Yes, October saw the Ansari X-Prize go to SpaceShipOne, the creation of Burt Rutan and his team at Scaled Composites, together with financier Paul Allen (collectively known as "Mojave Aerospace Ventures"), as they completed two successful suborbital flights within two weeks. The second of the two, in fact, blazed through the required altitude with all the panache required to put an end to any speculation that hidden flaws in the design were contributing to performance or stability problems.
In the end, the victory was clean and spectacular. "Nothing but net," as they say.
What's more, Diamandis, founder of the X-Prize and decade-long reigning champion in the Sleepless Nights Competition, has seen his vision and persistence vindicated every bit as forcefully and spectacularly as the Mojave team. With stakes that could hardly have been any higher--if no one had claimed the X-Prize, Diamandis would have eaten one worthless $10 million insurance policy--he has, only a few weeks after the win, seen a lot of new fruit borne.
There is, of course, the transition to offering the X-Prize Cup, an annual award to continue ongoing invention and friendly competition among innovators and enthusiasts. If you ask me, this anticipated "Grand Prix of Space" could one day rival the enormous AirVenture fly-in celebration in Oshkosh, Wisconsin for aviation enthusiasts. http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/space/10/05...
Moreover, teams that had been competing with SpaceShipOne cinch Rutan for Rutan, Allen, and company--such as the Da Vinci Project--are forging ahead with their plans for launch. And why, you may ask? Because the X-Prize wasn't the big payoff for the Mojave group, although the publicity was nice.
The big payoff turns out to be licensing.
Branson's Virgin Group--think Virgin Atlantic, Virgin Mobile, and the one I keep waiting to hear announced, Virgin Contraceptives--contracted Rutan and associated SpaceShipTwo for (drumroll, please) Virgin Galactic. http://scaledtieroneojects/tierone/paul0... While that "galactic" may involve more than a little hyperbole, the plan for near-term suborbital tourism on a large scale is very real. And now that the game is suddenly afoot, other people are going to be sniffing around for other technology to license in order to claim their piece of the pie in suborbital tourism. Which means that even teams who lost in the X-Prize can still demonstrate the viability of their technology and sell it.
The first buyer, of course, is the aforementioned Virgin Galactic, and it is really quite stunning how suddenly the spaceflight has just unfolded. http://www.virgingalactic.com The X-Prize did exactly what Peter Diamandis said it would; it lit a fire that isn't going to end with SpaceShipTwo.
