The man who almost made it into space
He told his family and a few friends. He dropped hints to a couple of colleagues. So hardly anyone knew that the airline pilot could have — should have — been on board when SpaceX launched its first tourists into orbit last year.
Meet Kyle Hippchen, the real winner of a first-of-its-kind sweepstakes, who gave his seat to his college roommate.
Though Hippchen’s secret is finally out, that doesn’t make it any easier knowing he missed his chance to orbit Earth because he exceeded the weight limit.
“I’m insanely disappointed. But it is what it is.”
Hippchen, 43, a Florida-based captain for Delta’s regional carrier Endeavor Air, has opened up about his out-of-the-blue, dream-come-true windfall, the letdown when he realised he topped SpaceX’s weight restrictions of 113kg and his offer to the one person he knew would treasure the flight as much as himself.
His seat went to Chris Sembroski, 42, a data engineer in Everett, Washington.
The pair roomed together in the late 1990s while attending Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. They’d pile into cars with other student space geeks and make the hourlong drive south for NASA’s shuttles launches.
Neither could resist when Shift4 Payments founder and CEO Jared Isaacman raffled off a seat on the flight he purchased from SpaceX’s Elon Musk.
Hippchen snapped up $600 worth of entries. Sembroski shelled out $50. With 72,000 entries in the random drawing last February, neither figured he would win.
But when Hippchen read the small print — the winner had to be under 2m tall and weigh under 113kg (Hippchen is 1.8m and 150kg) — he told organisers he was pulling out.
In the flurry of emails and calls that followed, Hippchen was stunned to learn he’d won.
Unable to drop that much weight, Hippchen was allowed to pick a standin. He picked Sembroski.
And before he climbed into SpaceX’s Dragon capsule, Sembroski used the phone atop the launch tower to make his one allotted call.
He called Hippchen and thanked him one more time.
“I’m forever grateful,” Sembroski said.