Red Gate To Send Lucky Database Admin Into Orbit

A lucky, yet slightly geeky database administrator (DBA) will be sent on one of the world’s first sub-orbital spaceflights, just past the Kármán line, the official boundary between Earth’s atmosphere and outer space.

This is according to UK-based database tool developer Red Gate Software, which is running the competition. “Despite data’s importance to today’s businesses, the people that actually make it flow, database administrators, are incredibly under-appreciated. To help change this and reward one lucky DBA we are running a free competition to send one into space. For real, not through simulators or watching Star Trek,” said the company in a statement.

Can you identify a nerfherder?

The Space Adventures flight, 100km up, is open to anyone who is involved with IT databases, but if the competition trailer, which laments that its soundtrack is worse than Vogon poetry, is anything to go by, the competition is aimed purely at the geeks among us.

In fact, participants must complete a sci-fi based video quiz before 18 November to enter, and then, if selected as one of the 15 finalists, must take part in an X-Factor-style vote-off, based on what they would tweet from space.

“There has already been huge interest,” said the company in a statement. “Fifty two thousand people have visited the DBA in Space site, with the different pages and videos viewed over 200,000 times.”

According to the Space Adventures website, suborbital space flights start at $110,000 (£68,888).