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Published online 27 September 2004 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news040927-4
Column
The new race to space
Behind the populist image of the X prize lies an unsettling agenda.
If all goes according to plan, by early October SpaceShipOne will have become the first privately funded spacecraft to have carried a pilot and the weight of two people to 100 kilometres above Earth's surface, returned safely, and then repeated the journey within two weeks.
Those are the criteria that must be fulfilled for SpaceShipOne to claim the US$10-million Ansari X prize, donated by private benefactors "to jumpstart the space tourism industry".
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