Associated Press: X Prize organizers predict space trip by summer

ST. LOUIS — The reward is high, but so is the risk as some of the 27 teams pursuing a $10-million US prize for the first privately funded manned spaceflight near a goal that once seemed outlandish. Organizers of the X Prize believe that teams could attempt the space trip as early as this summer. When the competition was announced eight years ago, many were skeptical that any privately financed team could meet the requirements to collect the prize: Build a spacecraft capable of taking three passengers 100 kilometres above the planet, then make a second successful suborbital trip within two weeks. “It’s going to happen in 2004. Someone will win it,” said Gregg Maryniak, director of the St. Louis-based X Prize Foundation, a group created to spark development of reusable spacecraft that can take average citizens into space. Read More