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ANSARI X PRIZE

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Image:X Prize logo stars small.jpg right|framed|The X prize logo shows a stylised letter X representing a spacecraft trajectory and containing a starfield. The '''Ansari X Prize''' (formerly the '''X Prize''') was a United States dollar US$10,000,000 prize, offered by the X PRIZE Foundation, for the first Non-governmental organization non-government organization to launch a reusable manned spaceflight manned spacecraft into outer space space twice within two weeks. It was modelled after early 20th century 20th-century aviation prizes, and aimed to spur development of low-cost spaceflight. The prize was won on October 4 2004, 47th anniversary of the Sputnik 1 launch, by the Tier One project using the experimental spaceplane Scaled Composites SpaceShipOne SpaceShipOne.

Contest rules
The contest winner was to be the first team to launch a pilot (spaceflight) piloted spacecraft, carrying at least three crewmembers (or one human pilot and payload equivalent to two more), to an altitude of at least 1 E5 m 100 kilometers (328,100 ft or 62.14 mi), and then repeat the feat using the same spacecraft within two weeks. Reaching orbit was not a goal, and so all the competitors aimed to make suborbital flights only. The spacecraft were permitted to land at the same site that they launched from. The 100 km target is the Karman line boundary of space as defined by the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale. The two competitive flights were required to be made by the same vehicle. With the exception of propellant, no more than 10% of the vehicle could be replaced between flights; the rest of the vehicle must be reused. Even NASA's Space Shuttle falls short of this performance requirement, since it takes much more than two weeks to ready a given shuttle between flights. However, the space shuttle is an orbital, rather than sub-orbital spacecraft. The vehicle must be intact and theoretically reusable after the second flight, and the crew must return unharmed. Altitudes achieved were measured by three separate systems. There was a flight recorder, referred to as the "gold box", carried on each competitive flight, and two separate radar systems were used. Official altitudes were determined by a compromise between the three systems. Teams were forbidden to accept government funding for their efforts. Private sponsors were acceptable, however.

Motivation
Image:XPrize_romanticized_graphic.jpg 350px|right|The X Prize invokes romantic ideals of pioneering aviators. The X Prize was designed to help encourage the space industry in the private sector, which is why the entries were not allowed to have any government funding. It aimed to demonstrate that spaceflight can be affordable and accessible to corporations and civilians, opening the door to commercial spaceflight and space tourism. It is also hoped that competition will breed innovation, introducing new low-cost methods of reaching Earth orbit. If everything goes as planned, the X Prize winners could become pioneers of low-cost space travel and unfettered space colonization human expansion into the solar system. The X Prize was modelled after many prizes from the early 20th century that helped prod the development of flight air flight, including notably the $25,000 Orteig Prize that spurred Charles Lindbergh to make his solo flight across the Atlantic Ocean. NASA is developing similar prize programs called Centennial Challenges to generate innovative solutions to space technology problems.

Contestants
Twenty-six teams from around the world participated, ranging from volunteer hobbyists to large corporate-backed operations: * Acceleration Engineering
- Advent Launch Services * Aeronautics and Cosmonautics Romanian Association (ARCASPACE) * Armadillo Aerospace
- American Astronautics Corporation (Now AERA)
- Bristol Spaceplanes, Ltd * Canadian Arrow * The da Vinci Project
- Pablo de Leon & Associates * Discraft Corporation * Flight Exploration * Fundamental Technology Systems
- HARC
- IL Aerospace Technologies
- Interorbital Systems
- Kelly Space and Technology
- Lone Star Space Access Corporation
- Micro-Space, Inc.
- PanAero, Inc.
- Pioneer Rocketplane, Inc. now Rocketplane Limited, Inc. * Scaled Composites' Tier One project (this team ultimately won the prize) * Space Transport Corporation * Starchaser Industries * Suborbital Corporation
- TGV Rockets * Vanguard Spacecraft This contestant list notably did not include traditional space access companies like Boeing and Lockheed, which many in the industry believe to be incapable of replacing their present space transportation vehicles with low-cost alternatives. These critics claim as evidence the companies' several failed attempts to do so, such as the X-33 project, on contract from NASA and other United States U.S. government agencies. However, the X Prize Foundation itself did not ban these companies from applying, so long as they could prove their efforts on this project would be free of government funding.

Competition status
Image:Ansari X-Prize Check.jpg November 6.html" title="Meaning of right right|thumb|300px|Representatives of the Ansari X Prize Foundation symbolically presented the ten million dollar prize to Burt Rutan and Paul Allen of Mojave Aerospace Ventures on [[November 6, 2004. The X Prize trophy is on the left..html" title="Meaning of thumb|300px|Representatives of the Ansari X Prize Foundation symbolically presented the ten million dollar prize to Burt Rutan and Paul Allen of Mojave Aerospace Ventures on [[November 6">right|thumb|300px|Representatives of the Ansari X Prize Foundation symbolically presented the ten million dollar prize to Burt Rutan and Paul Allen of Mojave Aerospace Ventures on [[November 6, 2004. The X Prize trophy is on the left.">thumb|300px|Representatives of the Ansari X Prize Foundation symbolically presented the ten million dollar prize to Burt Rutan and Paul Allen of Mojave Aerospace Ventures on [[November 6">right|thumb|300px|Representatives of the Ansari X Prize Foundation symbolically presented the ten million dollar prize to Burt Rutan and Paul Allen of Mojave Aerospace Ventures on [[November 6, 2004. The X Prize trophy is on the left. The Tier One project made two successful competitive flights, SpaceShipOne flight 16P X1 on September 29 2004 and SpaceShipOne flight 17P X2 on October 4 2004. They thus won the prize, which was awarded on November 6 2004. (Note: the winning team is referred to by several names at various times: Tier One, Scaled Composites, and Mojave Aerospace Ventures.) The trophy is currently on display in the lobby of the Science Fiction Museum in Seattle, Washington.

Flight attempts by teams that did not win
Although only the Tier One team actually launched a spacecraft into suborbital space, several other teams have conducted low-altitude tests or announced future plans to launch into space: *The da Vinci Project originally announced that their first flight would be on October 2 2004, but this was postponed indefinitely on September 23 2004, as they were unable to obtain a few necessary components in time. They have not announced a revised timetable. *The Canadian Arrow team conducted a successful full-power engine test in 2005 and announced on June 2, 2005, that it had received permission from the Canadian government to use Cape Rich as a future launch site. *On August 8 2004, Space Transport Corporation's '''Rubicon 1''' and Armadillo Aerospace's test vehicle, in two separate unmanned test launches, both crashed and were destroyed. *On February 15 2005, AERA (Formerly American Astronautics) announced its plans to send seven paying passengers into space as early as 2006, a full year before the first Virgin Galactic flight.

Organization
Created in May 1996 and initially called just "X Prize", it was renamed "Ansari X Prize" on May 6, 2004 following a multimillion dollar donation from Iran Iranian-born entrepreneurs Anousheh Ansari and Amir Ansari. The X PRIZE Foundation, (based at the St. Louis Science Center in St. Louis, Missouri), maintains a list of organizations registered to compete for the prize. Some companies developed their craft in secret, not publicly announcing their plans until they were ready to request air/space permission from their local government. Such was the case with the winning team Scaled Composites, whose founder Burt Rutan announced in 1996 that the company would compete for the X Prize but worked entirely in secret for seven years, finally revealing the completed vehicle in April 2003.

List of major donors by order of donation
*Anousheh Ansari and Amir Ansari *First USA (J.P. Morgan Chase), $1,000,000 USD *New Spirit of St. Louis Organization *Danforth Foundation, $500,000 USD *Tom Clancy, $100K–$500K *James Smith McDonnell J.S. McDonnell (McDonnell Douglas) *Andrew Taylor (Enterprise Rent-A-Car) *Andrew Beal (Beal Bank) *St. Louis Science Center

Spinoffs
The success of the X Prize competition has spurred spinoffs that are set up in the same way. There have been two major spinoffs at this point, the first of which is the Methuselah Mouse Prize M Prize (short for Methuselah Mouse Prize), which is a prize set up by University of Cambridge biogerontology biogerontologist Aubrey 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 are the NASA Centennial Challenges, which consist of (among others) the Tether Challenge in which teams compete to develop superstrong tethers as a component to space elevators, and the Beam Power Challenge which encourages ideas for transmitting power wirelessly. The X Prize foundation itself is developing additional prizes, including one around genomics, and another around energy.

See also
* NASA Centennial Challenges * List of prizes * Prizes named after people * America's Space Prize * Methuselah Mouse Prize, or M Prize (modelled after the Ansari X Prize) Related technical topics: * Specific impulse * Tsiolkovsky equation * Delta V

External links

- Ansari X Prize official site
- Ansari X Prize Space Race News
- Yahoo! News - SpaceShipOne Readies Run at $10 Mln Prize
- (Rubicon 1 un-manned test) X-prize contender rocket explodes
- Tier One (SpaceShipOne) Homepage
- Going Private: The Promise and Danger of Space Travel -- a study of the future of spaceflight and its possible risks
- FAI Rules for Astronautic Record Attempts
- press release: SpaceShipOne reaches over 360,000 feet to win the $10 million ANSARI X PRIZE
- Space Enterprise Network
- Interview with Mark Goodstein, X PRIZE Foundation on new energy X-Prize

Further reading
# "The X Prize", an article by Ian Parker on pages 52 – 63 of the 4 October 2004 issue of ''The New Yorker'' {{airlistbox}} Category:Prizes Category:Private spaceflight da:Ansari X Prize de:Ansari X-Prize es:Ansari X-Prize fr:Ansari X Prize ja:Ansari X Prize pl:Ansari X Prize ru:Ansari X Prize fi:Ansari X-Prize sl:Ansari X sv:Ansari X Prize see Ansari X Prize

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