Red Gate Announces Space Flight Finalists

Fifteen finalists have been chosen to fight for the chance to win a seat on a Space Adventures sub-orbital spaceflight.

The competition, launched last month by database tool developer Red Gate Software, was open to database administrators (DBAs) and anyone involved with IT databases in the UK, USA, Australia, Canada and Germany.

Popularity contest

The 15 finalists, including six from the US, six from the UK and three from Canada, had to be fluent in geek to complete a sci-fi based video quiz, and were short listed from over 5,500 entrants by a panel of judges which comprised Blur guitarist Graham Coxon, Simon Galbraith, joint-CEO of Red Gate Software, and Buck Woody, senior technical specialist for Microsoft and author of more than 500 articles and five books on databases.

The DBAs will now have until 13 December to earn as many online votes as they can to make it into space.

“We’ve been blown away by the number of entrants to DBA in Space and the judges had an incredibly tough job whittling it down to just 15 finalists,” said Neil Davidson, Joint-CEO of Red Gate. “Now the battle begins in earnest to win the public vote – one database administrator will be eligible to blast off into space and have a really Happy Christmas, while the others will come back down to earth with their fall cushioned by winning both Red Gate products and a host of cool stuff. Good luck to all 15 and may the best DBA win!”

To vote for your choice of Astronaut / DBA, visit the DBA in Space Website.