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."

Comments

Re:Obvious Question

[jlaxson]

how do you spell it

Ansari?

Moderate parent +1 Informative

[kamapuaa]

I agree, anyone of Iranian background is suspect! Why, using this system, Mrs. Ansari (perhaps bitter about not placing #1 in "Working Woman's Top 40 under 40" list) could bomb the US! Then, sometime within the next couple weeks, they could bomb the US again!

Thank you for your well-informed post. I also had better inform the travel agency to cancel their tour groups to Iran.

Re:especially the Atheist faith

[spacecowboy420]

Ok, I buy your point on Atheist faith, but I think the same logic applies to both terms although the dictionary supports both of our assertions:

agnostic ( P ) Pronunciation Key (g-nstk)
n

1.
1. One who believes that it is impossible to know whether there is a God.
2. One who is skeptical about the existence of God but does not profess true atheism.
2. One who is doubtful or noncommittal about something.

*A believer is someone who has faith.
*Noncommittal is ambiguos and supports your oxymoron theory

- ..meh *shrugs*

Re:especially the Atheist faith

[AJWM]

I think definition 1.1 is somewhat bogus. Most agnostics I know would be willing to believe in a God were He to offer proof of His existence (unarguable miracles, perhaps). In other words, they believe that it is possible to know whether there is a God if one indeed exists, it just hasn't been proved (to their satisfaction) yet. By the definition given they'd just shrug and say "that doesn't prove anything".

Most atheists (the evangelical ones, anyway ;-) are not merely a-theist (non-theist), they're downright anti-theist.

As for "a believer is someone who has faith" -- true in a religious context, but how much faith does one have if one believes the sun will rise tomorrow, or that if you drop something (on Earth), it will fall down? I'm a believer in physics, is that faith?