Peter Diamandis Prize Quotations

Now we must keep the competition going, and help push the envelope faster, higher, and cheaper, to build the safe spaceships that will carry all of us to space. To this end, we have partnered with the state of New Mexico to create the X Prize Cup, to attract tens of thousands of people each year to New Mexico to see the spaceships of tomorrow take racing to new heights,

Our hope is that the X Prize Cup activities will help bring suborbital tourism operators to the southern New Mexico site for year-round passenger launch operations.

These teams with their different approaches show real out-of-the-box thinking. That's what the Ansari X Prize is doing...allowing people to innovate and learn how to operate a new class of vehicle.

In one sense, the X Prize has already succeeded. We've sparked a diverse set of vehicles that are being tested and built. Secondly, we've got people excited about this market place.

Prizes change the public perception about an issue. The more prize money, the more the issue is seen as important by the public.

Prizes add a really important mix to allow breakthroughs, because peer-reviewed research is typically focused on small, incremental advances.

We are very proud of our partnership with New Mexico, Las Cruses and Governor Richardson. We're working to make the X Prize Cup an exciting annual event that will move the industry forward at the same time that it allows the public to personally participate in the future of the personal spaceflight revolution.

We expect that the first X Prize Cup will actually occur in the summer of 2006. We have a couple of years to get the infrastructure in place, ... We're basically creating a new business model for the whole space business including media, sponsorships...and the X Prize Cup is an important part of that.