X-Prize Cup 2007

From Wired Magazine:

"The whole NASA structure has become a jobs program, not a space exploration program," says Breed, 45, who runs a computer company and partnered with his 20-year-old son on his lander project.

For the past 50 years, space has been the sole purview of government-funded space programs like NASA and the mega-corporations it awards contracts to. But thanks in part to X Prize, a St. Louis-based nonprofit, the concept of entrepreneurial space exploration is exploding.

Many would-be space entrepreneurs will be present at the X Prize Cup, which runs Oct. 26 to 28 at Holloman Air Force Base in Alamogordo, New Mexico. Organizers expect more than 60,000 attendees, up from last year's 25,000. The Lunar Lander competition will be the center of attention, but the show will also include robotics displays, hands-on spacecraft exhibits and fly-bys courtesy of the U.S. Air Force.

"It's a coming-out party" for indie space mavericks, says George Whitesides, director of the National Space Society, a space-advocacy group which isn't involved in the X Prize Cup.