The Ansari X-Prize was founded in 1996, and was modeled after the Orteg Prize that Charles Lindbergh won in 1927 by flying solo across the Atlantic Ocean.

The X-Prize Foundation registered 26 teams from seven countries to compete for the prize.

The grand total of the Ansari X-Prize was $10 million. In total there was more then $100 million in private investment. This isn’t however a rare occurrence. For the people in the competitions, it’s more about competing and winning then the actual size of the prize.

The Ansari X-Prize competition follows in the footsteps of more than 100 aviation incentive prizes offered between 1905 and 1935, which created today's multi-billion dollar aerospace industry. It was however the first space incentive prize. The Ansari X-Prize was designed to jump-start the personal space flight industry, much like the early aviation prizes.

The X-Prize has three main reasons for wanting to go to space: Space offers adventure, Space provides freedom - a frontier literally without end, and Space can save the Earth.

The Rules for the Ansari X-Prize are simple:

• Requiring that the vehicle be privately funded and privately constructed means that a large government cannot come in and win the competition in a manner which does not lead to economically viable tourist capability.
• We chose 100km altitude because it is beyond the official 50-miles that the US Air Force recognizes as "worthy of astronaut wings" but not so high that the reentry speed requires exotic heat shielding.
• Requiring a vehicle which can fly three people means that X PRIZE registrants will be designing vehicles which can turn around after the competition and begin to generate revenue traffic following their certification.
• Finally, requiring that the same vehicle fly twice within two weeks means that cost per re-flight is only the cost of fuel and the limited "touch-labor" that can be applied in this short period of time. Therefore, we hope that cost per seat will be reasonable and affordable to many.