| Ansari X Prize | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Awarded for | "build and launch aspacecraft capable of carrying three people to100 kilometers above theEarth's surface, twice within two weeks"[1] |
| Country | Worldwide |
| Presented by | X PRIZE Foundation |
| Reward | US$10 million[1] |
| Final award | October 4, 2004 |
| Winner | Scaled Composites |
| Website | ansari.xprize.org |
 | |
TheAnsari X Prize was aspace competition in which theX Prize Foundation offered aUS$10,000,000 (equivalent to $20,048,801 in 2024)prize for the firstnon-government organization to launch a reusablecrewed spacecraft intospace twice within two weeks. It was modeled after early 20th-centuryaviation prizes, and aimed to spur development of low-cost spaceflight.[1]
Created in May 1996 and initially called just the "X Prize", it was renamed the "Ansari X Prize" on May 6, 2004, following a multimillion-dollardonation fromentrepreneursAnousheh Ansari andAmir Ansari.
The prize was won on October 4, 2004, the 47th anniversary of theSputnik 1 launch, by theTier One project designed byBurt Rutan and financed by Microsoft co-founderPaul Allen, using the experimentalspaceplaneSpaceShipOne. $10 million was awarded to the winner, and more than $100 million was invested in new technologies in pursuit of the prize.[1]
Several otherX Prizes have since been announced by theX Prize Foundation, promoting further development inspace exploration and other technological fields.
The X Prize was inspired by theOrteig Prize—the 1919 prize worth 25,000 dollars offered by New York hotel ownerRaymond Orteig that encouraged a number of intrepid aviators in the mid-1920s to fly across theAtlantic Ocean from New York to Paris—which was ultimately won in 1927 byCharles Lindbergh in his aircraftSpirit of St. Louis.[2] In reading the 1953 book,The Spirit of St. Louis during 1994,Peter Diamandis realized that "such a prize, updated and offered ... as aspace prize, might be just what was needed to bring space travel to the general public, to jump-start a commercial space industry."[3]: 15–17
Diamandis developed a fully formed idea for a "suborbital spacebarnstorming prize", and set an initial goal of finding backers to support aUS$10 million prize. He named it the X Prize, in part because "X" could serve as a variable for the name of the person who might later back the prize; any craft built to win the prize would be experimental, and a long line of experimental aircraft built for the US Air Force had been so designated, including theX-15 that was,in 1963, the first government-built craft to carry a human into space; and because "Ten is theRoman numeral X".[3]: 17
The X Prize was publicly proposed by Diamandis in an address to theNSSInternational Space Development Conference in 1995. The competition goal was adopted from theSpaceCub project, demonstration of a private vehicle capable of flying a pilot to the edge of space, defined as 100 km altitude. This goal was selected to help encourage the space industry in theprivate sector, which is why the entries were not allowed to have any government funding. It aimed to demonstrate thatspaceflight can be affordable and accessible to corporations and civilians, opening the door tocommercial spaceflight andspace tourism. It is also hoped that competition will breedinnovation, introducing new low-cost methods of reachingEarth orbit, and ultimately pioneering low-costspace travel and unfetteredhuman expansion into theSolar System.
NASA is developing a similar prize program calledCentennial Challenges to generate innovative solutions tospace technology problems.
Twenty-six teams from around the world participated, ranging from volunteer hobbyists to large corporate-backed operations:[4]
Some sources mention two other companies:
but do not mention Whalen Aeronautics Inc.[5]
TheTier One project made two successful competitive flights:X1 on September 29, 2004, piloted byMike Melvill to 102.9 km; andX2 on October 4, 2004, piloted byBrian Binnie to 112 km.[6] They thus won the prize, which was awarded on November 6, 2004. In press coverage, the winning team has been variously referred to asMojave Aerospace Ventures, the corporation that funded the attempt;Tier One, the project name of Mojave's contest entry; andScaled Composites, the manufacturer of the craft.
At least two documentaries were created to document the efforts of the winning team to win the prize. They included Black Sky: The Race for Space[7] and Black Sky: Winning the X Prize.[8] The documentaries chronicle the story of Burt Rutan and SpaceShipOne.
As of 2011, the trophy is on display in theSaint Louis Science Center inSt. Louis, Missouri.
Although only the Tier One team actually launched a spacecraft on asub-orbital spaceflight, several other teams have conducted low-altitude tests or announced future plans to launch into space:[3]
With the Ansari X Prize, theX Prize Foundation (based in Santa Monica, CA) established a philanthropic model in which offering a prize for achieving a specific goal stimulates entrepreneurial investment that produces a tenfold or greater return on the prize purse and at least one hundredfold in follow-on investment and social benefit. The Foundation has developed into a non-profit prize institute that conceives, designs and manages public competitions for the benefit of humanity.
The funding for theUS $10,000,000prize was unconventional. It came from a "hole-in-one insurance policy".[10][11] It was "fully funded through January 1, 2005, through private donations and backed by an insurance policy to guarantee that the $10 million is in place on the day that the prize is won."[12]
The success of the X Prize competition has spurred spin-offs that are set up in the same way. There have been two major spin-offs at this point, the first of which is theM Prize (short for Methuselah Mouse Prize), which is a prize set up byUniversity of CambridgebiogerontologistAubrey de Grey which will go to the scientific team that successfully extends the life or reverses the aging of mice, which would then eventually be available to humans. The second is the NASACentennial Challenges, which consist of (among others) theTether Challenge in which teams compete to develop superstrong tethers as a component tospace elevators, and theBeam Power Challenge which encourages ideas for transmitting power wirelessly. An independent spin-off called theN-Prize was started byCambridgeMicrobiologist Paul H. Dear in 2007, designed to foster research into low-cost orbital launchers.
The X Prize foundation itself is developing additional prizes: theArchon X Prize, to advance research in the field ofgenomics; theAutomotive X Prize, an engineering competition to create a fuel efficient clean car;[13][14] theWirefly X Prize Cup, an annually held air & space exposition featuring space-related competitions and rocketry, and theGoogle Lunar X Prize, a competition for privately funded lunar exploration. Of several awards on offer, the largest—$20 million—will be awarded to the first privately funded team to produce a robot that lands on theMoon and travels 500 m (1,640 ft) across its surface.[15][16]
There is also a possible "H-Prize", focused onhydrogen vehicle research, although this goal has been addressed byH.R. 5143, an X-Prize-inspired bill passed by theUnited States House of Representatives, which was later folded into theEnergy Independence and Security Act of 2007.[17]
Ansari X Prize:
Similar topics:
Related technical topics:
The $10 million will be paid, not by the X Prize Foundation, but by the insurance company the group dealt with in what's known as a "hole-in-one" insurance policy, similar to those taken out by golf courses for tournaments.
