One lucky reader of free Boston newspaper Metro has won a trip that will put him in some pretty exclusive company — those who have travelled in space. 22-year-old Justin Dowd will be aboard an XCOR Lynx spacecraft come 2014 when the ship is due to take off from a spaceport in Curaçao, a small island off the coast of Venezuela. The flight itself will only last one hour from takeoff to landing, but even still Dowd will have to go through two days worth of extensive training in the Desdemona space simulator in Soesterberg, Holland. Of course, part of the reason that Dowd was selected as winner was that he is already in great physical and mental shape — not only is he a physics and math major at Northeastern University, he's also in the process of training for a 12-mile-long endurance race. He even made a 15-minute stop motion film about Einstein to wow the judges. Metro readers will be able to follow Dowd's exploits with a series of reports to be published in the paper.



