perfidy

From Peter Diamandis, head of the X Prize Foundation:

"We expect to have a winner within the next nine to 12 months.''

Diamandis says that the two front runners are Burt Rutan's Scaled Composites effort, of which I have spoken previously, and John Carmack's (inventor of Doom and Quake) Armadillo Aerospace.

Lindbergh made his solo flight across the Atlantic in 1927 in pursuit of the $25,000 Orteig prize. He was not the first to fly across the Atlantic, not by a long shot. He was the first to fly solo, non-stop across the Atlantic.

According to the Space.com article, Diamandis said Lindbergh's flight "was a mind-shift breakthrough'' for the public. Within 18 months after that daring flight, the number of people boarding airlines rose from 5,700 a year to almost 200,000. Demonstrating that private companies can build and fly spacecraft can be a major step toward making human spaceflight as routine flying on an airliner is now."

Diamandis and many others hope that an X-Prize winner will light imaginations as Lindbergh's flight did, and lead the way to a new golden age of aerospace development.

Given the troubles that NASA has found, I can only say it can't happen soon enough.