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Space Tourism is Off and Running
ackthpt writes "The ink wasn't even dry on the Ansari X Prize check, after Brian Binnie piloted SpaceShipOne into space, when deals were already being made. Announced last week, Richard Branson of Virgin Group would be licensing the technology, and according to p2pnet is already embarking on plans to build a fleet of 5 passenger carrying craft. Space tourism? Preposterous! It'll take years, decades. Isn't that the consensus? According to The Australian Cadbury/Schweppes may be giving away a the prize of a space flight under the cap of your next bottle of 7 Up: 'Within hours, one of SpaceShipOne's sponsors and the "official beverage" of the AnsariX Prize, the soft drink 7Up, announced it would be offering the first free ticket into space.' Further, 'another company, Space Adventures, has already collected $US10,000 deposits from about 100 customers for its planned flights, which will cost less than $US100,000.' Last one into space is a rotten egg!"
First Comment...
From space!
That's when I took actions into my own hands.
Armed with a fresh-off-the-University-press degree in Applied Statistics and just one WEEK otherwise free of distractions, I won over $220,000 in cash and prizes from SIX different sweepstakes and giveaways.
Not kidding.
You need to read the rules; all of these are "no purchase necessary." You can alternately enter by putting your name and address on a 3x5 card and sending it to the company.
The first thing you need to do is move to Vermont. I'm absolutely serious; this is critical. In other states, you need to include return postage when entering these sweepstakes by mail; not Vermont! It's a state law that no return postage is reqiured. This makes a BIG difference in your expense to prize ratio. There is NO WAY to win these contests in other states, except by chance, because you can never come out ahead financially.
Next, DRIVE to the prize headquarters and deliver your entries IN PERSON. Otherwise, you're going to have to pay to mail each one. That is not going to work; you will LOSE money. Yes--there will be a cost for gas, lodging, etc., but plan out your trip ahead of time. I made a loop around the Eastern US and entered all six at once with a minimal route. Note that they CANNOT, by law, force you to actually mail the entries for a "no purchase necessary" contest; hand-delivering is guaranteed acceptable.
Now, you do need to carefully choose which ones you enter. Figure in the cost of paper and ink (and labor; see below) for an entry versus your expected payoffs. Pick the ones with the best prizes. Create a statistical curve based on the prizes; you'll fall somewhere on it, but you can control where. The idea is to enter enough times that, statistically, you will win the majority of the prizes. (I usually do "double N" of whatever 1/N is for the grand prize; it's a reasonable rule of thumb.)
And, remember, if the prizes are cash, or fairly liquid which you can turn into cash easily, you can hire people to "hand-write" your entries, at minimum wage. Usually all you need is your name and address. Get a PO Box (the address is shorter than a street address, because you usually can just leave out the PO Box line and do the Zip+4 for your city: "J. Smith / Grafton, VT 05146-1234"--that's it for PO Box 1234!) and use your first initial. Also remember there is no need to address the outer envelope because you will be hand-delivering the entry.
This has basically turned into my "career" after college. So far, it's working out great.
That's because "China" sounds like "Poland"
Why did NASA chose Sprite as the official soft drink of the Space Shuttle Columbia?
Because they couldn't get seven up!