X Prize Competition Gets New Sponsor, Amended Name 203
An anonymous reader writes "The X Prize Foundation today announced that entrepreneurs Anousheh Ansari and Amir Ansari have made a multi-million dollar contribution to the X Prize Foundation. As a result, the X Prize Competition is being renamed to the Ansari X Prize Competition." However, the X Prize rules stay the same: "The ANSARI X PRIZE will award $10 million to the first private organization to build and fly a ship that can carry three passengers 100 km (62 miles) into space, return safely to Earth and repeat the launch with the same ship within two weeks. Both flights must be completed by January 1st, 2005."
Wow (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Obvious Question (Score:1, Insightful)
Let the marketing drones call it what they want. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'll just keep calling it "the X prize" until there is more than one.
Re:Increase the prize money and extend the date (Score:5, Insightful)
Most are doing it for the money, but just not soley the X-Prize money. Afterall, if a team ends up finishing late or beaten by another team finishing before them... they'll still have a working reusable orbital spacecraft. That's gotta be useful for something.
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Insensitive clods! (Score:2, Insightful)
Dwarfs and midgets have been barred from the Final Frontier. I guess it is back to the mines to look for precious precious mithril.... Oh, and Mini-Me, stop humping the laser!
Re:Following the money (Score:4, Insightful)
I won't call you cynical. But I will call you an ignorant, paranoid, xenophobic and war-mongering fool - no offense.
Not everyone in the middle east would like to 'nuke' America - not yet anyway. Give it time, and consistency of US foreign policy and maybe... but even then you'd have to count on finding some fanatical middle eastern people with millions of dollars to spend on something insanely overt, huge risk and incredibly open to public and global scrutiny. And anyway, everyone knows the best delivery system for a nuclear warhead these days is a suitcase.
Re:Wow (Score:5, Insightful)
That was the idea behind the prize in the first place, but no big donor stepped forward early -- hence the "X" prize because there was no name, yet, to attach to it. The intention was always to name it after whoever stepped up with the prize money.
Read your aviation (and other technology) history, you'll see lots of progress due to (named) prizes offered by folks with no skills but how to make (or inherit) money.
I just can't wait for the new Maxwell House Instant Shuttle from NASA.
Me neither, although preferably not from NASA. And I think FedEx or American Airlines might be more likely logos.
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:especially the Atheist faith (Score:3, Insightful)
(Most) Atheists don't maintain there can't be a god. They maintain that, due to the nature of the claim and lacking of evidence, one most likely does not exist.
Re:Wow (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Wow (Score:5, Insightful)
Why, you ask? Because they bankrolled it and told everybody so. Of course they were shooting for a valuable spice trade and missed, but the point is that Columbus, an Italian with few resources, was not bankrolled out of altruism or interest in discovery, navigation or research, but out of a desire by Spanish royals to be rich and to stand out among European royalty as the greatest.
Altruism has its place, but greed, egos and personal desire for eternal fame are what pay the bills. There's nothing new about that.