Rules of the Game

When Burt Rutan rolled out SpaceShipOne in April of 2003, he complimented Diamandis, saying that the Ansari X Prize rules had stood the test of time and that it was the brilliant set of rules that allowed the competition to proceed.

After coming up with the concept of the Ansari X Prize in 1994, it took better than a year and a half to nail down the rules. Diamandis stated that the rules were 80 percent of battle. Making them simple, understandable, and bulletproof was an imperative. The rules had to define a precise goal that was very difficult to reach but not com­pletely unattainable. The rules in brief are given in table 2.2.

“I consulted with many of the people who would become teams later on. I reached out to many of the entrepreneurial players in the space community to get their input,” Diamandis said.

Table 2.2 Anasari X Prize Rules in Brief

The spacecraft must:

[1] reach a suborbital altitude of 100 kilometers (62.1 miles or 328,000 feet)

[2] carry three people (or one pilot plus the equivalent weight of two other people)

[3] repeat the same flight within two weeks

[4] be designed, built, and launched using only private funding

[5] return safely to Earth with crew unharmed

Initially, the rules were drafted to require the spacecraft to reach an altitude of 100 miles (160 kilometers). By comparison, Sputnik orbited above Earth at a maximum height of 588 miles (947 kilometers), while the International Space Station typically orbits a little more than 200 miles (320 kilometers) up. But when the reentry characteristics of a spacecraft returning to Earth from 100 miles (160 kilometers) up were analyzed, the heating was determined to be too high. The expense and time to develop an engineering solution for this would have been cost prohibitive to many—if not all—of the teams. An altitude of 100 kilometers (62.1 miles or 328,000 feet) was then selected.

This number was not exactly easy to reach, though. “There was a big debate about what was officially space,” Diamandis said. “The U. S. Air Force viewed it at 50 miles [80.5 kilometers], and the Europeans looked at it as 100 kilometers [62.1 miles]. We didn’t want the X Prize to be in contention, so we moved it to the higher of the two.” In order for a contestant to claim the Ansari X Prize, it was neces­sary to verify the altitude that was reached. So, each spacecraft would have to carry a flight recorder, also known as the gold box, provided by the X Prize Foundation to monitor the flight profile. Figure 2.10 illustrates the altitude requirement of the Ansari X Prize.

The next rule to decide was how many people the spacecraft would have to carry. “I didn’t want the vehicle to be considered a stunt,” explained Diamandis. “I wanted the vehicle winning the X Prize to potently go into revenue service. So, we basically focused on having a vehicle that could fly with a pilot and two paying passengers and required that the vehicle have three seats.”

However, three people were not actually required to occupy the spacecraft during the attempts to reach space. The rules state: “The flight vehicle must be built with the capacity (weight and volume) to carry a minimum of three adults of height 6 feet 2 inches (188 centimeters) and weight 198 pounds (90 kilograms) each.”

So, right before a launch attempt, three people had to strap into the spacecraft while it was on the ground in order to show that they fit. For each passenger not remaining onboard for the launch, 198 pounds (90 kilograms) of ballast would be added as a replacement.

“And the key rule, which was probably most important, was that the vehicle had to do two flights within two weeks,” Diamandis said. “What that meant was that the cost of the second flight was really touch labor and fuel.”

This rule was crucial in demonstrating the robustness of the design because it required that 90 percent of the spacecraft’s mass, excluding propellant mass, had to be original and could not be

Fig. 2.10. To win the Ansari X Prize, a team had to build a suborbital spacecraft to reach a height of 100 kilometers (62.1 miles or 328,000 feet). This is about a third of the altitude reached by the Space Shuttle

and International Space Station. It is called suborbital because the altitude is not sufficient for a spacecraft to achieve orbit. X PRIZE Foundation

к___________________ J replaced. The spacecraft had to return substantially intact. If after the first flight major components were damaged to the point where they could not be used again, or if too many materials had to be swapped out, then this rule would filter out those designs that were not durable or reusable.

“My mission in the X Prize was to bring about a new generation of privately owned and privately operated spacecraft that can service a marketplace,” Diamandis said. Many people, including Diamandis, viewed the space industry, in terms of human spaceflight, as stagnant. The two primary types of vehicles used to escape the confines of gravity remained for decades the Russian Soyuz and the U. S. Space Shuttle, which first flew in 1967 and 1981, respectively. There is a better chance of a person winning the lottery than flying aboard one of these spaceships. And even in the case of a lucky golden ticket, this would not necessarily secure a seat. Since government space agencies operate these vehicles, they have little interest in extending opportunities to the public at large.

This shortcoming of government space agencies was specifically what Diamandis wanted to challenge by requiring that the Ansari X Prize be privately funded. To that end, the following rule was put into place:

Flight vehicles will have to be privately financed and built. Entrants will be precluded from using a launch vehicle substantially developed under a government contract or grant. Entrants will be prohibited from receiving any direct funding, subsi­dies, and grants of money, goods, or services from any government (or otherwise tax-supported entity). Entrants will be permitted to utilize government facilities if access to such facilities is generally available to all entrants. Any such goods or services used in connection with the competition must be available to other entrants on similar terms.

Entrants will be permitted to utilize subsystems previously developed by a government agency that are currently available on a commercial or equal – access government-surplus basis, or for which manufacturing rights and specifications are available on an equal-access basis.

The competition was not without risk to its participants. However, since the whole idea of the Ansari X Prize was to promote public space travel, one of the more obvious rules was that the crew had to return to Earth safe and sound after each attempt.