Software vendor offers trip into space to contest winner

Red Gate Software, a SQL Server tools provider, has just announced it has teamed up with Space Adventures, a commercial spaceflight venture, to offer a database administrator a ticket for an actual flight into space.

The contest, open to eligible DBAs, starts off with an online video quiz. According to Red Gate, the 15 finalists will be selected on the basis of their performance in the quiz and their answer to the question in the application form: “What would be your first tweet from space to your fellow DBAs?”

The Space Adventures flight will take the winner into suborbital space, 10 times higher than commercial aircraft, and a third of the way to the International Space Station. The spacecraft will rise just past the Kármán line, at 100km, officially the boundary between Earth’s atmosphere and outer space.

For its part, Red Gate says it is staging the contest to bring more recognition to the often-underappreciated DBA community:

"We also think DBAs, the exceptional individuals who manage the smooth running of our planet's data supply, have been under-appreciated for too long. That's why we're holding DBA in Space. DBAs deserve better. Better recognition, better software tooling, better prizes."

Space Adventures, the company that organized the flights for the world's first private space explorers, offers a variety of programs such as the availability today for spaceflight missions to the International Space Station and around the moon, Zero-Gravity flights, cosmonaut training, spaceflight qualification programs and reservations on future suborbital spacecraft. The company's advisory board includes Apollo 11 moonwalker Buzz Aldrin, Shuttle astronauts Sam Durrance, Tom Jones, Byron Lichtenberg, Norm Thagard, Kathy Thornton, Pierre Thuot, Charles Walker, and Skylab/Shuttle astronaut Owen Garriott.

(Photo: Space Adventures.)