X Prize Has New Competitors

An anonymous reader writes "According to space.com, there are four new competitors in the X Prize competition. For those of you living under a rock, the X Prize competition is where people are competing for a 10 million dollar paycheck for creating a reusable spacecraft and using it twice within two weeks. X Prize officials are saying they expect to award the prize money within a year or two."

Do they have the 10 mil?

[netringer]

Burt Rutan [scaled.com] has said that he would have claimed the X prize [xprize.org] by now, but he wasn't going to persue it further until the US$10M prize was real. They've never gotten the sponsors to put up the money.

Rutan's already flying Proteus [scaled.com] is the launch vehicle he plans to use. He's keeping the capsule part secret.

Re:Do they have the 10 mil?

[WolfWithoutAClause]

Yes, the funding is now secure. They'd raised part of the money, but couldn't raise enough to cover the whole prize.

Instead the organisers cut a deal, essentially insuring with the money they had already, against somebody winning before 2005. If the prize isn't won then the insurers pocket the money they already have and walk. Otherwise the insurers have to pay out the full 10 mil.

Re:Do they have the 10 mil?

[benh57]

Probably a good bet on the insurers' part.

Re:Do they have the 10 mil?

[jeboyer]

To further increase the signal-to-noise, here's a couple [xprize.org] of links [hobbyspace.com] (look at Oct. 17 & 18 entries) with a little more detail on the funding deal...

Unbelievable

[isorox]

2 posts, both modded up. Why cant all slashdot discussions be like this?

*cue the sound of trolls*

Re:Unbelievable

[WolfWithoutAClause]

2 posts, both modded up. Why cant all slashdot discussions be like this?

Not even this one. Because you had to go and post ;-)

Terms and conditions?

[The Masked Fruitcake]

Alas, I was disappointed to find no easy money after investigating the X-Prize Guidelines [xprize.org]. Specifically, item 5 seems to disqualify the capitalists among us who would be tempted to pay somebody $1 million just for taking a quick little ride in a craft that looks suspiciously like the ammunition for a very large-scale potato gun. Net gain of $8 million, minus what it took to construct the cannon and retrieve the projectile and clean it out for use by vict^H^H^H^Hbrave individual #2!