“It hurts too much, I’m insanely disappointed, but it is what it is,” the SpaceX flight winner said. This was his response when the company informed him that the SpaceX flight won’t fit him.
How the SpaceX flight winner deals with it!
The winner, Kyle Hippchen, 43, gifted the prize to his friend. The weight limit for the flight is 250-pound, while Mr. Hippchen weighs 330 pounds. With a lot of bitterness, he’s still struggling with the disappointment to know that he will not able to fly to space.
To get the prize, Hippchen purchased about $600-worth of sweepstakes entries and participated in 72,000 entries in the random drawing last February. Finally, he didn’t believe he’d win, but this joy didn’t have a happy ending.
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After receiving a series of emails asking about details of his physicality, Hippchen thought that he was one of the finalists. He wanted to pull out, but the organizers told him that he had won the chance to orbit Earth.
“I was trying to figure how I could drop 80 pounds in six months. I mean, it’s possible, but it’s not the most healthy thing in the world to do,” he said. Since Hippchen couldn’t fly, Shift4 Payments, which is the flight’s sponsor, allowed him to pick a replacement.
The winner decided to give his ticket to Chris Sembrowski, who had been his roommate during his study at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. “Kyle’s willingness to gift his seat to Chris was an incredible act of generosity,” Shift4 Payments CEO said.
Hippchen, the Florida-based captain for Delta’s regional carrier Endeavor Air, joined his friends and family on a special zero-gravity plane. He said, “It was a blast,”.
