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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."
What a great way to buy one's name into the pages of history.
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
:)
What about the passengers? Or they really do care only about the ship
Sponsors get naming rights on just about everything these days, so it's not surprising the X-Prize wasn't immune... next thing you know somebody's going to buy the rights to put ads on baseball bases.
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
I hope they extend the date and I also hope the prize money goes up. I think the major entrants have all spent more than $10,000.000 as it is. Still, I don't think they are doing it primarily for the money anyway.
Happy Trails!
Erick
http://www.busyweather.com/
I wonder how test flights would go. Someone tricking their little brother to "step in the SPACESHIP!"
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Never criticize religion on Slashdot. You will be modded down for "Troll" no matter how factual it is.
I notice it doesn't say what kind of passengers - wonder if mice are acceptable?
I'll just keep calling it "the X prize" until there is more than one.
You can't take the sky from me...
As someone already pointed out, it says that the ship has to return safely, not the passengers.
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.
Mice? Does not say you can't send them instead of humans.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
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.
...the competition is now known as "Pepsi Presents the Ansari X Prize Competition"
(Why, yes, this was an obligatory Simpsons reference, thank you for noticing!)
~Philly
Call my cynical, but Iranians wanting in on rockets capable of doubling as ICBMs worry me.
;-)
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.
is can NASA take a rocket up 100 km with 3 people, take it down, and put it back up again within 2 weeks?
Anousheh Ansari
Founder and CEO
telecom technologies, inc. (tti)
Anousheh Ansari is president, founder, and CEO of telecom technologies, inc. (tti), a supplier of softswitch based solutions for network and service providers offering end-to-end solutions for next generation, carrier-grade multi-service networks. Prior to founding tti, Ansari provided consulting services to the major telecommunications service providers and vendors in the areas of Frame Relay and ATM switch testing and evaluation.
Early in her career, Ansari held positions with MCI Telecommunications Corporation and Communication Satellite Corporation (COMSAT) in various engineering capacities. She worked on architectural design for SS7 and ISDN networks.
Ansari was recognized by Working Woman magazine as the winner of the 2000 National Entrepreneurial Excellence award, and was chosen as the winner of the 1999 Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year, Southwest Region, for the Technology and Communications category. She has authored numerous technical papers and has two patents for her work on Automated Operator Services and Wireless Service Node. She was a U.S. delegate at ITU SG VII, SG XI and SG XVII, and a representative at American National Standard Institute T1S1 and T1X1 Technical Subcommittees.
Ansari holds a Master of Science Degree in Electrical Engineering from George Washington University and a Bachelor of Science Degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from George Mason University. She is also a member of Eta Kappa Nu, IEEE and NSPE.
Success
2000 National Entrepreneurial Excellence Award winner: Anousheh Ansari, CEO and chair of Telecom Technologies on the cover of Working Magazine (May 2000). "Anousheh Ansari once dreamed of being an astronaut while growing up in her native Tehran, Iran. Today the 33-year-old Ansari is turning upstart Telecom Technologies Inc into a force in the telecommunications industry."
Hey! In space, copyright laws don't apply (yet). You can set up a rogue state for file traders.
History is bound to repeat itself. Apparently, many of the Europeans who came to the US way back when did so to escape opressive taxes. Of course, others did it for wealth or land. Who knows, if cheap affordable spaceflight becomes a reality, the chance to create a new state from scratch will be upon us.
However, the *IAA are probably ahead of you, or will do their best to be. I had Entertainment Law this semester (had the final today) - we learned that one of the record company executives saw a shot of astronauts in space with music playing. Apparently it was MCI. Well, believe it or not, while artist contracts previously required assignment of all rights for the whole Earth, now they say for the Universe. (Can't have artists suing and reclaiming that lucrative interplanetary market!)
The first to miss gets the Darwin awards.
It's all good.
Money for anyone who can once and for all get my X Window configuration files working.
There, now there's another X prize.
Actually they did not really have the money when they announced the prize. They actually announced the prize, hoping they could gather the money from donations before anyone could claim the prize. It seems a questionable thing to do, but looks like they will get away with it.
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.
As far as the organisers are concerned, I can't recall them ever posting here, but the plan after the X Prize is won by somebody (probably Rutan, at this stage) is the X Prize Cup, an annual festival/competition where teams will compete to launch their craft as high and as fast as they can.
If they are successful with that competition, I imagine that sooner or later they will propose a private orbital shot.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
First the Pulitzer Prize and the Nobel Prize whore themselves out, and now the X-Prize.
The Ansaris are U.S. residents (citizens too, I would guess - the article doesn't say, but as they both are well-established American businesspeople, I find it likely). Saying that their Muslim-nation background makes them automatically suspect is a witch-hunt.
The basic science of missiles is understood - the science of the X-Prize is on developing a re-usable vehicle that can make multiple trips within a couple of weeks. I'm not an expert, but I'd be surprised if X-Prize technology ends up getting used in ICBM's.
Sponsoring the X-Prize doesn't mean the Ansaris have exclusive access to its aerodynamic secrets.
The most popular movie in Iran right now is a satire of religious extremists. Of course they do hold most of the political power, but this isn't a heirarchal society where every person of Persian background (including US citizens) is trying to build a bomb for the religious right.
"Absolutely the only thing stopping them is fear of retribution ala Afghanistan or Iraq"??? I'd love to hear you back that up. It seems to me, that a determined state could make an anonymous terrorist attack of some kind. Anyway, the war on Iraq isn't retribution for anything; even Bush doesn't claim that, I don't know why you would. The war on Afghanistan may be retribution at heart, but the Taliban (or the people of Afghanistan) didn't attack the US.
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
Just to put this into perspective, the expected financial reward for the company that wins the Joint Strike Fighter contract is $200 billion.
It is being done.... See the scaled composite web site for info on their *Manned* test flights.
The moral of the story is: "Always remember to mount a scratch monkey."
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