Become the Fifth Space Tourist

MattSparkes writes "There have been four space tourists so far. You could become the fifth — even if you aren't a dot-com millionaire. New Scientist is running a competition to send one person on a sub-orbital flight, 62 miles above the Earth. All you have to do is write 250 words on what the best ever patented invention is. Personally I think it has to be the Levitationarium." Of course if you win you'll probably have to pay the taxes.

Only for UK residents

Terms and Conditions

http://www.winatriptospace.co.uk/blogs/patent/tand c.html [winatriptospace.co.uk]

1. This competition is open to anyone aged 18 or over who is ordinarily resident in the UK except for employees of Reed Business Information Limited, Volkswagen Group United Kingdom Limited or Space Adventures Ltd and their immediate families. For guidance on what 'ordinarily resident' means see

www.hmrc.gov.uk/manuals/cbtmanual/cbtm10020.htm.

Brits Only!

Note: This contest is only open to residents of the UK.

So no need to worry about the IRS demanding a share... just Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs.

Re:Brits Only!

So no need to worry about the IRS demanding a share... just Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs.

Fortunately for us Brits, prize winnings are tax exempt.

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Believe it or not, it is true. If you win a car in a church raffle in the US, you must pay applicable taxes on the prize. Sucks, but it's the truth :(

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If you win a car in a church raffle in the US, you must pay applicable taxes on the prize.
At least with a car, there is an MSRP that says what it is worth. Of course, no one in their right mind pays MSRP for a car. Now, for a trip to space, when they val

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At least with a car, there is an MSRP that says what it is worth.

And with a suborbital space flight, there's a web site [spaceadventures.com] that says what it's worth.

Sure, some millionaire might pay $25 million for it, but how much would the average Joe pay.

Um, the average

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Why tax it at all? Unless I'm missing something, somebody paid tax to buy said item as a prize
You have a good point. If I were King, I would try to avoid double taxation. In the current system in the U.S., people generally think that they can not pay tax

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Why tax it at all?

Using the church-raffle car as an example, the problem is that somewhere upstream, the car was written off as a deduction on someone else's taxes. For instance, a car dealership may have given the $20,000 car to the church, and then gotten a $5,000 tax br

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Sorry, life's a bitch. If you're on a game show and get to choose between a car and cash, take the cash. Also, as to the IRS not taking any of your winnings, if you're a US citizen and you reside in the UK and win, the IRS is going to come after you, a

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U.S. income tax is not a tax on cash received, but on income. Whether you're paid in dollars, stock options, room and board, sexual favors, or magic beans, they want you to pay tax on the value of that income. If they only taxed income in the form of mon

Best Patent Ever

It would probably have to go to Edward L. Van Halen's patent [google.com] awarded in 1987. You see, fig. 1 [google.com] just can't be beat.

Well, now I'm torn between that and the "The ornamental design for a unisex short with reversible condom, as shown. [google.com]." After all, some of us are so busy with life that we don't have time to stop and take out a condom and put it on when we're about to have sex. For the promiscuous person on the go!

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Patent leather, of course.

Easy

The best invention is probably modern plumbing. Before that disease was much more rampant. Not only that, it gave everyone a throne of their own to feel like a king on!

~S

They're asking for patented ones...

And it's a tough call- there's so many to choose from.

Phonograph (Edison)
Light Bulb (Edison)
AC Power System (Tesla)
Remote Control System (Tesla)
Bladeless Turbine (Tesla)
Steam Engine (Watt)
Hot Air Engine (Stirling)

And so forth...

Each of the above has had an

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Good point, I was a bit hasty and skipped over the patented part.

~S

Re:They're asking for patented ones...

There are, especially as:

Thomas Savery invented the Steam Engine, Joseph Swan invented the light bulb and Edison only invented half the phonograph, the french having figured out the recording part.

Perhaps a more useful 250 word essay would be on how the patent system enshrines the myth of the individual genius, when in fact technology moves forwards by little increments.

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It's a shame, really, that they're limiting the competition to UK citizens.

At least by doing that they don't run the risk of being thrown into jail for violating some obscure US law.

Sliced Bread

There can be no question that sliced bread is the greatest invention of all time: it is the yardstick by which all inventions have since been measured.

Re:Sliced Bread

I'd say the greatest invention is the yardstick. It's the best invention since sliced bread!

Audi & Patents

... As an audi owner and general geek I wasn't impressed at all with the fairly recent adverts proclaiming the sheer number of patents that were involved in designing my car. See here [leyton.org] (not my blog).

Seems like they are really going for this patent thing wit

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"... As an audi owner and general geek I wasn't impressed at all with the fairly recent adverts proclaiming the sheer number of patents that were involved in designing my car. See here (not my blog)."

You weren't impressed because you realize all of that o

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"You weren't impressed because you realize all of that over-engineering is what makes your car require so much maintenance."

Hmm. Let me see - drove out of the garage from new, and doesn't need to go back until it's either 2 years old, or it's done 20k mile

The Wheel

It's one of the best inventions of mankind and it was actually patented [newscientist.com].

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Wow, and I thought people defacing Wikipedia to test it was bad.

Interesting Social Experiment

These sorts of things crop up every few years: poll a bunch of people - prominent scientists, celebrities, politicians, bum-on-the-street, [insert other demographic here] - on what the best invention of the last X years (or ever) was. You can get [google.com] some [time.com] int [askmen.com]

The greatest invention, in my opinion

I'd have to say it is "One Click Shopping" [google.com] patented by Amazon.com. Truly, the greatest invention since this one [google.com].

Fifth space tourist?

Sixth is more like. Simonyi is scheduled to go up before the winner of this prize.

Talking about Levitationariums...

If you're in the Boston area, and have $50.00 to spare, you can visit http://www.skyventurenh.com/ [skyventurenh.com] )warning, embedded QT movie) in Nashua, NH, where you can experience body flight in their indoor vertical wind tunnel.

I'm not related to them in any way, b

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It says you can't be more than 250 pounds, doesn't that rule out like half the US population? That can't be good for marketing.

Fist Say:

Yeah ok - but what is there to do there?

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Sex with hot green alien?

Use of a Laser Pointing Device to exercise cats

Truly the most innovative patent of all time.

Jolyon

Gah!

I hate marketing. Suborbital is NOT SPACE TOURISM! The other four space tourists entered orbit -- a controlled entry into space, and stayed there. A suborbital trip is a rocket ride. Fun, yes, but not space travel.

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%A1rm%C3%A1n_lin e [wikipedia.org]

It's not an orbital flight, no, but it's definitely outer space. Alan Shepherd only went 50 miles higher.

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%A1rm%C3%A1n_lin e It's not an orbital flight, no, but it's definitely outer space. Alan Shepherd only went 50 miles higher.

That's the boundary of space, but that doesn't mean this is space travel. I define space travel

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Travelling past the boundary of space == space travel. Not really something you wriggle out of by adding extra conditions.

If you could throw your can up above the 62 mile mark it would be a space vehicle.

If I cross the border from Canada to the US to get s

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Suborbital is NOT SPACE TOURISM! ... A suborbital trip is a rocket ride.

      Unless something goes dreadfully wrong. Then it could become an orbital trip after all ;)

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No, even if everything goes wrong, the ship won't have the energy to get into orbit.

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the ship won't have the energy to get into orbit.


Exactly, like the other poster said - PARTS of it might just make it to orbit. So look on the bright side, at least your right foot and 2 fingers off your left hand might make it to orb

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I hate marketing. Suborbital is NOT SPACE TOURISM! The other four space tourists entered orbit -- a controlled entry into space, and stayed there. A suborbital trip is a rocket ride. Fun, yes, but not space travel.

Although I think it would be in fact techn

oooh!

I better make sure my Multi-Pass is up to date!

If those in the US could play

If those of us in the US could play, I'd take the jail time to go to space if the IRS came a-knocking. I probably couldn't afford the taxes, so jail time vs going into space....

In a heart beat I'd go to space....

but wait...what if I spend a year outside t

You wont go to jail

for that little amount of money.
You would have your wages garnished, or you could work out a payment plan.

Astroturfing?

My guess is that the winner will be a software/crypto or business method patent, and that this will be used to fuel the push for such patents in Europe.

My picks: lightbulb and integrated circuit....

The lightbulb made round-the-clock commerce possible worldwide. (Thanks Thomas Edison!)

The integrated circuit made computers smaller, faster, more efficient, and networkable--generating a huge amount of commerce and revenue worldwide. (Thanks Bell Labs!)

No

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Yeah, early adopters often lose out. I don't mind paying extra to be an early adopter of household technology, but when it comes to strapping myself to a rocket I'd like to know that some research has been done. Having said that, if I could win, I would

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yeah, manby someday someone will do research in rocketry..hell maybe we could put people in orbit regularly....Then someday, in the far future, we may put a man on the moon.

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You would think that there would be a way for the winner to avoid having to pay the taxes for winning this trip.

There is, and they're doing it. Prizes in the UK are tax exempt; this prize is only available to UK residents.

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Half the price of nothing? Well while technically half of nothing is a value (i.e. nothing) I don't think you'll be saving anything by waiting, except your life ;)

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If a pilot and copilot fly a commercial plane to Vegas, they are not tourists.

Mike Melvill and Brian Binnie were not tourists. In fact, if I were them it would make me a little angry to be demoted to tourist status.