Antigua Casino Backs Space Flight Attempt

by Leroy Baker, Tax-News.com, New York

12 August 2004

Antigua-based casino GoldenPalace.com has sponsored a Canadian group of rocketeers, hoping that the da Vinci Project’s Wild Fire rocket can capture the Ansari X $10 million prize for the first private spaceflight in competition with the Paul Allen-backed SpaceShipOne team's X Prize.

Leader of the da Vinci Project - and its designated pilot - is Brian Feeney. "It's tight," he says, "It's a race. We deliberately moved very hard and very fast, as fast as we could, to keep that as the narrowest possible gap." Feeney gave the X Prize Foundation the required 60 days notice of a prize attempt on Tuesday, setting the flight for 2nd October.

The $10 million Ansari X Prize goes to the first team to send a privately developed spaceship to an altitude of 100 kilometers (62 miles) twice within two weeks. SpaceShipOne reached 100 kilometers on June 21, the first privately developed vehicle to go into outer space, but it didn't carry enough weight during that flight for it to qualify as an X Prize try.

SpaceShip One is due to make its X Prize attempt on 29th September. So the da Vinci team can only win if something goes wrong with one of SpaceShip One's two flights, and everything goes right with its own flights. On-line voting on MSNBC has SpaceShip One a clear leader in the race with 88% of the votes.

Drew Black of GoldenPalace, which is licensed in Kahnawake Mohawk territory in Quebec as well as in Antigua, told MSNBC: ‘The reasoning behind this whole Ansari X Prize project is to promote space tourism, to send up a spacecraft with five, 10, 20 people in it into outer space. We believe it will happen in the near future, and they will be organizing gambling junkets like they do on riverboats today. Space is the final frontier for us, too.’

Black said he had tried sponsoring the Paul Allen project, but they weren't interested. The sponsorship for Wild Fire is probably about $350,000, completing total financing for the project of less than half the $20m Paul Allen is said to have put into the SpaceShip One project.

Black said that Feeney would be carrying up an Internet-connected laptop that would enable him to play computer games, backing up GoldenPalace.com's claim to be the first casino in space. "He's going to probably have just a few seconds, but he will play a couple of hands of blackjack and spin a couple of slots," Black said.

The rocket will also carry the famous football kicked wide into the stands by David Beckham during Euro 2004 match, bought for $35,000 by GoldenPalace.com on e-Bay. The casino's founder and chief executive officer, Richard Rowe, is taking the ball on a worldwide tour to raise money for charity, Black said.

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