My Trip In Space
Ben Riecken is looking for a ticket to ride. While other
traditional tourists are willing to plunk down $200 or so
to fly our friendly skies a few hundred miles away, Mr. Riecken
is looking for $200,000 for a ticket to ride into space.
As a flight instructor from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University,
Ben Riecken is no novice when it comes to air travel. In 2003,
he set a record in Florida by landing a Cessna 172 in the
105 hard surface airports in the state within 48 hours. In
2006, Mr. Riecken piloted along with a student a Seneca V
small general aircraft across the North Atlantic.
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Ben Riecken in Mojave, California
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Recently, Mr. Riecken received the privilege to visit Burt
Rutan, designer of SpaceShipOne (SS1), in the California Mojave
Desert and pilot the SpaceShipOne simulator. The SpaceShipOne
simulator offers as close to a real world experience as one
can get without the peril of actual space travel.
Ben Riecken recently launched his own website at MyTripInSpace.com
to finance the trip in space with Virgin Galactic on SpaceShipTwo.
He designed this website after being invited by Brian Binnie,
SpaceShipOne astronaut, two years ago to see SS1 and realizing
that the Average Joe is very close to finally be able to rocket
in space.
To finance this trip, Mr. Riecken is selling pixels as advertisement
where advertisers can put a logo, message and link. This link
will redirect traffic to the advertiser's website. For those
in this industry, this is a cost effective advertisement that
will last at least 5 years.
Media attention and traffic have been growing since the opening
of the website. The story was featured on NBC and FOX affiliates,
General Aviation News and Aero News. Several other articles
will also be published in the near future.
The latest update is that the website stayed up for a year
or two but has since been taken down and a Japanese company
has bought the domain name.
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