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Meet The Man Who Won A Trip To Space And Gave It To A Friend

Published

4 years ago

January 27, 2022

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. He still hasn’t watched the Netflix series on the three-day flight purchased by a tech entrepreneur for himself and three guests last September.

“It hurts too much,” he said. “I’m insanely disappointed. But it is what it is.”

Hippchen, 43, a Florida-based captain for Delta’s regional carrier Endeavor Air, recently shared his story with The Associated Press during his first visit to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center since his lost rocket ride.

He opened up about his out-of-the-blue, dream-come-true windfall, the letdown when he realized he topped SpaceX’s weight restrictions of 250 pounds (113 kilograms) and his offer to the one person he knew would treasure the flight as much as himself. Four months later, he figures probably fewer than 50 people know he was the actual winner.

“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.

His seat went 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’d pile into cars with other student space geeks and make the hourlong drive south for NASA’s shuttles launches. They also belonged to a space advocacy group, going to Washington to push commercial space travel.

Despite living on opposite coasts, Hippchen and Sembroski continued to swap space news and champion the cause. 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. The beneficiary was St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

Hippchen snapped up $600 worth of entries. Sembroski, about to start a new job at Lockheed Martin, shelled out $50. With 72,000 entries in the random drawing last February, neither figured he’d win and didn’t bother telling the other.

By early March, Hippchen started receiving vague emails seeking details about himself. That’s when he read the contest’s small print: The winner had to be under 6-foot-6 and 250 pounds (2 meters and 113 kilograms).

Hippchen was 5-foot-10 and 330 pounds (1.8 meters and 150 kilograms).

He told organizers he was pulling out, figuring he was only one of many finalists. In the flurry of emails and calls that followed, Hippchen was stunned to learn he’d won.

With a September launch planned, the timeline was tight. Still new at flying people, SpaceX needed to start measuring its first private passengers for their custom-fitted flight suits and capsule seats. As an aerospace engineer and pilot, Hippchen knew the weight limit was a safety issue involving the seats, and could not be exceeded.

“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.

Isaacman, the spaceflight’s sponsor, allowed Hippchen to pick a stand-in.

“Kyle’s willingness to gift his seat to Chris was an incredible act of generosity,” he said in an email this week.

Isaacman introduced his passengers at the end of March: a St. Jude physician assistant who beat cancer there as a child; a community college educator who was Shift4 Payments’ winning business client; and Sembroski.

Hippchen joined them in April to watch SpaceX launch astronauts to the International Space Station for NASA, the company’s last crew flight before their own.

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.”

By launch day on Sept. 15, word had gotten around. As friends and families gathered for the liftoff, Hippchen said the conversation went like this: “My name’s Kyle. Are you The Kyle? Yeah, I’m The Kyle.”

Before climbing into SpaceX’s Dragon capsule, Sembroski followed tradition and 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.

And while Hippchen didn’t get to see Earth from orbit, he did get to experience about 10 minutes of weightlessness. During Sembroski’s flight, he joined friends and family of the crew on a special zero-gravity plane.

Headline

12 Feared Dead In Kenya Light Aircraft Crash

Published

1 day ago

October 28, 2025

Editor

A small plane travelling from Kenya’s coast crashed on Tuesday, according to the country’s aviation authority, with the 12 people on board feared dead.

The small plane was en route to Kichwa Tembo — a private airstrip located in the Maasai Mara National Park — from the tourist hotspot of Diani when it came down at around 5:30am local time (0230 GMT).

“The aircraft had 12 persons on board,” a statement from the Kenya Civil Aviation Authority (KCAA) said.

It gave no further details, but said that government agencies were already on site to establish the cause of the accident.

The Guardian reports that plane crashes are fairly common in Kenya in the last 18 months. On March 5, 2024, a mid-air collision between a Safarilink Aviation commercial flight and a 99 Flying School training aircraft occurred over the Nairobi National Park, resulting in two fatalities.

The incident took place shortly after both aircraft had departed Wilson Airport. The collision involved Safarilink Aviation Flight 053, a De Havilland Canada Dash 8 carrying 39 passengers and five crew members, and a 99 Flying School Cessna 172M.

AMREF Aircraft Crash

In August, a light aircraft belonging to the AMREF Flying Doctors crashed into a residential area in Mwihoko, Ruiru, Kiambu County, killing six people and injuring at least two others.

The aircraft, a Cessna Citation XLS (registration 5Y-FDM), had taken off from Wilson Airport and was en route to Hargeisa, Somalia, when it went down under unclear circumstances.

AMREF Flying Doctors CEO Stephen Gitau issued a statement confirming the incident. Mr Gitau noted that the aircraft departed Wilson Airport at 2.17 PM before crashing in Mwihoko. He stated that the organisation is “cooperating fully with relevant aviation authorities and emergency response teams to establish the facts surrounding the situation.”

Foreign Couple Killed in Kenyan Plane Crash, Earlier in January, a light aircraft crash killed a foreign couple aboard. The accident involved a Cessna 185 aircraft that departed from Nairobi and was en route to Mbaruk in Nakuru County. It went down in the lakeside town of Naivasha at approximately 5:14 p.m. local time (1414 GMT).

At the time, Naivasha Police Deputy Chief Charles Mwai suggested that poor visibility due to fog in the area might have been a contributing factor. Aviation experts have been called to the scene to conduct an investigation.

Headline

UK Police Arrest Asylum Seeker Sex Offender Mistakenly Freed

Published

3 days ago

October 26, 2025

Editor

The UK police on Sunday arrested an Ethiopian asylum seeker and convicted sex offender, whose crimes had sparked anti-immigration protests, after he was accidentally released from prison in an embarrassing blunder by British authorities.

London’s Metropolitan Police said officers arrested Hadush Kebatu in the north of the capital on Sunday morning, nearly 48 hours after he was mistakenly freed around 30 miles (48 kilometres) away.

Kebatu, 38, had served the first month of a one-year sentence for sexually assaulting a teenage girl and a woman, but was reportedly due to be deported when the Prison Service error occurred on Friday.

His high-profile case earlier this year in Epping, northeast of London, sparked demonstrations in various English towns and cities where asylum seekers were believed to be housed, as well as counter-protests.

Commander James Conway, who oversaw the manhunt for him, said “information from the public” led officers to the Finsbury Park neighbourhood of London, where he was found.

“He was detained by police but will be returned to the custody of the Prison Service,” he added.

Kebatu is now expected to be deported.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer said Friday he was “appalled” by the “totally unacceptable” mistake that saw him freed rather than sent to an immigration detention centre.

The Telegraph newspaper said he was wrongly categorised for release on licence and handed a £76 ($101) discharge grant.

Police had appealed Saturday for Kebatu to turn himself in, after reports emerged that he had appeared confused and reluctant to leave the prison in Chelmsford, eastern England.

A delivery driver described seeing Kebatu return several times in a “very confused” state, only to be turned away by staff and directed to the railway station.

The driver told Sky News he saw Kebatu outside the jail, asking, “Where am I going? What am I doing?”

“He was starting to get upset, he was getting stressed,” the driver said.

The father of Kebatu’s anonymous teenage victim told the broadcaster that “the justice system has let us down.”

Police arrested the asylum seeker in July after he repeatedly tried to kiss a 14-year-old girl and touch her legs, and made sexually explicit comments to her.

He also sexually assaulted an adult woman, placing a hand on her thigh, when she intervened to stop his interactions with the girl.

He was staying at the time at Epping’s Bell Hotel, where scores of other asylum seekers have been accommodated, and which became the target of repeated protests.

AFP

Headline

Madagascar Revokes Ousted President’s Nationality

Published

3 days ago

October 26, 2025

Editor

Madagascar’s new government has stripped ousted president Andry Rajoelina of his Malagasy nationality in a decree published Friday, 10 days after he was removed in a military takeover.

According to AFP, the decree means that Rajoelina, who was impeached on October 14 after fleeing the island nation in the wake of weeks of protests, would not be able to contest future election.

The decree published in the official gazette said Rajoelina’s Malagasy nationality was revoked because he had acquired French nationality in 2014, local media reported, as photographs of the document were shared online.

French broadcaster RFI said it had confirmed the decree with the entourage of the new prime minister, Herintsalama Rajaonarivelo, who signed the order.

The decree cited laws stipulating that a Malagasy who voluntarily acquires a foreign nationality loses their Malagasy nationality.

Rajoelina’s French nationality caused a scandal when it was revealed ahead of the November 2023 elections, nearly 10 years after it was granted.

It triggered calls for him to be disqualified but he went on to win the contested polls, which were boycotted by opposition parties.

The 51-year-old politician fled Madagascar after army Colonel Michael Randrianirina said on October 11 his CAPSAT unit would refuse orders to put down the youth-led protest movement, which security forces had attempted to suppress with violence.

Rajoelina said later he was in hiding for his safety, but did not say where.

Randrianirina was sworn in as president on October 14, pledging elections within two years.