X-Prize Foundation
| X-Prize Foundation | |
|---|---|
| Legal form: | Nonprofit organization |
| Purpose: | Making breakthroughs for the benefit of humanity |
| Chair: |
Peter Diamandis , Founder and CEO Robert K. Weiss , President and Vice Chairman |
| Consist: | since 1995 |
| Number of employees: | about 50 |
| Seat: |
Culver City , California, United States
|
| Website: | www.xprize.org |
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The X-Prize Foundation , recognized as a non-profit, was founded in 1995 by Peter Diamandis . It organizes price competitions for innovative technical and scientific developments, which are mainly privately financed. According to its own information, it wants to create incentives for the development and restructuring of industries and thus new jobs, as well as revitalize deadlocked markets . As a higher goal, the prices with “radical breakthroughs” should serve the good of humanity. The foundation's board of trustees includes James Cameron , Elon Musk , Larry Page , Arianna Huffington ,Ratan Tata and Ray Kurzweil .
The Ansari X-Prize , from which Scaled Composites emerged as the winner in 2004 with the SpaceShipOne , made a significant contribution to the global awareness of the Foundation . The award is considered to be the first significant milestone in the still young private space industry . The space company Virgin Galactic plans to use this technology to offer suborbital space flights for private passengers in the near future .
In February 2021, the foundation and curator Elon Musk announced that it would be dedicating the largest incentive prize competition to the history of reducing CO 2 in the earth's atmosphere, with a value of 100 million US dollars .
background
The X-Prize Foundation was inspired by other historical prizes that recognized innovative solutions to technical and scientific problems and challenges.
In seafaring, the longitude problem , the exact determination of the geographical longitude on which one is located, was known for a long time . Several prizes were advertised to solve this problem. John Harrison finally solved the problem.
The price most often cited as the inspiration for the X Awards is the Orteig Prize . In 1919, the French-born New York hotel owner Raymond Orteig made the sum of 25,000 US dollars available to those who were the first to fly from New York to Paris or vice versa on a non-stop flight. To win this $ 25,000, nine different teams invested a total of around $ 400,000 until Charles Lindbergh was finally able to claim victory on May 20, 1927 with the Spirit of St. Louis . After this event, interest in aviation increased many times over, applications for a pilot's license rose by 300 percent in 1927, and the number of passengers on American airlines grew from 5,782 in 1926 to 173,405 in 1929. Today, aviation represents a 250 billion dollar figure US dollar represents a major industrial sector.
X-Prize
With these prizes as a guide, the X-Prize Foundation is now trying to create incentives for top technical and scientific achievements.
The prizes are financed in different ways: The Ansari X-Prize , endowed with 10 million US dollars , which was initially only called the X-Prize, was initially financed from several small donations. It was only renamed in 2004, which was preceded by a donation of several million from Anousheh Ansari and Amir Ansari . For other prizes, for example the Google Lunar X-Prize , Google provided the prize money of 30 million US dollars. In the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge, on the other hand, the ongoing competition is sponsored by Northrop Grumman , while the prize money is sponsored by NASA .
Current prices
Gigaton Scale Carbon Removal
In February 2021, the X-Prize Foundation and technology entrepreneur Elon Musk announced the Carbon Removal X-Prize . The research prize competition, with the highest value to date with 100 million US dollars, is intended to inspire teams all over the world to participate in order to develop sustainable solutions for reducing carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) in the atmosphere (see also: Negative emissions ). Musk made an initial announcement about the project at the end of January 2021.
Ended prices
Ansari X-Prize
The Ansari X-Prize was the first of the X-Prizes. Announced in 1996, 26 teams competed for the US $ 10 million prize until the Scaled Composites team won it on October 4, 2004. The condition was to reach a height of at least 100 km (Kármán line) twice within two weeks with a manned spacecraft . The spacecraft had to be financed and built privately, and it had to be at least 90 percent reusable.
Google Lunar X-Prize
The Google Lunar X-Prize was a competition launched in 2007 for a moon landing until the end of March 2018.
Progressive Insurance Automotive X-Prize
The $ 10 million Progressive Insurance Automotive X-Prize was officially announced on April 12, 2007 at the New York International Auto Show 2007 ; the winners were announced on September 16, 2010. This award, named after the main sponsor Progressive Insurance , awarded prizes for outstanding technical solutions in the automotive sector. The most important criterion was low consumption. The winning models had to be mass-produced.
Wendy Schmidt Oil Cleanup X-Challenge
The wife of computer scientist and manager Eric Schmidt presented the Wendy Schmidt Oil Cleanup X-Challenge on July 29, 2010 , inspired by the 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico . It officially started on August 1st, 2010 and ended on October 11th, 2011. The award honors innovative solutions for cleaning seawater contaminated with crude oil. The first three teams were awarded $ 1 million, $ 300,000, and $ 100,000, respectively.
Archon Genomics X-Prize
The Archon Genomics X-Prize was intended to award a method for fast and precise DNA sequencing . The prize should be awarded to those who manage to correctly and inexpensively sequence the genome of 100 people within 30 days by January 3, 2013. Additional conditions are a maximum error rate of one per 1,000,000 base pairs and a maximum cost of US $ 1,000 per genetic material. The award is donated by the health company Medco Health Solutions .
The namesake of the award was Archon Minerals Ltd. , which already financed this in 2006 and at that time still stipulated the decryption of 100 chromosome sets in ten days, whereby a sequencing could not cost more than 10,000 US dollars.
On August 22, 2013, the competition, the first ever X-Prize competition, was canceled prematurely. The reason given was the rapid technical development, which made the objective of the task no longer seem up-to-date.
Qualcomm Tricorder X-Prize
On January 10, 2012, the previously announced Qualcomm Tricorder X-Prize was launched at CES 2012 . The core of the three and a half year competition was the development of a user-friendly, precise medical diagnostic device. The $ 10 million prize money was sponsored by the Qualcomm Foundation, established by Qualcomm in 2010 . The name Tricorder comes from the Star Trek universe and describes a handy measuring device for physical and medical quantities. No participant met all of the requirements.
Shell Ocean Discovery X-Prize
On December 14, 2015, the 36-month Shell Ocean Discovery X-Prize was launched and ended in December 2018. The task was to explore and map the seabed of the deep sea. The total prize money amounts to seven million US dollars.
Planned prices
At the X-Prize Foundation, several prizes are permanently in the planning phase. For these prices, partners are usually still sought to take over the financing.
In cooperation with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation , for example, an X-Prize is to be created, which provides for the development of a better tuberculosis diagnosis.
Board of Trustees
The Foundation is headed by a 28-person board of trustees, the so-called Board of Trustees .
| member | position | |
|---|---|---|
| Eric C. Anderson | Trustee | Founder of Space Adventures |
| Anousheh Ansari | Trustee | First female space tourist and donor for the Ansari X-Prize |
| Amir Ansari | Trustee | Founder of Prodea Systems and donor for the Ansari X-Prize |
| Jack Bader | Trustee | Entrepreneur |
| Michael Boustridge | Trustee | President at BT America |
| James Cameron | Trustee | Director |
| Peter Diamandis | Chairman & CEO | |
| Gil Elbaz | Trustee | |
| Richard Garriott | Trustee | Space tourist and software developer |
| James N. Gianopulos | Trustee | Fox Filmed Entertainment CEO |
| Jack Hidary | Trustee | |
| Arianna Huffington | Trustee | Editor-in-Chief, The Huffington Post |
| Dean came | Trustee | Entrepreneurs and inventors, for example Segway |
| Ray Kurzweil | Trustee | AI visionary and non-fiction author |
| Erik R. Lindbergh | Trustee | |
| Gregg E. Maryniak | Secretary | Entrepreneur and lawyer |
| Rob McEwen | Trustee | CEO of Minera Andes Inc. |
| Diane Murphy | Trustee | |
| Elon Musk | Trustee | SpaceX founder and space visionary |
| Larry Page | Trustee | Co-founder & CEO of Google |
| Adeo Ressi | Trustee | |
| Jeffrey L. Shames | Trustee | |
| Barry Silverstein | Treasurer | |
| Ratan Tata | Trustee | CEO of the Tata Group |
| J. Barry Thompson | Trustee | |
| Craig Venter | Trustee | Biochemist, founder of Celera . |
| Robert K. Weiss | Vice Chairman & President | Director, film producer (see The naked cannon ) |
| Will Wright | Trustee | Co-founder of Maxis and computer game designer |
See also
Web links
- Official website
- Ansari X-Prize
- Progressive Insurance Automotive X-Prize
- Archon Genomics X-Prize
- Google Lunar X-Prize
- Qualcomm Tricorder X-Prize
- Sheall Ocean Discovery X-Prize
Individual evidence
- ↑ Who We Are (English) - page at the X Prize Foundation ; Status: February 24, 2011
- ↑ Incentivized Competition Heritage ( Memento from August 15, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) (English) - page at the X-Prize-Foundation ; Status: February 24, 2011
- ↑ $ 100M GIGATON SCALE CARBON REMOVAL . XPRIZE Foundation. Retrieved February 9, 2021.
- ↑ Carbon Removal X Prize: Elon Musk praises the biggest incentive prize in history , Paul Siethoff in: Frankfurter Rundschau , February 10, 2021
- ↑ Elon Musk offers $ 100 million for CO2 conversion , t3n magazine , January 25, 2021
- ↑ Tesla boss Musk wants to donate a $ 100 million prize , Spiegel Online, January 22, 2021
- ↑ Results of the competition on iprizecleanoceans.org
- ↑ a b X Prize Foundation: US Foundation announces new Genomics X Prize - Article at Golem.de , from October 27, 2011
- ↑ Article announcing that the competition will be prematurely canceled
- ↑ Ten million dollars for the "Star Trek" tricorder Spiegel - Article from May 14, 2011
- ↑ X PRIZE Foundation and Qualcomm Foundation Set to Revolutionize Healthcare With Launch of $ 10 Million Qualcomm Tricorder X PRIZE ( Memento from January 15, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) (English) Reported to MarketWatch
- ^ Shell Ocean Discovery XPRIZE Schedule XPRIZE Foundation
- ↑ Prize Development (English) - page at the X Prize Foundation ; Status: February 24, 2011
- ↑ Board of Trustees (English) - page at the X Prize Foundation ; Status: February 24, 2011
- ↑ Avatar Director James Cameron Joins XPRIZE Board Of Trustees (English) - Reported to Moonandback , March 16, 2011
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