PRESS RELEASE MAY 18th, 1996X PRIZESM TO SPUR INTERNATIONAL SPACE RACE
ST. LOUIS, May 18, 1996 -- A major international space race is being announced in St. Louis, the home of Charles Lindbergh. Sixty-nine years after Lindbergh won the Orteig International Prize for flying non-stop from New York to Paris, St. Louis is ready to make history again.
Today in St. Louis, business leaders announced their support for the X Prize Foundation, a nonprofit, educational group, which is organizing an international $10 million competition for the first private team to launch a spaceship able to carry three adults to 100 kilometers on a repeatable basis.
More than 20 astronauts, lead by Apollo 11 Astronaut Buzz Aldrin, gathered to support today's announcement. In addition, NASA Administrator Daniel Goldin provided his personal endorsement for the effort. Also on hand were Collier Prize winner Burt Rutan, creator of the Voyager aircraft and two of Charles Lindbergh's grandsons, Erik and Morgan Lindbergh.
"I congratulate St. Louis business leaders for their vision and foresight," said Goldin. "If the X Prize is half as successful as other aviation competitions have been, it will serve as an important milestone in opening the space frontier to commercial passengers and space tourism."
In addition to outlining their support for the X Prize Foundation, St. Louis business leaders presented a plan for reviving the city's reputation as a visionary aerospace community by the year 2004. The NEW SPIRIT OF ST. LOUIS Committee, modeled after the business group that supported Lindbergh in 1927, will underwrite the operation of the X Prize Foundation, in both by organizing the competition and through its educational programs.
"The St. Louis business community and other supporters of the X Prize Foundation are united in our desire to take Lindbergh's dream one step further," said Richard C.D. Fleming, president of the St. Louis Regional Commerce and Growth Association. "We have provided a home for the X Prize Foundation and financial support for its operations, and we have made a long-term commitment to help its organizers create a series of incentive programs that will advance space technology and change perceptions about space travel and tourism forever. The possibilities are staggering, but we believe the task is not."
The X Prize Foundation's first international X Prize competition is modeled after previous aeronautic prizes that have encouraged entrepreneurs, designers and pilots to create today's $250 billion aeronautical industry. The X Prize is designed to stimulate the development of commercial space travel and tourism through an initial $10 million cash prize that will be awarded to the first privately funded team that safely launches and lands a vehicle capable of transporting three people on two consecutive suborbital flights to 100 kilometers altitude. A sponsor for the $10 million X Prize is expected to be announced by the end of this year.
Dr. Peter Diamandis, founder and chairman of The X Prize Foundation, outlined the Foundation's plans to award up to four $25,000 X Prize NEW SPIRIT OF ST. LOUIS prizes annually (in honor of the $25,000 Orteig Prize that inspired Lindbergh's epic journey) to individuals who have made the greatest contributions to commercial human space flight within the last 12 months. These awards will be presented each May at the St. Louis Science Center, beginning in 1997.
In addition, Diamandis announced plans for the NEW SPIRIT OF ST. LOUIS Cup, a biennial competition, similar to the America's Cup, that will begin after the X Prize has been claimed.
"It's hard to believe that a very short time ago, people expressed disbelief that man could ever fly, or that he could talk to other people over enormous distances on a cordless telephone, or use a computer network to access practically every scrap of information that exists on this planet," Diamandis added. "Yet, airplanes, cellular phones and the Internet are now common to us all. If you look at the X Prize's objective from this perspective, it becomes easier to believe that space travel and tourism will not only become possible, but also very commonplace as well."
Colette Bevis, Chief Marketing Officer for the X PRIZE Foundation, said that by using aviation prizes as a model, the X Prize is designed to accelerate the private development of low-cost, reusable vehicles that will make space accessible to everyone in the very near future. "Before launching the X Prize, we secured the endorsement of numerous space and aviation leaders throughout the world." said Bevis. "They all reinforced an historical fact: cash prizes stimulated major entrepreneurial advancements in the aeronautical field -- particularly in the areas of speed, distance, technology and endurance."
In addition to those individuals who helped the X Prize Foundation make its global announcement in St. Louis today, the Foundation has earned broad support from other prominent individuals in the space field. Supporters such as Arthur C. Clarke, father of the communications satellite and author of 2001: A Space Odyssey, and Erik Lindbergh, pilot and grandson of Charles Lindbergh endorse the X PRIZE.
Other X Prize supporters from throughout the international space community include: Aero-Club de France; Aerospace States Association (ASA); The Association of Space Explorers (ASE); The Explorers Club; Federation Aeronautique Internationale (FAI); NASA; National Space Society (NSS); St. Louis Science Center; Society of Experimental Test Pilots (SETP); and the Space Frontier Foundation.
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