How a Visionary Band of Business Leaders, Engineers and Pilots is Boldly Privatizing Space

* X-Prize*: $10M** offered to whoever*** achieves sub-orbital flight with the conditions:

1. Build a manned spacecraft without any government funding

2. Launch three people in the spacecraft to 100-kilometer attitude and return to the Earth

3. Repeat step 2 with the same spacecraft within two weeks

* Charles Lindbergh motivation in making non-stop flight between New York and Paris was to win the prize ($25K in 1927)

** $10M was from the so-call hole-in-one insurance policy with six-figure premium

*** Burt Rutan won X-Prize in 2004

* Flow-on Effect of X-Prize:

-- Space tourism

-- Outer space marriage

-- Hotels in space

-- Spaceports

-- Same-day intercontinental travel at rocket speed

-- Same-day package delivery for the needs like organ transplant

-- Solar power satellites beaming sunlight back to Earth

-- Colonization of Mars by humans

-- Space mining