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A 'Dude Perfect' YouTuber Will Travel Into Space Aboard Blue Origin

A crypto community is sending one of the Dude Perfect dudes to space.

Eric Mack Contributing Editor
Eric Mack has been a CNET contributor since 2011. Eric and his family live 100% energy and water independent on his off-grid compound in the New Mexico desert. Eric uses his passion for writing about energy, renewables, science and climate to bring educational content to life on topics around the solar panel and deregulated energy industries. Eric helps consumers by demystifying solar, battery, renewable energy, energy choice concepts, and also reviews solar installers. Previously, Eric covered space, science, climate change and all things futuristic. His encrypted email for tips is ericcmack@protonmail.com.
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Eric Mack
2 min read
Blue Origin New Shepard rocket in flight, with a fiery exhaust

An upcoming New Shepard launch will feature YouTube royalty. 

 Blue Origin

The Texas quintet of YouTubers known as Dude Perfect made a name for themselves by harnessing the power of gravity to create all kinds of viral trick-shot videos, but their next trick will be to figure out how to take advantage of experiencing almost no gravity at all. 

The crypto collective MoonDAO has voted to give one of the seats it purchased on an upcoming Blue Origin launch to one of the five Dude Perfect dudes. 

MoonDAO is a decentralized autonomous organization, or DAO, a type of online community that makes decisions by having members vote using tokens on a blockchain. One of those decisions was which of four nominated influencers should get a free trip to space. It was a close race between Dude Perfect and "Everyday Astronaut" Tim Dodd, but in the end the dudes received 46.5 percent of votes to Dodd's 44 percent. Fellow YouTuber Kaz Sawyer got nearly 8 percent, while AI researcher and Twitter personality Roon got 1 percent. The voting period ended Sunday.

The main question now is which of the five members of Dude Perfect will actually be taking the brief New Shepard rocket ride to the edge of space. They've suggested reprising their model rocket battle competition to decide who gets the seat:

MoonDAO's second purchased seat will go to a lucky holder of its Ticket to Space NFT, chosen at random. One winner and 10 alternates were chosen at random from more than 8,000 people who were able to mint one of the digital tickets for free to enter the sweepstakes. 

A statement from MoonDAO posted in its Discord server noted that the winner and alternates are still preliminary for the moment.

"We will be vetting all winners with a second round of KYC (identity verification) to confirm they are not bots and have followed all contest rules. Once passed we will be able to confirm the fixed and final results."

This won't be the first time an NFT sweepstakes winner takes a ride to space. One of the astronauts on the most recent Blue Origin flight actually won the seat in a drawing held by The Crypto Space Agency. 

The two MoonDAO-funded astronauts could fly as soon as the next Blue Origin launch in the coming weeks, but no target date has been announced. 

It's also unclear if Dude Perfect will attempt to break some new records while aboard New Shepard, or how they'd even practice making a shot in microgravity. When it happens, this could be one of the most interesting space launch livestreams we've seen yet.