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By Root 1498 0

methodology to do so. I enjoyed sharing with him some of my space concepts, such as my approach for missions to Mars, and the elderly gentleman nodded knowingly. I think it pleased Herr Oberth to know that someone in the next generation was carrying on his work. We walked and talked, and I held the elderly professor’s hand to steady him as we walked in the garden pathway in front of his house, and then on our way to the Hermann Oberth Raumfahrt Museum named in his honor. Just as the efforts of the rocketry pioneers made it possible for me to plant America’s flag on the moon, their examples have inspired me to work for the next generation, to enable them to plant our flag on Mars.

To that end, I returned home more inspired than ever to find a way to see my Mars Cycler get into the hands of people who could combine their technological expertise with the political and economic capital to make the cycler a reality. I also had another brainstorm that had been stirring in my mind for some time.

THE COSTS OF putting people into space were skyrocketing, so to speak, and with the shuttle grounded, we were losing more time every day in our attempts to take ordinary people into space. But what if cost was not an issue? What if we didn’t have to depend on Congress to vote the money into the budget? What if we could finance space travel some other way? How could that be done? My mind was teeming with ideas, and the one that I settled on seemed like a plausible approach.

I envisioned a nonprofit venture called ShareSpace, intended to help get ordinary people into space. My initial plan was to sell “shares” at ten or twenty dollars each, with the proceeds going to fund long-term exploration and tourism studies of space travel. Then, every so often, there would be a drawing to award winners with space-related prizes. Initially the drawings could involve more of the public by offering all sorts of prizes including space camps for kids, suborbital jaunts into space, and perhaps, one day, trips into Earth orbit to visit space stations, space hotels and space resorts, and ultimately even trips to fly around the moon. I was convinced, and still am, that by getting more people into space, and giving them that direct experience, the public’s involvement, rather than government’s, will spur the major advances in space exploration.

Much of my plan was still ruminating in my mind, and I was sitting in yet another mundane meeting discussing these matters, trying to convince another group of skeptics, when somebody said, “Why don’t you have a lottery?”

The notion struck me like a lightning bolt. Yes! A lottery is a great idea. Have a lottery in which millions of people contribute money for a chance to win the big prize: a trip into space! We could have other, minor prizes to keep the interest up for those who didn’t win the main trip, so I talked with adventure travel groups about providing prizes such as a trip to the North Pole and other exotic prizes. Everyone seemed interested—cautious, but interested.

I attended several national lottery “conferences” in Washington, D.C., gatherings in which people who knew how a legal lottery could be run shared their expertise and advice. Almost immediately, as my mind raced ahead to the possibilities, the obstacles and potential landmines seemed to pop up. I discovered that lotteries came under the jurisdiction of the attorney general in each individual state, so it would be difficult to have a national lottery. The most significant problem to overcome was that the lottery could not appear to be gambling.

A few years later I went to Las Vegas and talked with Sig Rogich, a casino mogul, and other people who had money and influence; a number of them seemed interested in the ShareSpace lottery. The power brokers in Las Vegas suggested that we come up with a game show in which a person could win a trip into space. That got me thinking about the possibility of a television show similar to modern-day “reality” shows, in which a group of people could compete to win an opportunity to take a short trip into