The winner of the first-of-its-kind sweepstakes gave his seat for a trip to space to his college roommate.
Known as Kyle Hippchen, the man had been given a chance to be on board when SpaceX launched its first tourists into orbit last year.
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Shift4 Payments founder and CEO Jared Isaacman raffled off a seat on the flight he purchased from SpaceX’s Elon Musk. The beneficiary was St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.
Hippchen, who weighs 250 pounds (113 kgs), exceeded the weight limit. He had passed the height eligibility of being under 6-foot-6, as he is 5-foot-10.
“It hurts too much,” he said. “I’m insanely disappointed. But it is what it is.”
“I was trying to figure how I could drop 80 pounds in six months, which, I mean, it’s possible, but it’s not the most healthy thing in the world to do,” Hippchen said.
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The 43-year-old still has not watched the Netflix series on the three-day flight purchased by a tech entrepreneur for himself and three guests last September.
“It was their show, and I didn’t want to be distracting too much from what they were doing,” said Hippchen, who watched the launch from a VIP balcony.
He gave his seat to Chris Sembroski, 42, a data engineer in Everett, Washington. The pair roomed together starting in the late 1990s while attending Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.
They both had been spent hundreds of dollars for the giveaway by Isaacman which had received over 72,000 entries.
In gratitude, Sembroski offered to take personal items into space for Hippchen. He gathered his high school and college rings, airline captain epaulets, a great-uncle’s World War I Purple Heart and odds and ends from his best friends from high school, warning, “Don’t ask any details.”
“Kyle’s willingness to gift his seat to Chris was an incredible act of generosity,” said Isaacman.
(With inputs in agencies)
