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X Prize Competition Gets New Sponsor, Amended Name
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."
This was an obvious joke, but I'm not sure if moderators really get it-
Ads really are going on baseball bases. Spiderman 2 has bought the rights to put some logos on baseball bases in the next few weeks.
Next thing you know, corporate sponsors will be buying insightful or funny slashdot posts.
THIS POST BROUGHT TO YOU BY MCDONALDS. WE'RE LOVIN' IT.
"5. The crew must return to the Earth's surface from both flights in good health as reasonably defined and judged by the X PRIZE Review Board. The flight vehicle must return from both flights substantially intact, as defined by and in the sole judgment of the X PRIZE Review Board, such that the vehicle is reusable."
:)
Rule number 5
I guess they don't put in on the press release since it points out that people might not come back in good health...but the full rules don't let dead people win.
As someone already pointed out, it says that the ship has to return safely, not the passengers.
Nope. Rule 3 says "Each flight must carry at least one person..."
It does not specify if the passengers have to be alive or not. If you send up corpses, it is easier to keep them intact than it is to keep live passengers alive.
It's even stricter than that. Rule 5 says "The crew must return to the Earth's surface from both flights in good health as reasonably defined and judged by the X PRIZE Review Board."
Mice? Does not say you can't send them instead of humans.
Nope, but Rule 3 says "person" and I don't think mice count as people.
Try finding loopholes in the actual rules instead of the Slashdot summary of them.
This is incorrect. Ion Propulsion is only good for micro-gravity / zero-gravity travel. As it only adds small amounts of energy to the craft built up over a long period of time to reach fast speeds. This method of propulsion is impossible to use (as it is currently implemented) for flights from the surface of the earth into outer-space.
SUB-Orbital!. Getting into orbit requires an amount of speed and power that is waaaay beyond what the X-Prize entrants can currently achieve.
I mean, sure, once they start running a profitable business taking people up to space, Zero G for seconds to a few minutes, and then down real fast, then they can start working on the exponentially harder orbital flights, which will be even more profitable with business applications as well as pure fun.
There are two kinds of people in the world: Those with good memory.
http://www.gmu.edu/alumni/spirit/00fall/ansari.htm l
If you look at the donators background, I don't think you could find a better or more honorable person to have sponsored this event...
This woman definitely deserves her name to be recorded with X Prize's History...