counting strategies in Blackjack. This is different. Even though I’ll “lose” my money, I’ll be directly helping companies build the infrastructure that will one day take ME up.
I wish them Godspeed and lotsa money.
