The X Factor

Now that the idea was hatched, what to name it?

“The letter X initially stood for the variable for the person’s name that funded the prize, just like the Orteig Prize,” Diamandis said. “It worked because $10 million was the number I thought was the right number. I wanted it to be enough money to be of substantial importance to the world, but not so big that it would attract the Lockheeds or Boeings. I didn’t want the winner to be a traditional player. I wanted it to be somebody who was going to really work hard on how to do this thing cost effectively and worry about every penny spent.”

Finding a title sponsor to put up the prize money proved very difficult, so the X hung around for a lot longer than Diamandis had anticipated. But when the title sponsor did come along, the Xhad already become symbolic. X stood for the Roman numeral ten, as in

A N S A R I

PRIZE

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Fig. 2.9. Initially, the X in the X Prize was only a place holder to be replaced when Peter Diamandis found a title sponsor. But gradually it took on its own significance. X stood for $10 million, X had been used for the early X-planes, and X meant mysterious or extreme. So, when a title sponsor did come along, the X remained. X PRIZE Foundation

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the number of millions in the prize. X denoted a vehicle of an exper­imental nature, as with the X-planes. X also had the connotation of being extreme or mysterious. “So, after we found the Ansaris,” Diamandis said, “we decided to keep it and make it the Ansari X Prize.” The logo is shown in figure 2.9.