Overview

An X PRIZE is a $10 million+ award given to the first team to achieve a specific goal, set by the X PRIZE Foundation, which has the potential to benefit humanity. Rather than awarding money to honor past achievements or directly funding research, an X PRIZE incites innovation by tapping into our competitive and entrepreneurial spirits.

There are many types of competitions and awards around the world, but an X PRIZE is in a class by itself. What sets us apart from other non-profit organizations is our ability to frame a challenge and incentivize a solution in a way that our efforts and funds are multiplied exponentially by the teams who strive to compete and win the prize.

Ansari X Prize (Won)

On October 4, 2004, the X PRIZE Foundation captured the world's attention when we awarded the largest prize in history, the $10 million Ansari X PRIZE, to Scaled Composites for their craft SpaceShipOne.

To win the prize, famed aerospace designer Burt Rutan and financier Paul Allen led the first private team to build and launch a spacecraft capable of carrying three people to 100 kilometers above the earth's surface, twice within two weeks.

Spaceflight was no longer the exclusive realm of government. With that single flight, and the winning of the $10 million
Ansari X PRIZE, a new industry was born.

The Ansari X PRIZE was modeled after the Orteig Prize, won by Charles Lindbergh in 1927 for being the first to fly non-stop from New York to Paris, and mirrored the hundreds of aviation incentive prizes offered early in the 20th century that helped create today's $300 billion commercial aviation industry. Dr. Peter Diamandis designed the prize after reading The Spirit of St. Louis about the winning of the Orteig Prize. In 1996, he formally announced the prize in St. Louis, and the race was on.

read more at: http://space.xprize.org/ansari-x-prize