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Ansari X Prize

January 01, 1970

This article is about the sub-orbital human spaceflight contest. For other X Prizes, see X Prize Foundation.

The Ansari X Prize was a space competition in which the X Prize Foundation offered a US$10,000,000 prize for the first non-government organization to launch a reusable crewed spacecraft into space twice within two weeks. It was modeled after early 20th-century aviation prizes, and aimed to spur development of low-cost spaceflight.[1]

Ansari X Prize
The winning spaceplane SpaceShipOne being carried below its launch vehicle White Knight
Awarded for"build and launch a spacecraft capable of carrying three people to 100 kilometers above the Earth's surface, twice within two weeks"[1]
CountryWorldwide
Presented byX PRIZE Foundation
Reward(s)US$10 million[1]
Last awardedOctober 4, 2004
WinnerScaled Composites
Websiteansari.xprize.org

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-dollar donation from entrepreneurs Anousheh Ansari and Amir Ansari.

The prize was won on October 4, 2004, the 47th anniversary of the Sputnik 1 launch, by the Tier One project designed by Burt Rutan and financed by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, using the experimental spaceplane SpaceShipOne. $10 million was awarded to the winner, and more than $100 million was invested in new technologies in pursuit of the prize.[1]

Several other X Prizes have since been announced by the X Prize Foundation, promoting further development in space exploration and other technological fields.

Motivation edit

The X Prize was inspired by the Orteig Prize—the 1919 prize worth 25,000 dollars offered by New York hotel owner Raymond Orteig that encouraged a number of intrepid aviators in the mid-1920s to fly across the Atlantic Ocean from New York to Paris—which was ultimately won in 1927 by Charles Lindbergh in his aircraft Spirit 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 a space 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 space barnstorming prize", and set an initial goal of finding backers to support a US$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 the X-15 that was, in 1963, the first government-built craft to carry a human into space; and because "Ten is the Roman numeral X".[3]: 17 

The X Prize was first publicly proposed by Diamandis in an address to the NSS International Space Development Conference in 1995. The competition goal was adopted from the SpaceCub 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 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, and ultimately pioneering low-cost space travel and unfettered human expansion into the Solar System.

NASA is developing a similar prize program called Centennial Challenges to generate innovative solutions to space technology problems.

Contestants edit

Twenty-six teams from around the world participated, ranging from volunteer hobbyists to large corporate-backed operations:[4]

Some sources mention two other companies:

  • AeroAstro*
  • Cerulean Freight Forwarding Co.,

but do not mention Whalen Aeronautics Inc.[5]

Winning team edit

The Tier One project made two successful competitive flights: X1 on September 29, 2004, piloted by Mike Melvill to 102.9 km; and X2 on October 4, 2004, piloted by Brian 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 as Mojave Aerospace Ventures, the corporation that funded the attempt; Tier One, the project name of Mojave's contest entry; and Scaled 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 the Saint Louis Science Center in St. Louis, Missouri.

Unsuccessful attempts edit

Although only the Tier One team actually launched a spacecraft on a sub-orbital spaceflight, several other teams have conducted low-altitude tests or announced future plans to launch into space:[3]

  • ARCA launched Demonstrator 2B rocket on September 9, 2004, at Cape Midia Air Force Base in Romania. It was the first flight of a reusable monopropellant rocket.
  • 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. No flight ever occurred.
  • 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 unnamed test vehicle, in two separate uncrewed test launches, both crashed and were destroyed.[9]
  • On February 15, 2005, AERA Corporation (formerly American Astronautics) announced its plans to send seven paying passengers into space as early as 2006, a full year before the first announced speculative Virgin Galactic flight.

List of major donors by order of donation edit

Organization edit

Main article: X Prize Foundation

With the Ansari X Prize, the X 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.

Funding edit

The funding for the US $10,000,000 prize 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]

Spin-offs edit

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 the M Prize (short for Methuselah Mouse Prize), which is a prize set up by University of Cambridge 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 is 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. An independent spin-off called the N-Prize was started by Cambridge Microbiologist Paul H. Dear in 2007, designed to foster research into low-cost orbital launchers.

The X Prize foundation itself is developing additional prizes: the Archon X Prize, to advance research in the field of genomics; the Automotive X Prize, an engineering competition to create a fuel efficient clean car;[13][14] the Wirefly X Prize Cup, an annually held air & space exposition featuring space-related competitions and rocketry, and the Google 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 the Moon and travels 500 m (1,640 ft) across its surface.[15][16]

There is also a possible "H-Prize", focused on hydrogen vehicle research, although this goal has been addressed by H.R. 5143, an X-Prize-inspired bill passed by the United States House of Representatives, which was later folded into the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007.[17]

See also edit

 
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Ansari X-Prize.

Ansari X Prize:

Similar topics:

Related technical topics:

Further reading edit

  • "The X Prize", an article by Ian Parker on pages 52–63 of the 4 October 2004 issue of The New Yorker

References edit

  1. ^ a b c d . Archived from the original on 23 September 2010. Retrieved 2010-09-15.
  2. ^ Wood, Molly (May 10, 2021). "To solve big problems, sometimes you need a contest". marketplace.org. Retrieved January 28, 2023.
  3. ^ a b c d Belfiore, Michael (2007). Rocketeers: how a visionary band of business leaders, engineers, and pilots is boldly privatizing space. New York: Smithsonian Books. ISBN 978-0-06-114903-0. Retrieved 2014-12-28.
  4. ^ "Go for Launch! X Prize Foundation Announces Teams Ready to Compete for $10 Million". phys.org. July 28, 2004. Retrieved February 12, 2023.
  5. ^ a b "X-Prize". Astronaut.ru. Retrieved 28 December 2014.
  6. ^ "SpaceShipOne rockets to success". BBC News. 7 October 2005. from the original on 28 October 2010. Retrieved 9 December 2010.
  7. ^ "Black Sky: The Race for Space". imdb.com. Retrieved February 13, 2023.
  8. ^ "Black Sky: Winning the X Prize". imdb.com. Retrieved February 13, 2023.
  9. ^ "(Rubicon 1 un-manned test) X-prize contender rocket explodes". August 9, 2004. Retrieved February 13, 2023.
  10. ^ Boyle, Alan (2004-10-05). "SpaceShipOne wins $10 million X Prize". msnbc.com. Retrieved 2020-06-01.
  11. ^ Boyle, Alan (October 3, 2004). "SpaceShipOne wins $10 million X Prize". NBC News. Retrieved February 12, 2023. 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.
  12. ^ "An Interview with Peter Diamandis". 2003-03-01. from the original on 7 February 2010. Retrieved 2010-01-22.
  13. ^ "Interview with Mark Goodstein, Executive Director of the Automotive X Prize on new energy X Prize". Retrieved January 28, 2023.
  14. ^ "Progressive Insurance Automotive X Prize". Retrieved February 13, 2023.
  15. ^ Glenday, Craig (2013). Guinness World Records 2014. pp. 184. ISBN 978-1-908843-15-9.
  16. ^ "THE NEW SPACE RACE".
  17. ^ "H.R.5143 - H-Prize Act of 2006". Congress.gov. 11 May 2006. Retrieved 2015-10-11.

External links edit

January 01, 1970
ansari, prize, this, article, about, orbital, human, spaceflight, contest, other, prizes, prize, foundation, space, competition, which, prize, foundation, offered, prize, first, government, organization, launch, reusable, crewed, spacecraft, into, space, twice. This article is about the sub orbital human spaceflight contest For other X Prizes see X Prize Foundation The Ansari X Prize was a space competition in which the X Prize Foundation offered a US 10 000 000 prize for the first non government organization to launch a reusable crewed spacecraft into space twice within two weeks It was modeled after early 20th century aviation prizes and aimed to spur development of low cost spaceflight 1 Ansari X PrizeThe winning spaceplane SpaceShipOne being carried below its launch vehicle White KnightAwarded for build and launch a spacecraft capable of carrying three people to 100 kilometers above the Earth s surface twice within two weeks 1 CountryWorldwidePresented byX PRIZE FoundationReward s US 10 million 1 Last awardedOctober 4 2004WinnerScaled CompositesWebsiteansari xprize org 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 dollar donation from entrepreneurs Anousheh Ansari and Amir Ansari The prize was won on October 4 2004 the 47th anniversary of the Sputnik 1 launch by the Tier One project designed by Burt Rutan and financed by Microsoft co founder Paul Allen using the experimental spaceplane SpaceShipOne 10 million was awarded to the winner and more than 100 million was invested in new technologies in pursuit of the prize 1 Several other X Prizes have since been announced by the X Prize Foundation promoting further development in space exploration and other technological fields Contents 1 Motivation 2 Contestants 3 Winning team 4 Unsuccessful attempts 5 List of major donors by order of donation 6 Organization 7 Funding 8 Spin offs 9 See also 10 Further reading 11 References 12 External linksMotivation editThe X Prize was inspired by the Orteig Prize the 1919 prize worth 25 000 dollars offered by New York hotel owner Raymond Orteig that encouraged a number of intrepid aviators in the mid 1920s to fly across the Atlantic Ocean from New York to Paris which was ultimately won in 1927 by Charles Lindbergh in his aircraft Spirit 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 a space 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 space barnstorming prize and set an initial goal of finding backers to support a US 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 the X 15 that was in 1963 the first government built craft to carry a human into space and because Ten is the Roman numeral X 3 17 The X Prize was first publicly proposed by Diamandis in an address to the NSS International Space Development Conference in 1995 The competition goal was adopted from the SpaceCub 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 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 and ultimately pioneering low cost space travel and unfettered human expansion into the Solar System NASA is developing a similar prize program called Centennial Challenges to generate innovative solutions to space technology problems Contestants editTwenty six teams from around the world participated ranging from volunteer hobbyists to large corporate backed operations 4 Acceleration Engineering Advent Launch Services website ARCA website Armadillo Aerospace website American Astronautics Corporation AERA website Bristol Spaceplanes Limited website Canadian Arrow The da Vinci Project Pablo de Leon amp Associates website Discraft Corporation Flight Exploration Fundamental Technology Systems High Altitude Research Corporation website IL Aerospace Technologies website Interorbital Systems website Kelly Space and Technology website Lone Star Space Access Corporation website Micro Space Inc website Len Cormier s PanAero Inc website Pioneer Rocketplane website Scaled Composites Tier One project Winning Team Space Transport Corporation Starchaser Industries website Suborbital Corporation TGV Rockets website Vanguard Spacecraft Whalen Aeronautics Inc Some sources mention two other companies AeroAstro Cerulean Freight Forwarding Co but do not mention Whalen Aeronautics Inc 5 Winning team editThe Tier One project made two successful competitive flights X1 on September 29 2004 piloted by Mike Melvill to 102 9 km and X2 on October 4 2004 piloted by Brian 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 as Mojave Aerospace Ventures the corporation that funded the attempt Tier One the project name of Mojave s contest entry and Scaled 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 the Saint Louis Science Center in St Louis Missouri nbsp Representatives of the 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 Ansari X Prize trophy is on the left nbsp SpaceShipOne Flight 16P taxi pre launch nbsp Mike Melvill and Burt Rutan speak to the media after the first flight into spaceUnsuccessful attempts editAlthough only the Tier One team actually launched a spacecraft on a sub orbital spaceflight several other teams have conducted low altitude tests or announced future plans to launch into space 3 ARCA launched Demonstrator 2B rocket on September 9 2004 at Cape Midia Air Force Base in Romania It was the first flight of a reusable monopropellant rocket 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 No flight ever occurred 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 unnamed test vehicle in two separate uncrewed test launches both crashed and were destroyed 9 On February 15 2005 AERA Corporation formerly American Astronautics announced its plans to send seven paying passengers into space as early as 2006 a full year before the first announced speculative Virgin Galactic flight List of major donors by order of donation editAnousheh Ansari and Amir Ansari the official sponsors of the competition 3 5 First USA J P Morgan Chase US 1 000 000 New Spirit of St Louis Organization Danforth Foundation US 500 000 Tom Clancy 100K US 500 000 J S McDonnell McDonnell Douglas Andrew Taylor Enterprise Rent A Car Andrew Beal Beal Bank St Louis Science CenterOrganization editMain article X Prize Foundation With the Ansari X Prize the X 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 Funding editThe funding for the US 10 000 000 prize 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 Spin offs editThe 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 the M Prize short for Methuselah Mouse Prize which is a prize set up by University of Cambridge 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 is 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 An independent spin off called the N Prize was started by Cambridge Microbiologist Paul H Dear in 2007 designed to foster research into low cost orbital launchers The X Prize foundation itself is developing additional prizes the Archon X Prize to advance research in the field of genomics the Automotive X Prize an engineering competition to create a fuel efficient clean car 13 14 the Wirefly X Prize Cup an annually held air amp space exposition featuring space related competitions and rocketry and the Google 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 the Moon and travels 500 m 1 640 ft across its surface 15 16 There is also a possible H Prize focused on hydrogen vehicle research although this goal has been addressed by H R 5143 an X Prize inspired bill passed by the United States House of Representatives which was later folded into the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 17 See also edit nbsp Wikimedia Commons has media related to Ansari X Prize Ansari X Prize Tier One SpaceShipOne WhiteKnightOne Black Sky The Race For Space 2004 telefim Discovery Channel documentary about the Ansari X Prize How to Make a Spaceship 2016 book by Julian Buthrie about the Ansari X Prize Similar topics NASA Centennial Challenges Orteig Prize America s Space Prize Methuselah Mouse Prize or M Prize modeled after the Ansari X Prize N Prize a low budget orbital satellite insertion challenge List of space technology awards List of challenge awards List of awards named after people Related technical topics Specific impulse Tsiolkovsky rocket equation Delta v Portals nbsp Aviation nbsp United States nbsp SpaceflightFurther reading edit The X Prize an article by Ian Parker on pages 52 63 of the 4 October 2004 issue of The New YorkerReferences edit a b c d Ansari X Prize Archived from the original on 23 September 2010 Retrieved 2010 09 15 Wood Molly May 10 2021 To solve big problems sometimes you need a contest marketplace org Retrieved January 28 2023 a b c d Belfiore Michael 2007 Rocketeers how a visionary band of business leaders engineers and pilots is boldly privatizing space New York Smithsonian Books ISBN 978 0 06 114903 0 Retrieved 2014 12 28 Go for Launch X Prize Foundation Announces Teams Ready to Compete for 10 Million phys org July 28 2004 Retrieved February 12 2023 a b X Prize Astronaut ru Retrieved 28 December 2014 SpaceShipOne rockets to success BBC News 7 October 2005 Archived from the original on 28 October 2010 Retrieved 9 December 2010 Black Sky The Race for Space imdb com Retrieved February 13 2023 Black Sky Winning the X Prize imdb com Retrieved February 13 2023 Rubicon 1 un manned test X prize contender rocket explodes August 9 2004 Retrieved February 13 2023 Boyle Alan 2004 10 05 SpaceShipOne wins 10 million X Prize msnbc com Retrieved 2020 06 01 Boyle Alan October 3 2004 SpaceShipOne wins 10 million X Prize NBC News Retrieved February 12 2023 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 An Interview with Peter Diamandis 2003 03 01 Archived from the original on 7 February 2010 Retrieved 2010 01 22 Interview with Mark Goodstein Executive Director of the Automotive X Prize on new energy X Prize Retrieved January 28 2023 Progressive Insurance Automotive X Prize Retrieved February 13 2023 Glenday Craig 2013 Guinness World Records 2014 pp 184 ISBN 978 1 908843 15 9 THE NEW SPACE RACE H R 5143 H Prize Act of 2006 Congress gov 11 May 2006 Retrieved 2015 10 11 External links editX Prize founder talks about the prize and the future of space travel MIT Video FAI Rules for Astronautic Record Attempts Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Ansari X Prize amp oldid 1223264147, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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