But there's hope.

Alongside the terrible death ray revelation, I read of a $10 million dollar prize for winning the space race.

Yes, we now have a race to privately fund human space exploration. They reckon it will take less than a year for the winner to "launch people to the edge of space and bring them back safely twice within a two week period".

Maybe i'll try and win that so I can escape the death ray, and make a quick 10 mill on the side.