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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ansari X Prize | 2/2 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ansari_X_Prize | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T13:30:48.091306+00:00 | kb-cron |
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". 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."
== 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; 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. 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.
== See also ==
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
== Further reading == "The X Prize", an article by Ian Parker on pages 52–63 of the 4 October 2004 issue of The New Yorker
== References ==
== External links == X Prize founder talks about the prize and the future of space travel (MIT Video) FAI Rules for Astronautic Record Attempts