Play an online game, win a ride in space?

Uncharted legal waters
Some states, such as Arizona, would forbid awarding a high-value prize like a suborbital spaceflight, he said. Moreover, different states have different definitions of a legal game of skill as opposed to an illegal game of chance. "It often depends on what the trial judge rules," Rose told MSNBC.com.

He said it's better to run a skill game as a player-vs.-player tournament with multiple rounds, "so the element of chance drops out." However, structuring the competition as a series of simple guessing games might be less likely to meet the skill-game standard, Rose said.

"It's hard to do a skill game that is really, truly a game of skill and is fun to play," the professor observed. "That is a very practical problem. If it's too easy, then it might become a form of gambling. And if it's too hard, it becomes a form of gambling."

To navigate the uncharted waters, SpaceShot has put together a legal team including attorney Martin Owen, co-author of the book "Internet Gaming Law," and members of the law firm Wilson, Sonsini, Goodrich and Rosati. Other advisers, listed in a news release issued Monday, include David Livingston of "The Space Show," Jeff Goldsmith of IGN, Joe Latrell of Beyond-Earth Enterprises and John Jurist, an expert on medical issues surrounding spaceflight.

Will people pay to play?
There are plenty of precedents for space-ride giveaways, even though none of the winners will be able to cash in for at least another couple of years. Last year, Virgin Galactic and the automaker Volvo awarded a seat to a Colorado man as part of a Super Bowl promotion. Space Adventures worked with Oracle Corp. as well as the Norwegian candy company Nidar to give away suborbital rides on a spacecraft to be named later, and still more sweepstakes are in the works.

But "Virgin Galactic Quest" and SpaceShot's game are different in that participants would actually have to pay a nominal fee to enter. Two years ago, Florida officials rejected the idea of setting up a lottery with space-themed prizes, saying that the idea didn't fly in focus-group sessions.

"Our players said that they would be more interested in winning cash prizes as opposed to going to space," lottery spokeswoman Leslie Steele told MSNBC.com.

Dinkin was unfazed by Florida's experience.

"I imagine that a very high percentage of people would rather take the money than the ride, and SpaceShot is not for them," he said. "But there is a large core of people who, if they had the money, would spend it on the ride. ... We're a scrappy American company, and we don't have a million-dollar PR budget to buy a Super Bowl ad. But we're going to deliver this service, and I think it's going to be a good service."

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