Ansari X Prize

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Ansari X Prize
Space Ship One and White Knight - Flickr - Beige Alert.jpg
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 by X PRIZE Foundation
Reward(s) US$10 million [1]
Last awardedOctober 4, 2004
Winner Scaled Composites
Website ansari.xprize.org
Ansari X Prize logo.png

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]

Contents

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

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

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]

Winning team

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

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]

List of major donors by order of donation

Organization

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

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

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

Ansari X Prize:

Similar topics:

Related technical topics:

Further reading

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Scaled Composites</span> American aerospace company

Scaled Composites is an American aerospace company founded by Burt Rutan and currently owned by Northrop Grumman. It is located at the Mojave Air and Space Port in Mojave, California, United States. Founded to develop experimental aircraft, the company now focuses on designing and developing concept craft and prototype fabrication processes for aircraft and other vehicles. It is known for unconventional designs, for its use of non-metal, composite materials, and for winning the Ansari X Prize with its experimental spacecraft SpaceShipOne.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Teacher in Space Project</span> NASA program from 1984 to 1990

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">SpaceShipOne</span> American experimental spaceplane

SpaceShipOne is an experimental air-launched rocket-powered aircraft with sub-orbital spaceflight capability at speeds of up to 3,000 ft/s (2,000 mph) / 910 m/s (3,300 km/h) using a hybrid rocket motor. The design features a unique "feathering" atmospheric reentry system where the rear half of the wing and the twin tail booms folds 70 degrees upward along a hinge running the length of the wing; this increases drag while retaining stability. SpaceShipOne completed the first crewed private spaceflight in 2004. That same year, it won the US$10 million Ansari X Prize and was immediately retired from active service. Its mother ship was named "White Knight". Both craft were developed and flown by Mojave Aerospace Ventures, which was a joint venture between Paul Allen and Scaled Composites, Burt Rutan's aviation company. Allen provided the funding of approximately US$25 million.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Burt Rutan</span> American aerospace engineer

Elbert Leander "Burt" Rutan is a retired American aerospace engineer and entrepreneur noted for his originality in designing light, strong, unusual-looking, and energy-efficient air and space craft. He designed the record-breaking Voyager, which in 1986 was the first plane to fly around the world without stopping or refueling. He also designed the Virgin Atlantic GlobalFlyer, which in 2006 set the world record for the fastest and longest nonstop non-refueled circumnavigation flight in history. In 2004, Rutan's sub-orbital spaceplane design SpaceShipOne became the first privately funded spacecraft to enter the realm of space, winning the Ansari X-Prize that year for achieving the feat twice within a two-week period.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mike Melvill</span> American test pilot and astronaut (born 1940)

Michael Winston Melvill is a world-record-breaking pilot and one of the test pilots for SpaceShipOne, the experimental spaceplane developed by Scaled Composites. Melvill piloted SpaceShipOne on its first flight past the edge of space, flight 15P on June 21, 2004, thus becoming the first commercial astronaut, and the 435th person to go into space. He was also the pilot on SpaceShipOne's flight 16P, the first competitive flight in the Ansari X Prize competition.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">SpaceShipOne flight 15P</span> First privately funded human spaceflight (2004)

Flight 15P of SpaceShipOne (X0) was the first privately funded human spaceflight. It took place on June 21, 2004. It was the fourth powered test flight of the Tier One program, with the previous three test flights reaching much lower altitudes. The flight carried only its pilot, Mike Melvill, who thus became the first non-governmental astronaut.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">SpaceShipOne flight 16P</span> 2004 private crewed sub-orbital spaceflight

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Flight 17P of SpaceShipOne was a spaceflight in the Tier One program that took place on October 4, 2004. It was the second competitive flight in the Ansari X Prize competition to demonstrate a non-governmental reusable crewed spacecraft, and is hence also referred to as the X2 flight. It was a successful flight, winning the X PRIZE.

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References

  1. 1 2 3 4 "Ansari X Prize". 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. 1 2 3 4 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. 1 2 "X-Prize". Astronaut.ru. Retrieved 28 December 2014.
  6. ↑ "SpaceShipOne rockets to success". BBC News. 7 October 2005. Archived 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. Archived 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.
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