Courtesy of the Texas Lottery and Space Perspective
Audio By Carbonatix
Oh, hey there, every other state lottery in the known world. What’s the biggest prize you’re offering? Lemme guess, is it a big pile of money? Yeah, well top this: In Texas, we are offering a free trip to outer-goddamn-space.
The Texas Lottery announced a new scratch-off game on Tuesday that gives four lucky people – and a guest for each winner – a trip 100,000 feet above the Earth. This trip will take place sometime in 2025, according to a joint statement from the Texas Lottery and the space travel company Space Perspective.
The $1,000,000 Cash Blast scratch-off game is offering a top prize of $1 million for a winning $20 ticket. The game starts by scratching off the six “winning numbers” at the top of the ticket, and winners will have to scratch off the same six numbers hidden in a 35-place grid.
The new game is part of the company’s Space Perspective Cash Adventure Promotion, and the Texas Lottery is the first lottery in the world to offer space travel as a prize.
“The Texas Lottery is always looking for new and creative ways to reward Texans with memorable, once-in-a-lifetime experiences,” Gary Grief, the executive director of the Texas Lottery, said in the statement. “By partnering with Space Perspective, we’re excited to offer four winners and their guests a chance to take their place in space history with an unforgettable journey 100,000 feet above the Earth,”
The Texas Lottery will pick 75 prize winners from the scratch-off contest and choose four from the group to take a private space flight with a guest of their choosing. The Spaceship Neptune will transport eight travelers into space from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida “without having to train like a NASA astronaut,” according to the promotion’s website.
Instead, the winners will be seated on reclining captains’ chairs in a flying lounge with “a fully catered meal and an unobstructed 360-degree view” of Earth and the stars for two hours. Once they are in the space, the Texas Lottery will hold one more special drawing, and one of the four space travelers will win $100,000. This will make it the “highest cash prize ever awarded at the edge of space,” according to the release.
The capsule will even have WiFi access so guests can chat with their friends and family back on Earth – there goes your excuse for not answering emails in time.
A hydrogen balloon “the size of a football field” will bring the capsule back to Earth at a leisurely speed of 12 mph before it splashes down just off the coast of Cape Canaveral. The space pioneers will then be transported back to the mainland by Space Perspective’s Marine Spaceport Voyager ship, a vessel that will be “the world’s first marine spaceport for human flight,” according to the website.
The flight path for the Spaceship Neptune, which will transport eight lucky guests into orbit 100,000 feet above the Earth for a two-hour trip.
Courtesy of the Texas Lottery and Space Perspective
The scratch-off tickets for the special space trip are already on sale wherever you buy your lottery tickets or online at txlotteryluckzone.com. The drawings will start on the first day of 2024 and continue into at least March to a date yet to be determined by the Texas Lottery.
If you don’t win either of the grand prizes, there are plenty of other ways to win something. The Texas Lottery will conduct a random draw of 1,720 purchased tickets for $100 each in the form of a Visa Reward debit card. The winners will also receive an entry in the drawing for the $1,000,000 Cash Blast trip prize.
Seventy-five winners will also receive “a virtual reality (VR) headset with space reality titles like the award-winning Spheres as well as a customer Space Perspective VR experience” and a free trip to the Kennedy Space Center in Merritt Island, Florida, with a $1,200 travel allowance for you and a guest to attend a special party before the launch of the Spaceship Neptune. The trip includes a free hotel room and a private tour and luncheon at the Kennedy Space Center as well as additional chances to win more prize money up to $1 million, according to the statement.
The final night of the trip includes a “Right Stuff Party” featuring an appearance by former U.S. International Space Station Commander Chris Cassidy and “a private concert featuring A-list musical talent,” according to the website.
The good news here: if the “A-list” talent turns out to be Kid Rock, there’s a good chance you’ll at least get a refund for the ticket.
