Oracle Sweeps Sends Winner to Space
It’s out of this world. To better educate software developers about leading edge development technology, Oracle has launched a new online sweepstakes touting its top prize as a trip to space.
The Oracle Space Sweepstakes is giving one grand-prize winner a chance to be part of a suborbital space flight through Space Adventures Ltd., the world’s leading space experiences company. The flight, which will be available likely in 2007, will let passengers fly 62 miles above the earth and experience five to 10 minutes of weightlessness, said Stacey Tearne, a spokesperson for Crosby-Volmer, which handles p.r. for Space Adventures.
The package, valued at $138,000, includes a four-day pre-flight training program, airline and travel expenses, and $35,000 in cash, Tearne said.
In addition to the space flight, Oracle, the world’s largest software company, will also award two first place finishers with an Apple PowerBook G4. Five second-place winners will receive an Apple iPod and 10 third-prize winners will receive the Star Wars trilogy set on DVD.
Participants can register for the sweepstakes at Space.oracle.com. Once registered, participants must complete a series of online quizzes testing their knowledge of the latest Java and Service Orientated Architecture technologies. Each successfully completed quiz will be included as an entry into the drawing. There is a limit of one entry per eligible person per quiz.
The sweepstakes began this week and will run though May 2005. The sweepstakes will feature a new quiz topic each month. Winners will be announced by June 30, 2005.
Headquartered in Arlington, VA, with an office in Moscow, Russia, Space Adventures is the only company to have successfully launched a private tourist to the International Space Station. The company tested flights this summer in preparation for private flights, Tearne said. The sweepstakes winner will be among one of the first private space explorers in the world, she said.
