Wed, Mar 03, 2010
On October 4th, 2004, the X PRIZE Foundation made international
headlines when they awarded the Ansari X PRIZE to Scaled Composites
for the successful launch of their craft, SpaceShipOne. Inspired by
the Orteig Prize, won by Charles Lindbergh in 1927 for the
successful completion of the first non-stop flight from New York to
Paris, Peter Diamandis formally announced the X PRIZE competition
in 1996.
The competition offered the largest incentive prize in history,
a stunning $10 million dollar award, to the first non-government
organization to launch a reusable manned spacecraft 100 kilometers
above the earth’s surface twice within two weeks.
26 different teams representing 7 nations around the world
competed for the prize. Finally, on the 47th anniversary of the
Sputnik 1 launch, the Tier One Project, led by Scaled
Composites’ aerospace designer Burt Rutan and financed by
Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, successfully completed the second
of the two necessary launches.
Though $10 million dollars was awarded to the team, the 26
participating teams invested more than $100 million dollars in
total towards new technologies in pursuit of the prize. Since the
success of the Ansari X Prize, more than $1.5 billion dollars has
been invested towards the private spaceflight industry.
Piloting the historic second flight was former Navy test pilot
Brian Binnie. After graduating from the U.S. Navy’s Test
Pilot School, Binnie dedicated over 20 years of Naval Service in
the Strike-Fighter community. Through the years, he logged over
4,600 hours in 59 different aircraft. With an educational
background including a B.S. in Aerospace Engineering and an M.S. in
Fluid Mechanics and Thermodynamics from Brown University, as well
as an M.S. in Aeronautical Engineering from Princeton University,
Binnie proves himself not just as a talented test pilot, but also
as an essential component for Burt Rutan and Virgin
Galactic’s Richard Branson as they push ahead with
SpaceShipTwo. Join Aero-TV as Brian Binnie reflects on what is to
come for the commercial space industry.
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