Thursday, October 25, 2007

Wirefly X-Prize No More?

On the eve of the X-Prize Foundation's biggest annual event, the space show and rocketship competition in New Mexico this weekend, the biggest corporate sponsor is cutting back on its financial support.

So confirmed X-Prize Foundation spokeswoman Sarah Evans to journalist Leonard David, according to his blog. The size of the reduction was not stated, nor was the reason.

The move might open an interesting possibility, however. Google is already sponsoring one X-Prize competition, the Lunar Challenge-- and Google and its founders are immensely rich. Landing Google as its main corporate sponsor could get the Foundation all the prize money it would ever need to truly kickstart a private space industry. The money would come out of Google's petty cash drawer.

Just a thought.

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