What if there are not enough people to play?

What if you only have 15 people total, playing on average of every other day
How often would you be awarding a ticket then?
It's been 6 months now, and your best player is only at level 9. (I'm not saying anyone is playing bad, heck, look at me! ) At this rate it'll be a year or longer before someone hits, say, level 15. And if that person loses level 15, they must use one of their other entries, that's probably on a much lower level. It's too bad you don't just get knocked down a level. (but then you wouldn't make enough money to pay for the flights!) Yeah, I understand that someone else had to win that level 15, and that's good, but it just seems to me, that, it is proving to be difficult to win 17 times in a row on the same entry, let alone finding someone to match you at the upper levels. I think this is a big turn off to most people. Of course you do have your die-hards like Crux, Halo, etc. But I've noticed most people quit playing within the 1st 2 months. (Although they're probably still registered, and you'll list the number of people registered when you respond and not necessarily the number of people actually playing)
I don't mean to sound as negative as I do. The fact that I'm here writing this, should tell you that I'm interested in playing a game for a trip to space. I just feel like I need to be honest about how I feel about this game. I just feel like the game is failing, and the few die-hards will be left sitting in upper levels for a LONG time, just to maybe lose after being on top for months. Yes, there will be a winner, but with the uncertainty of weather, what incredible luck and extreme patience this person will have. I hope this person stays in good physical shape, because it may be a while!
Maybe not so long, if you can get A LOT more people playing. A LOT more.
Again, sorry to be so negative, but it'll definitely be interesting to see how everyone responds to this. Kermit

Kermit, it is difficult to drum up business when none of the suborbital folks are flying. We will be out at X Prize Cup where John Carmack may take home a substantial prize and demonstrate both the technical and legal acumen to start flying. But others project flying in 2008 at the earliest. The fact that we have over eight hundred players is exceptional given the state of the suborbital industry.

If all our players play daily, we will award two flights by 2008 when Rocketplane Kistler starts flying their XP. Only a handful of players are playing daily. Four of them have played over 500 times in the six months since we opened. For players that play 1,000 times a year (which costs about $5/day if you win half and lose half), we would only need 262 players like that to award a flight a year. We are still in the awareness phase of our marketing. We will be continuing in this phase until we get substantial nationwide exposure.

While the game is not reaching breakeven, we have regular players who are making regular progress. crux42 with two plays at level 8 and one at level 9 will be able to cash those in for a level 10 play (round of 256) once we enable the 'trade up' feature.

I am personally able to fund SpaceShot until 2008, 2009 or whenever they start flying.

At the same time, we are working on our value proposition to attract more new players. We will be out at X-Prize Cup next week showing thousands of attendees our product. It may take a while, but we will succeed. Look for a release about our founding of Space Shot America Latina and our bringing on a new chief of marketing Monday.

Hey 1_kermit, I have been around in the Aerospace world for some time and I think the current group of space supporters and activists is relative small compared to the group that will come when there're actual space flights flying. SpaceShipOne its success etc pushed websites such as this one (space fellowship) to very high numbers, with about doubling the site its active users after the hype, same will do future events for SpaceShot etc. As with most business it may take at least 2 years or more to create a large group of consumers or player in this case. For SpaceShot, I'm a lot more optimistic. But it just needs time.

If SpaceShot would ever be in financial difficulties, I guess I even don't mind putting up free advertisement on the Space Fellowship, I consider Sam Dinkin to be a friend, however.. I don't think it can fail .

Thanks for citing me in your post. I understand the need for immediate rewards and fast-action pay-offs as our generation is used to, but Dinkin is right. Most sub-orbital flights won't be getting off the ground for a year. It will take at least one, all-passengers-paid flight before people really believe in what Spaceshot is doing, since even paid flights have not yet reach sub-orbit.

Think about it this way, I've paid just slightly over $100 for all my plays and have managed to take first place (for now) AND earned plays equaling over $2,500 should this venture NOT work out. That is, in the unlikely chance that Spaceshot not *ever* achieve the goal of sending one of us into space, I will get paid out 90% of $2,500 for about $100 spent. Few people playing now allows each of us to build free plays from the ongoing promotion (see other posts) and position one of those playing now to take the ultimate prize.

We can't loose, friends, and I don't care so much that I win as much as I hope that this project gets a lot more people interested in space travel for the common person, which is my ultimate goal.

Now, lest ye think I a stupid man, I am perfectly happy to take that shot and the cash reward. However, I'm happy to contribute $100 to the cause of someone else going. Someone common and normal, rather than rich Iranian women and ex-airforce pilots recruited by NASA. I will spend about that much in my life paying for NASA anyway...

Play on! And, remember, I honestly have no better idea about the weather than you.

Crux

In Texas, we play the lottery. 1/3 of adults play the lottery for $400-500/year. That's 7-8 million of us. Surveys say half of US citizens want to go to space. If half of the lottery players put their lottery purchases toward spaceflight, that would be $1.7 billion per year. That's right, the amount of money that Google bought YouTube for every year from just one state. If we get 1% of that, $17 million a year would buy 85 flights a year just for Texans. That would be 70-80,000 people buying an entry once every few days. Are we going to sit idly by and let Neiman Marcus sell charters to fat cats for $1.7 million as Christmas gifts or are we going to demand a seat for the common people! What do you spend on Starbucks coffee? I've paid more for SpaceShot than a seat on the XP for myself to enable y'all to go. If not now, when? Remember how to dream.

Well, I will concede that this poll was a failure. But we did get almost 1,000 leads at X Prize Cup. Where is everyone indeed?

It might be the prize. The sweepstakes over at WinYourMortgage.com seems to be a hit product. Space just isn't as cogent as a mortgage payment to many. That just gives me reason to redouble my efforts to sell spaceflight.