How a $10M Bet Made Civilian Spaceflight a Reality w/ Anousheh A, Gregg M, and Erik L | EP #122

Some things happen right when you get this idea from the universe and I said that's it um cuz I've been so frustrated with space that okay I'm going to do a prize for space flight I remember people saying that you guys are crazy um because you're going to get people killed the idea of space flight of commercial space flight and human space flight was insane we wanted to get a totally different style of operations Than the people that were doing government funded space programs it would be Monday and we would have $50,000 due on Friday

and if we didn't pay it the whole thing was over the xprize has launched nearly $600 million in in competitions has driven billion dollars in R&B we've Now sort of taken two whole Industries the Aerospace industry and the incentive prize industry to a new level there are things that people believe are impossible but It's because they have a wrong assumption someplace and prizes Target those wrong assumptions this is not an overnight success this is an overnight success after 30 years of hard work Peter dandis here welcome to moonshots today is a special episode it's probably

going to be a long one so buckle in it's a story of human spirit it's a story of dreaming big hopefully at the end of this conversation you're going to be inspired to do something Extraordinary in your own life and to pull together a band of rebels we're going to transform something that you think is important this happens to be the 30th year anniversary of the X prize we've launched 30 prizes over 30 years extraordinary hard for me to believe that we've driven about $600 million of incentive competitions driving billions in R&D and while it's

been an amazing story uh it has a history that after you hear it's an Improbability that we exist today uh you're going to be hearing from three indiv uals uh Greg marinac uh who I'll introduce in a moment uh Eric Lindberg grandson of Charles Lindberg and Nan sari who funded the first $10 million xprize who is now the CEO of the x prise foundation at the end of the day uh if we look back most people and still today believe that we're in a world of great crisis where there's few resources that we are uh

running out of resources on This planet but the belief of myself and the folks you're about to meet is that the greatest resource Humanity needs is that of the committed and passionate human mind uh that dreaming big uh and putting muscle behind those dreams can slay any Grand Challenge so settle back get ready to be inspired uh this is the story of opening up civilian space flight of opening up the space Frontier for everybody because it wasn't always that way uh let's begin uh Greg marinac Hey buddy good to see you where are you today

hi Peter I'm in uh exurban St Louis Missouri The ancestral home of the x prise foundation yeah well uh for those who don't know Greg Greg uh first of all to put context here Greg is one of my oldest and dearest friends we go back in uh now 40 50 years no well got 40 years uh in terms of working together in space uh Greg gave me the original Spirit of St Louis book and we'll tell that story that got the xprize Foundation uh started um and I think Greg it's fair to say that you

sacrificed so much in your life uh to for this dream and I want to say thank you for all of that uh let's kick it off I mean you know today in 2024 people are used to seeing uh Falcon 9 launching people to the space station Starship is flying Bezos is flying and when you think about you know human space flight you think commercial companies but it wasn't always that way you want to set Some context of why the heck did we start this X prise and originally X prise was just about opening the space

Frontier and it was considered an insane idea back then let's let's jump back in our time machine here yes so if we go back in in our time machine Peter uh we even go back a little further than the question of government or commercial in space it's like why why do we want to care about space and one of the things we've Learned from ex prise over these last 30 years is that there are things that people believe are impossible but it's because they have a wrong assumption someplace and our prizes Target those wrong assumptions

well the assumption that that people had in the in the 70s and 80s was that and and mostly still have today is that the Earth is somehow divorced from the ocean of space that surrounds us and you and I got into this Business because we wanted to give Humanity the best chance of success and and use the resources in the ocean of space to save our Island Earth uh but what we discovered through through years of of working this problem and literally years you and I worked on this this was not our first rodeo X

prise it was probably about our fifth Rodeo um we discovered that there was a a Another fundamental assumption that people were making that was holding us back and that was the assumption that only governments could do space flight and Peter you you sacrificed as much as I did or more but uh you know one of the things you were doing back when we started was you were running our little small launch vehicle company International microspace we were going to launch we had a perfect business plan we were going to launch 10 pound Satellites for non-governmental

customers uh at a cost of about $750,000 well it was almost Flawless there were two small problems with that there were no non-governmental customers and there were no 10 pound satellites then now they are abundant but but we found out right away every single business meeting well isn't that NASA's job why isn't government doing it if it's worth doing how come NASA's not Doing it you know NASA is a victim of its own marvelous success of the 60s you know when you and I when you and I met Greg you were running the space size

Institute out of Princeton New Jersey working with Gerard K O'Neal uh uh you were president there and you know it was a time when there was a very small group of I almost feel it was like religious Believers that space was uh in our destiny you know I I think we had all drunk the Kool-Aid from you know Star Trek and uh and great authors like hline and the idea that after I mean for me what was really what was really shaking things up was that the space shuttle program was so damn expensive and it

was flying so infrequently and this was not my vision of space flight um and and Gerard K O'Neal came in with a very different vision and I think it's important for people to know that you know Jeff Bezos today really has taken the mantle Jeff was at Princeton University uh as an undergrad and he was in fact the president of the SS chapter right and you and I met first met through SS through Todd Holly who was my co-founder with Bob Richards there and um and and Bezos his vision different from musk his you know

elon's vision is let's go to Mars let's go into another planetary gravitational well um and uh and and Jeff's Vision I think because of of the work done at space studies and by Dr O'Neal was let's go mind the moon in The asteroids and create large O'Neal colonies and make Humanity not dependent on planetary systems yeah and also bring power down from space 24/7 for cities and mega cities and Industry basically use space to save the Earth and Bezos read the same book that I read I was in law school when I read it the

High Frontier and it cost me my life and Bezos read it and it costs him a billion dollars a year now in in what he's personally Funding it's fascinating right you were you were a lawyer at the time it's people don't know you as a lawyer because you're so brilliant as an educator and a space you know a space Visionary uh but you were doing law at the time and that changed the course of your life yeah I met O'Neal and my wife and I my my fiance and I started the Chicago Society for space

studies in 1977 when dinosaurs still r on the earth and and we invited Dr O'Neal to to give A a big public speech uh lecture uh at Navy Pier in Chicago which he did in 78 when I should have been been studying for the bar exam I was working this giant event and I met Jerry and he invited me to become a director and and eventually he Hoodwinked me into not Hoodwinked me but he he persuaded me to move to Princeton I joke Peter has heard so many times that uh that my wife says that

that O'Neal got me with a commercial Pitch that was uh join the space business you could earn as much as some poets and sadly it was true and people think about space now as a billionaires game and such and uh there was no commercial space flight back then it was all governmental programs what was what was Jerry's vision of space that was so compelling I know what I know what it was for me but I'd like to hear yours well for me it was the the notion that that um we could actually use space not

Just to look at the problems that the Earth was facing but to to change and you know that there's more context here remember the mood when when we got into the space business Peter some of the books that were very popular in fact this is little before that was the population Bomb by Paul erck the cover of which said in the time it takes to read the cover of this book four people have died three of them children from starvation real Cherry book erck was Completely wrong by the way and paradoxically his student uh his

grad student is Stuart brand who thinks a lot like you do and I Peter but he was wrong uh and another book that was popular and still is popular is called limits to growth and it says in a limited World your children will have less than you their children will have less than them but those books were based on a fundamentally flawed assumption that the world is a closed System when they the Earth and it's not we get all our energy from space already and um so O'Neal's Vision was really compelling because it was in

such strong Counterpoint and and it really was based on something that you just said which is that O'Neal asked his students as a professor of physics at Princeton what's the best place for a future future expanding technological civilization is it is it the Earth is it is it the moon or some other planet or Is it something entirely different and the answer came back something entirely different be in free space if you get out of your gravity well don't go down into another one unless Hawaii's at the bottom and we got the only planet with

Hawaii at the bottom so this so it's very it is a very different vision from the vision of uh of people like Elon um you know he's sincere he got imprinted with the old NASA 1950s party line and he believes it but uh but this is this is a different view of of space to paint a little bit of the um the vision that O'Neal had and um to to move us to move us forward you know Jerry O'Neal uh believed that we could go to the surface of the Moon and mine resources there that

the moon has lots of oxygen um he didn't know maybe he theorized there was water at the poles which we've now in fact verified but nickel iron all the Building materials are in the lunar regolith and you could actually because of the low gravity mine the moon send the materials out into free space and actually build solar power satellites to create a economic engine and then very importantly create these large O'Neal colonies can you describe what an O'Neal Colony looks like because I think that's again what Bezos has as his endpoint Vision here yeah when

Jerry wrote his first paper in 1974 published in physics Today he did a thought experiment uh he said how big could you build a habitat in in free space if you built it using Brooklyn Bridge technology limits steel cable and and stone and the answer was astonishing if you wanted to you could build Switzerland in space uh a big cylinder that you'd rotate for artificial gravity and you'd let sunlight in and it's basically a it's a hollow shell and you live inside of it it's very much like The membrane of a cell now that I

gotten older and started to study biology I realized that nature invented this great thing that can allow life to form or or exist in hostile otherwise environments that's what that's what O'Neal Colin is it's like that now later in Jerry's career Jerry was a true entrepreneur he he started thinking that maybe this would be a government kind of activity but he realized almost immediately that that NASA would would never do it and he Said how small could you make these things how small could you make a a permanent space habitat that people could live in

for long periods of time and and that was really exciting too so that was that was the work that we were doing and Peter you mentioned you know the possibility water on the moon Jerry wrote a little piece for Omni magazine which is how I got I remember om I wonder if anybody else does well you wrote a you wrote a letter to other Call students together that was the formation of sets that was from Omni and I saw that BL yeah uh but um Jerry wrote A Little Piece which is sort of a he

was good at writing vignettes and it's like what's life like 20 years after we start making space habitats and in it he he said back in the late 90s a t a small spacecraft is discovered ice at the poles of the Moon and that inflamed me when when did when did he write that around 83 or so and I was on I read it On a dot matrix print out prophetic and and I was on the train going to see you and Todd at at the aed's meeting in Washington and it it it wound up

taking over the next 10 years of my life because I started the lunar prospector team at space Studies Institute that's right designed in uh the probe and then we we Hoodwink at Nasa in paying for it Alan binder was our chief scientist and he wrote the proposal to uh Gus gusta AR helped and and the the Result was we found the water ice at the poles of the moon so the idea though is that that the the you know your friend Arthur Clark Peter uh had a great graphic from the 1950s which we should throw

into this podcast which shows the gravity well of the Earth compared to the tiny gravity dimple of the Moon 22 times easier to throw something off the Moon than from the earth it's not to use those lunar resources on Earth it's to use them to build stuff in space that Can send value to the Earth either either new land you know Mark Twain said invest in real estate they're not making anymore but we will I want to give people a little bit of a vision of what the O'Neal Colony looks like and what you know

Bezos has um has has grabbed on to versus the surface of Mars imagine being able to create a large cylinder you know a kilometer in length they they're about um rotating at you know the equation the Physics it's a b^ s over r or Omega squ R to get oneg acceleration um on the inside but a million people I think were was his population size if I if I um if I don't remember correctly please correct me the the early ones could be that big and and but but they can be just as little ones

can be nice uh in fact Jerry was fond of the little Hilltown um what kind of population was he looking at in the 5,000 in a Bernal Spere was what was interesting I think is that when you're you've got the gravity uh and if you move towards the center axis of rotation you're weightless in the center and as you get older you could move up hills to have you know a half a g at a retirement home but the thing that was interesting today you know if you have a polarization of uh Republicans and Democrats

whatever that whatever you want uh you fight um because you're collocated in the future In these O'Neal colonies you could just build a second O'Neal colony and you could literally bud and have you know one population who believe in one religious group or one way of thinking move into one colony and so you could have uh this kind of constant diversification and growth but it was this conversation Greg that led us together and um I remember just to move this forward there was a a moment in time um when it Really uh uh that crystallized

a universe that we're now living in where the X prise exists so I used to come and hang out with you um and uh cuz you were my my big brother and we had geeky conversations that I couldn't have with anybody else and one day you decided uh it's time for me to get the joy of flight you want to take us from there yeah I remember that very clearly Peter actually you know you and I love to build things but our day jobs involved a Lot of PowerPoint and Excel spreadsheets so we would give

ourselves permission once or twice a year to get together and build some and usually with my my young daughters at the time and you came up and were you were our house guest in hope well New Jersey just next to Princeton and it was a beautiful October day it was 199 1 and we had we had planned to spend the the day in the basement building a robot with our my oldest daughter Claire who was 8 years Old and the weather was so perfect that we said let's do something outside and I don't remember if

it was your idea or mine but we decided to go to Princeton airport and rent to Cessna 172 and I would fly you up the Hudson River Corridor um under the controlled airspace in New York City and I remember as we went North look looking over to the right you were in the copilot seat and I could see the Empire State Building behind you and you had a Strange expression on your face ear to ear grin because that was in the middle of international microspace and you had all that burden on your shoulder and you

were having fun and that was a rare thing so instead of turning around at the tapen Z Bridge which was my original plan we flew over marar and and we flew to Great Neck Long Island over overflying your boyhood home yes and then all all the way back and I remember when we landed at Princeton airport you Were literally bouncing around on the interior of the plane it was such a blast yeah and you were saying Greg I'm going to finish I'm been getting my license because you had already soloed back when you were a

student at MIT in Harvard but you'd stopped because of your misplaced priorities of going to medical school and such so um and you and I remember you know somewhat patronizingly saying yeah Peter that's great you know when you said I'm Going to get my license yeah good Peter you do that but I in my heart of hearts I said you know I know Peter's not going to two weeks from now he'll be on something else so a few weeks after our trip I was with my wife and daughters in in a little river town on

the Delaware River called New Hope Pennsylvania and in a little bookstore there I saw a Dusty copy of Charles lindberg's PID surprise winning book The Spirit of St Louis and I had read it when I was uh in The first week of high school um uh when I was uh a freshman and and a year later I was taking flying lessons so I picked the book up blew the dust off it my daughter said dad why are you buying that you have two copies of that at home said I'm buying it for your uncle Peter

and you very promptly put it on your bookshelf as I Rec come but then a couple years later um You you you read it and I think you were visiting with your parents someplace what is that yeah I so I just want to take a moment and say uh you know everything I have done since then comes back to this moment in time when Greg gave me this book it changed the course of my life and you know I think about this when I give a gift of a book to somebody and you never know

uh I did I I picked it up again I remember it was December of 1993 I was visiting my Parents down in Florida and you know it was slow Christmas season and so I decided to read the book and it it changed the course of my life I mean so here is a book written by Charles Lindberg I think he won the polzer prize with this in like 1954 thereabouts and it tells the story of Charles lindberg's flight across the Atlantic Ocean I had always assumed I mean everybody's heard of Lindberg he was the most

famous human on the planet at one point I'd always Assumed that he just flew on a whim that he woke up one day decided to fly East but it turns out that in 1919 a Frenchman named Raymond orteg um who had come to the US uh penus I think around around around 1901 or thereabouts um and becomes a hotel bus boy and a hotel manager and ultimately the owner of the hotel Lafayette and on the heels of uh of World War I where Aviation made its debut uh Raymond orte said you know there is a

positive potential for Aviation and uh let's I'm going to offer up a $225,000 prize uh for the first person who flies between New York and Paris or Paris and New York and you you'd go east if you understood know the trade winds um and and people laughed at that um that idea this $25,000 prize which today is somewhere on the neighborhood of 8 to10 million depending on inflation and uh they said it's impossible you know people had never flown anything near that but or threw Down the gauntlet and the book tells the story of all

the teams that attempted to win this $25,000 prize and I remember Greg and in reading the book I was underlining how much money CU because Lindberg details this how much money all the different teams were spending to go after this $25,000 prize and like some teams were spending like $100,000 right the prize was much more than just the money it was like the just the uh you know the glory of of achieving this this Goal it had gotten a level of extraordinary uh attention especially as people were dying in the attempt and failing in the

attempt it became much more valued to achieve the uh this impossible feat um and I think when I added up was like $400,000 was spent by all the teams to go after this $25,000 prize and what I found fascinating uh and I remember calling you about this was that Lindberg was the most unlikely guy to do it he had the least experience Of all the teams um he had been flying for a couple of years and in fact no one would sell him an airplane or an engine because they were so fearful that he would

fail you know publicly and miserably that they would give him a bad rep and ultimately he went to uh uh to Ryan Aircraft company and bought one in San Diego made the flight to to St Louis from St Louis to New York and New York to uh to lebour and we'll tell that story with Eric Lindberg who'll be Joining us in a little while um who recreated that flight with uh with you as Mission Control uh to help save the xprize to financially give us the money to keep doing what we're doing but that book

I remember reading that book and it was like I was blown away at the end of reading it I was like you know and some things happen right when you get this idea from the universe and I said that's it um cuz I've been so frustrated with space that okay I'm going to do a prize For space flight and uh I wrote down in the margin of the book X prize because I had no idea who was going to be ortigue or Nobel or pulit who's going to fund the prize and we'll meet the person

in this podcast later a Newan sori um who had just had a $ 1.3 billion exit when I when I met her um who funded our prize and we we ended up naming it the unari X prize the X stuck around because it took so long um for us to fund the prize but I remember calling you and I called Jim Burke uh who had been involved in the Kramer prize and said you know what do you think about this idea so do you remember me calling you about this I do and and it was

really interesting because I had actually in saying in in speeches and even writing in some papers that what commercial space flight needed to get going was a Lindberg like event but I wasn't thinking about the prize uh doing it with a prize and when you said it it was like one of those V8 moments Said that's a great idea and and Jim Burke was an amazing character he was sort of the Indiana Jones of space and as a young man as a 30-year-old he was leading the the leading program for the early H program which

was to take pictures of the Moon with a spacecraft that would crash in the ranger program yeah and and Jim knew a bunch of interesting people and got and G and thanks to Jim we got some excellent advice on I had he he was on my board at Space Studies Institute he helped me with litter prospector even helping me to get the U the gamma ray spectrometer from NASA uh from the Apollo program and he knew everybody he knew Richard feeman who gave us some really good advice about prizes which we could talk about separately

but um oh and the Kramer you mentioned the Kramer prize that was a prize for human powerered space flight and and Jim human powered I mean Airplanes and and Jim had uh Jim actually had a gossamer Condor aircraft in his in his uh driveway when I went to his house and and refurbished the one that's in the Smithsonian that won the actual prize so yeah he was pivotal and and your pal Byron lenberg astronaut entrepreneur um I had met Byron in in uh when I was at MIT and medical school he had flown twice in

the space shuttle and he and I and Ray cow Ray Crow and I started uh a company called zerogravity Corporation together zero g that's it's still operational now 30 plus years later doing the only commercial company to offer parabolic flights uh we'll maybe we'll chat about that later because um it was very funny uh Zer G started in 93 May of 93 x prize idea came in December of 93 and both of them came into existence within a week of each other 20 years uh or no I'm sorry 11 years later in 2004 made my

life insane but help me remember Greg um Between 94 and announcing the prize we we incorporated the X prize as a 501c3 Foundation right um and we start I remember writing an article from the National Space society and I started you know asking for donations uh $25 and $100 donations and we were funding funding the X prise in the earliest days 25 bucks and 100 bucks at a time and I remember going to the mailbox uh back when we had mailboxes and I cared about mailboxes and opening up envelopes of Donations of $25 checks $

checks and that's how the X prise got started back then what's your what's your earliest memory of uh of of getting some early traction here well I remember those days I remember Peter you had a room in your Rockville Maryland Department which was all whiteboard it was like an upstairs bedroom and You' converted it to a giant whiteboard room and I remember you and Byron and I tried to figure out what are all the technical ways somebody could Could accomplish the feat of s suborbital space in fact let's let's take a little detour and talk

about that for a second sure please that the the beyond the idea of doing an ortigue prize prize to to kick open the uh space for Humanity your biggest contribution Peter on the design of xprize was the realization that we could change the way people think about space flight in other words the Govern we we could could Overcome that false assumption that only governments could do it without going into orbit but doing suborbital space flight which is 25 times less energy intensive and and means the capex is way smaller that was brilliant and that's what

that's would led us to populating your your whiteboards with all the technical ways that could do it and by the time we were done with X prise we had a team in every single one of those domains yeah which was pretty amazing I Remember that we had uh vertical takeoff vertical Landing horizontal takeoff horizontal Landing taking off out of the water landing back on the water using a balloon first stage a helicopter first stage being towed behind an airplane underneath an airplane above an airplane and you're right it was darwinian evolution of rockets and every

one of those was was we had a team representing every possible configuration of going to 100 kilometers yeah we did and and you Know that was a I remember um you used to let me crash at your place CU I was living still in the Princeton area and commuting to work in Bethesda Mar and if I'd stay over you and I would after working all day we would uh get a bite to eat and then and then work for another five or six hours on this stuff and uh I remember some of the early interns

that we had uh uh Eric Anderson uh made our first web page Jake Lata from MIT I later helped him get his First job uh working for I think Gary Hudson uh I I think what you said is important to uh to explain here you know know uh the question was if we're going to run this prize how much money should it be and what should a person have to do you know running an incentive prize right you have uh prizes like Nobel and Pulitzer which award something that was done you know years ago sometimes

decades ago uh as an as an accomplishment um but incentive prize is Very different it says I don't care who you are where you've ever you know what you've ever done you know uh where you live if you do this thing if you go New York to Paris you win the money so the artique pro Enterprise so the what did you have to do was important and then how much money should it be and uh I had been in the rocket business you know Greg you were one of our directors in that in that company

as well and I understood how difficult it was to build Rockets this was way before SpaceX and and people can remember back in the um in the early to mid99s the idea of space flight of commercial space flight flight and human space flight was insane it was you know this was something the space shuttles were flying at a billion dollars of flight uh 20,000 person Army to operate uh a shuttle a shuttle mission and so uh I wanted something that a small team could do I remember it was like it you know what made the

Ortique prize possible was it was Lindberg and a few engineers at Ryan aircraft making that vehicle so what what is it that someone could do but that was what I call audacious and yet achievable that intersection was so important and uh so we said okay instead of going to orbit and you're right going to 17,500 mph um versus you know um going to uh you know an altitude so go let me put in mock numbers instead of going to Mach 25 you're going to Mark 3 Um you know it's seven times faster to get to

orbit when you square velocity to get to energy so like you said it's going to be like 49 50 times harder to get to orbit compared to um suborbital and and you know we gave Alan Shepard Wings astronaut wings I was considered a space flight okay and then the other thing was because I was working on zerog G at the time I wanted to have a commercial company come out of this commercial industry right and space Tourism was was very much our vision and so okay how how big should the vehicle be if it's one

person it's a stunt um two people is interesting but a pilot and two paying passengers a pilot and two buddies or a couple that could be a viable a viable vehicle so we said okay three people going we originally set it at 100 miles altitude um if you remember famously and then uh we had some Engineers when you and I were working on the rule set at um Uh look at what the peak heating would be if you came in from 100 Mil altitude and the heating was so high that we were concerned that you

know composits wouldn't be possible you need special kind of heat seek Metals um and so we lowered it from 100 miles to 100 kilometers uh as we like to joke knowing full well most Americans would know the difference between 100 kmers 100 miles and uh and then the other thing we had a lot of discussions about this a Lot of debate about this uh which was um you know we didn't want governments playing this it had to be privately funded and what to find privately funded um yeah yeah and there were there were a couple

interesting pieces to that um uh one one of the reasons we wanted I mean a key reason we wanted it to not be government was just because everybody thought it had to be governments it wasn't because we don't like governments in fact our biggest supporters turned Out to be nasis but uh and and other governments have come to like private space flight very much and in fact there it's funny that that's ironic that today like China is is is criticizing its companies for not having produced an Elon or a Jeff Bezos uh do you remember

a meeting at David we's home uh I do we um I remember we had a few of those but uh I remember in fact didn't didn't you have have a problem where where you were trying to Get to St Louis but you were stuck in montros Colorado we'll tell we'll tell that story in a in a moment um but before then I think we had a meeting with David Wine in his beautiful home in montro Colorado and we had Gary Hudson there and you and whole slew of others where we were debating the rules um

and I think we ended up saying that you could have 10% Government funding um and that you could only replace I think like 5% of the mass of the vehicle and I Think the most important rule for the X prise was that that when you made your first flight you had to do the second flight with the same vehicle within 2 weeks and you could only replace 5% of the mass yeah now let's talk about that because that's caused a lot of uh misunderstanding because we had a sneaky trick there and that was that we

didn't want our prize to require us to get into the accounting nickers of every one of Our teams uh we joke nowadays that we we want prizes that that uh we don't want prizes that have all the excitement of Double Entry bookkeeping But but so how could we keep the cost down and we you you and I realized that that we weren't going to get uh Rockwell International or locked Martin as contestant so it was going to probably be small groups and it was going to be Labor so if we look keep the time between

flights small it would keep the cost of refurb small yeah but there was another thing that was going on that the uh yeah the rule about about what percentage could be government funded um was interesting we eventually stole a rule or borrowed a rule from Kodak Kodak com company had a competition for amateur photographers MH but a lot of photographers make a few bucks here And there but it's not enough to live on doing some small jobs so they get disqual would be disqualified if they had to be true virgins so we said well you

you have to be you can't get more than 10% of your income from Government funding because we were concerned that people like in fact ultimately Bert Rutan won our prize he was getting funding from NASA for some other projects not specifically for his design of of his winning entry but we didn't Want any any misunderstanding the other thing about private teams that's that's really important that we talked about a lot and and it turned out to be pivotally true was that we wanted to get a totally different style of operations than the people that were

doing government funded space programs you know I talk about this and I steal this from from Bert ran he says the day before something truly is a breakthrough it's a crazy idea and And the challenge is that if you really want to breakthrough in space flight you need crazy ideas and um and govern governments don't like doing crazy things because they have high failure rates and large corporations that are worried about quarterly stock earning reports and so forth don't like doing crazy things that could fail because of that and you end up only with this

you know this crazy group of rebels uh which is what we actually attracted in the Final result you know this x prise the first X prise um brought in 26 teams from seven countries that were incredible Rebels May we'll chat about some of them and you know it was we created the foundation in 1994 30 years ago hard to believe um and it was you know you and I were funding it out of our own Pockets um uh doing other work getting these $25 and $100 donations uh but and I remembered uh there was a

moment in time where I said Okay what do we have to sell what do we have to sell that could that could allow us to sell uh this and I said I I think one thing we could s is where the xprize is headquartered and I was looking at um for obvious reasons I was looking at Florida I was looking at Houston Texas uh I was looking at San Diego because of Ryan I I was looking at California I was looking at Seattle cuz Boeing was headquartered there and then I met an Individual who played

another we have these guardian angels in our lives of this story and and and anybody going after you know a big dream here right our Dream to bring it back here is open up commercial space flight open up space for Humanity that was the vision that was the mission and that it's almost like this this Clarion call and this emotional energy that just every time we hit a brick wall it was like nope we have to keep going we have To keep this is this is Humanity's future at stake here refuse to let it stop

us and I met a gentleman by the name of Doug King and uh Doug was heading the Challenger centers at that time I think and had just accepted a role as the president of the St Louis Science Center and he was visiting New York and visiting in DC and I used to have these U monthly salons that you you would be part of on occasion too and and he said listen um I love your ex prise Idea um he had read it about the National Space society's magazine and he says you really should look at

coming to St Louis uh St Louis is where Lindberg got his money I was like yeah that's kind of obvious McDonald Douglas is in St Louis and St Louis has a chip on their shoulder um I remember him saying that and and there's an incredible population of group there but they they want to be you know uh St Louis was like the 1904 uh World's Fair was there Lindberg was there it had its Heyday and it wanted to revive its Heyday do you remember any of those conversations with Doug oh I remember it very clearly

so Doug's an interesting character he'd been in electronics Industry executive in California and and he volunteered to help create the Challenger centers uh a uh teenage son of astronaut Owen garot named uh Now a good friend of ours Richard Garrett yes Richard Garrett he um he when after challer was lost the people were thinking about what they could do as a memorial and he said continue the mission of education and Christy mcalli right was the educator on that yeah I was the was the teacher in space who perished on on that flight and and so

Doug was a super volunteer and eventually winds up running the international Challenger Centers which which still exist today and I remember that conversation with Doug in fact it was a little less polite than you recounted Peter I think he did he say well he knew both of us remember you and I knew him from before I knew him for some years too and he he kind of said maybe he just said this to me he said hey dummy come to S Lewis that's they talk about Charles Lindberg as if they saw him last Tuesday they

have a very strong sense of History indeed right now the Missouri Historical Society has a big a big beautiful exhibition about the 1904 world Fair SL Olympics which were collocated and St Louis had been the fourth largest city in America at at one time hard to remember right on the Mississippi uh when waterways were the way you got around yeah exactly that's exactly right so they got surpassed by places like Chicago when the railroads Came and they and that's where the chip comes from but Doug said hey come to St Louis and he did more

than just say that he he welcomed us in a in a huge way and and doesn't that lead back to story being stuck in Colorado yeah so you know it's interesting how single individuals can change your life right uh you first and foremost and then and then Doug um and then so Doug calls me one day he goes Peter listen there is one person in St Louis one person that you must meet His name is alth he's the head of something called Civic progress uh he's part he's like a senior executive at fman Hillard and

he's the guy that can unlock all of the pocketbooks and the purses and the wallets in St Louis and you just have to meet him and so I'm like okay and like trying to get his calendar trying to get his calendar this guy is super busy and I finally get a meeting like a month out and the day before I'm with a friend Mark Arnold who Also plays a a character in this in this in this story and we're in in La we were working on a company called Angel Technologies long story won't get into

it right now and we're flying in his uh Cessna uh 421 um and it's a twin engine airplane uh Mark is a phenomenal pilot uh and uh we are flying from La back to St Louis where Mark lived and I've got my meeting tomorrow with alar and I'm like I've been prepping for this for a week I've Got my PowerPoint slides I've got all my stories I've got all of the numbers it's like this is uh this is probably late 95 yeah late 1995 and uh we land in Montrose Colorado to refuel it's snowy outside

and um and it weather's awful and we're refueling to get to St Louis by uh like 1:00 a.m. for my 9:00 a.m. meeting with uh with alir and I'm waiting inside while the refueling is going on and Mark comes in and he's just he's just massively Dismayed turns out that the lineman had put the wrong kind of fuel into uh the sess of 421 thinking it was a 441 and we are stuck in montros Colorado and I'm like holy I can't be stuck here that my my meeting is tomorrow it took me a month to

get on this guy's schedule it's like the entire fate of this entire prize and the entire fate of commercial space flight the entire fate of Humanity's you know exploration of space is on this and I'm like in my hotel room It's like how what it's like I refuse to allow it to be and and um I go online and I find out that there is a 6:00 a.m. or like a 5:30 a.m. flight into in from Denver into St Louis and I finally find a taxi company that will uh that will drive me through the

night from Montrose Colorado to Denver so I'm Sleepless in the back of a of a taxi cab get to Denver Airport hop on the commercial flight land I have 30 minutes to get the meeting I get to the meeting and uh to Set the setting I'm in this large St Louis Science Center uh conference room uh with with uh Doug King introducing me I I must have looked like hell uh and and Al cir sitting there and I'm going through this and I'm telling the history of Lindberg which obviously all knows history of space flight

and this idea of this xprize and I'm looking for a home and I'm looking to raise $10 million for this This prize and literally he alir cuts me off and he like jumps up out of his chair slams his hand on the table goes I get it I get it this is great we're gonna have we're GNA have xise here in St Louis and it was like I was like I was like stunned and his level of enthusiasm was so high and um he says listen meet me for a scotch at the Racket Club tonight

um which by the way was the club where Lindberg uh raised his $25,000 and uh I've got an idea for you and I do and he says here's what we're going to do uh we are going to raise you an initial $2.5 million of capital um uh to get this prize this Foundation going if you move the headquarters here to St Louis we want you here you know uh he was Civic progress was all about bringing companies and industries and jobs to St Louis and he said I'm going to find you 100 St louisans who

will each contribute $25,000 which was the amount of the original ore prize and he goes in fact um I found you the first one between our meeting this morning and this meeting this afternoon you remember who that was Ralph Cy yes Ralph Cy God bless him a a big contractor in uh in the St Louis area yeah in St Louis in Southern Illinois and um uh Mark Arnold joined there shortly thereafter and I was like listen you and I had been used to raising money $25 at a time $100 at a Time right and getting

these $25,000 checks I I remember that that when we would get someone to sign up for the and by the way he called uh Al's genius was calling this the new Spirit of St Louis right the Spirit of St Louis people don't know this but um there was a Spirit of St Louis organization I think was was nine St louisans including Lindberg who that was it was actually nine other St louisans plus Lindberg okay so it was 10 then with him on yeah It was 10 he put his life savings up which was several thousand

dollars and yeah and so they called that group was called The Spirit of St Louis organization and and uh lucky Lindy named his airplane um Spirit of St Louis after that organization of people who funded him and so alir said let's call it the new Spirit of St Louis nssl and we'll find those individuals um and and you and I you Know at by this point uh Greg um I'm hard on you to please lead the lead this effort come on as the executive director I need help I'm in the middle of running as I've

always have been you know there was my there was uh uh International microspace there was Angel Technologies all these other going on Z that I'm involved in running i' I've always had a hard trouble doing any one thing at one time and the only way of ever succeeded is having an incredible person running The show and I'm there as a in a role of chairman so you were effectively the our first CEO uh we had a title of executive director because a nonprofit and you moved your family from Princeton New Jersey to St Louis where

you still are um on this on this dream um and and I remember you and I going out to meet with Incredible people um along the way to pitch them on this $225,000 membership and uh when we got a success we would go and feast at IHOP IHOP IHOP was our way to go celebrate yes before lears before I learned the dangers of sugar I'd have those silver dollar pancakes yeah you you know Peter it's it's I'm glad you mentioned the Spirit of St Louis organization and the spirit the new Spirit of St Louis organization

because it's hit me after you know living in St Louis for for years now that there's a unique quality uh to an ethos here and lyberg wrote about it Beautifully in the book Spirit of St Louis yeah he writes and he writes about being on Long Island uh at Roosevelt Field he's ready to go he's up against the the Neil Armstrong of his day Admiral Richard Bird yeah and and the guys who bought the plane that they wouldn't sell to him first the Baka that's later going to successfully make that trip after Lindberg doesn't and

unlike those other two teams lindberg's really paying close attention To the weather but he realizes he's going to get a shot he might he could beat these these firm Runners but if he does it he's not going to be eligible to win the ortique prize because there was a 60-day notice period and the time hasn't run out and he he talks about it he says I called Harry Knight one of the his liais on with the Spirit of St Louis organization and I told them I could go and beat these other guys but if I

do that I wouldn't win the money that's the Whole basis for their organization being created and he said Harry didn't hesitate for a second to hell with the money when you're ready to fly you fly and that's the kind of character we had in people like Al Kur and and and all the members and uh Jack Bader uh you know the the folks who some of these were folks that gave USF Holton oh my goodness wonderful people that we're still friends with to this day John McDonald right and McDonald Douglas that's a great story he

yeah I mean so so I want to tell just a couple of those stories um as you know because it was important you have to understand uh that that we're in the midst of this Venture and uh this idea that we're going to have people do this privately going into space uh when none of this was possible before no one believed it was possible they thought we were nuts and um we were trying to we were trying To be get to a level of credibility and uh uh there was a couple of things that occurred

I'm going to tell one story Greg and then I welcome you to tell yours so Al Kur again absolute genius in this and he I think of him as our Guardian Angel and he says listen we're going to have an event uh at the Racket Club and I remember it was on March 4th of 1996 and I remember March 4th because we're going to March 4th towards the Future and um we set up a room uh uh Byron lenberg had come uh we had uh uh the head of the dcx program uh who was there

um blank Bill GoBots Bill Gobots who flew you know a vertical takeoff vertical Landing rocket powered vehicle from McDonald Douglas and we had this large uh poster board uh with like 50 slots and we were asking people we gave a pitch in the room was the Danforth family you know the back you know families from all the all the Multi-billionaire industrial families in the room and we're pitching our hearts out and we asked those who had already said yes to the $25,000 in new spirit to come up and sign their name and we had like

six or seven names signed up right there Walter medcafe and uh and Ralph Cy and and Mark Arnold and then we invited people to step up to the podium and sign up for the new Spirit of St Louis organization uh and if they didn't want To do it publicly there was a form they could fill out and I think at the end of that day we probably had my recollection is probably around 20 individuals uh who signed up so we raised about a half a million dollars at that moment in time um What story do

you remember best about raising that you want to tell the John McDonald's story yeah so John McDonald was the chairman of McDonald Douglas corporation which is now part of Boeing and and for him the $25,000 was Was you know not not at all significant but what it what would be significant would be him lending his name to this effort yes and he tasked his space wizard Bill goots who was heading up the Delta Clipper program and working with people like astronaut Pete Conrad on that program he said what would it cost tell me what it

would cost McDonald Douglas to do this xprize flight to win this prize and and and Bill who we came to know I love you Know did did a did a very serious engineering study on it and said we could do it for probably about $60 million 5060 million and um the recommendation was that uh they should support the I don't remember if it was Bill's recommendation to John or John's recommendation after talking with Bill but the idea is well let's support the effort and and if we we decide to get into this business we'll just

buy the company that wins Which is which is kind of what happened at the end in a way to to to uh birth Rance company so um but we had a lot of really courageous uh relatively small players that weren't multi-millionaires that weren't you know that that that people from St Louis and elsewhere about half of our new spirit members actually ultimately came in fact the best story is probably the Tom Clancy story well we'll get to that in a little bit but What happens now that I think is so important is it's March of

1996 we had just raised a half a million dollars and you know I I think Al thought we would get all hundred people to sign up and so what do we do now and uh it was you know let's gamble we're all gamblers right it's like this is a crazy a Grazy field of uh of dreams and uh Al said we should go ahead and announce the prize and do a huge media event and uh You know I've since then written about this idea giving birth to an idea above the line of super credibility um

you know I so the question was could we announce the xprize on a global stage in a way that uh would get the world's attention and get the potential sponsor to come to us if we couldn't go out and find them and so we start aiming and we ended up uh hitting a date of May 18th of 1996 not far afterwards where uh we were assembling this super credibility And just to lay out what super credibility looks like we're having a massive press event under the Arch in St Louis on the deis is not one

astronaut but 20 astronauts so uh Byron lenberg who is with you and me sort of early founders of this competition uh went out to the association of Space Explorers and got 20 of them to show up including Buzz Aldren uh and and many of the early great astronauts and so on the day are 20 astronauts we have um Dan uh uh Dan Golden the head of NASA there and we have Patty gray Smith uh who was the associate administrator uh effectively overseeing space flight for the FAA so the two big government groups there and then

uh we have uh Charles lindberg's grandsons um we have uh Eric Lindberg and Morgan Lindberg on the de with us and I'm going to be bringing uh Eric on with us in a moment um and and then we have uh Bert Rutan there also speaking and it was incredible we had Front Page News around the world right $10 million uh space prize announced out of St Louis and you know no one asked we have the money which we didn't and no one asked we have any teams yet which we we didn't but it was it

had entered this period of super credibility and that was uh that was amazing I think we ought to fess up Peter that it was not uncontroversial to do this big launch in fact we lost two of our Board of Director members who were freaked out by the by by the and these are both good friends and good people uh uh but they were they were yeah well here here was the here was the here was their pitch you're going to take all the money we just raised a half a million dollars and you're going to

blow it on a large PR event are you crazy that was I think the summary of what they said and summary yeah and and the answer was yes we're going to do that and um I mean it Was interesting right because our pitch after that was to go to potential sponsors and say listen here's the deal um you don't have to pay until after someone does it this is pay upon success you just have to pledge the $10 million you don't have to pay until after someone does it short break from our episode to talk

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back to our episode hey everybody let me introduce Eric Lindberg uh grandson of Charles Lindberg artist extraordinaire Aviator and uh and crazy Sports fanatic um Eric where are you today I'm on Mercer Island uh very near where I first met you uh Banbridge Island yeah you know I want to I want to Tell a little bit of the background here um and then bring it up to that May 18th 96 uh date when uh when we're on stage together so uh you know I had obviously all of this got started with your grandfather's book and

as in between '94 and and uh uh the announcement in May of 96 I'm like I've got to figure out how to connect what we're doing with the Lindberg name and family and I was living in DC at the time and I I saw this announcement that the Lindberg Foundation was having their annual um Gayla event at the airon Space Museum and unfortunately I wasn't invited um but it didn't stop me you know listen this is all about opening commercial space flight for Humanity this is all about you know opening the space Frontier for Humanity

there's a greater purpose here so I put on my tuxedo I don't know if I rented it or owned one back then and I craft the party at the Aon Space Museum and um like all these Individuals are around and uh and like where's the Lindberg family and I find out that your Aunt Ree is uh is the senior most Lindberg at this event and I finally find my opening to go and introduce her introduce myself to her and I'm like hi I'm Peter D mandis I'm you know we're doing this $10 million prize and

I would love to have lber Foundation involved and she goes well slow down you know slow down she goes okay listen uh let me let me recommend Uh there is one of the Lindberg family members uh Eric Lindberg who is a pilot I don't think she said he's the flying Lindberg but it sounds like a circus act but uh he's a pilot and you should go and meet him he would be the right member of the family to get involved and uh uh and that was the first time I heard your name um and then

I think Colette Bevis who was involved in our earliest days uh supporting and creating this exerprise As well uh I think maybe she reached out to you first yeah I think Colette called me or something and I thought oh this is interesting and not normal um but it was very interesting this crazy idea you weren't used to collect calls I I think the next thing happened was that um you know I brought Byron with me and we came to visit you know it was still back then astronauts were not as frequent and bringing an astronaut

as your calling card still had a level of Pizzazz and and buing God bless him um uh you know joined in and we came so here we are Eric uh Byron lenberg Peter diamandis here talking about opening the space Frontier and doing uh this this version of the arake prize so what did you what did you think yeah first of all I mean it was crazy and you guys were crazy I I was you know I guess because of my background my grandparents being the most famous people on the planet for about 10 years straight

and then um you Know having this incredibly public life and the latter half of their lives they really focused on the balance between advancing technology and preservation of the environment so I thought 10 million bucks into space you know this core idea of the prize it's nuts we need that $10 million down here on planet Earth um so I really was resistant and and and ant Reef was sort of yeah I didn't really get it but you might be interested because you Fly and then when you guys came and and I thought well I'll go

have dinner with an astronaut and it hey it's a free dinner um couldn't couldn't say no to that but as you recall I I had long hair cuz I kind of couldn't afford a haircut and I was you know walking with a cane and um really disabled and not living living a very constricted life but and as I just listen to you guys you and bar we were I mean you were so much you know listen we Need you know the environments first um and you know why why would you focus on Space instead of

this and Byron and I just opened up uh with every possible you know argument we possibly could about you know going going to space to save the Earth Etc it worked I I I I I got chills on the back of my neck you know listening to Byron talk about what it's like to see our planet from space and and I still get those chills I want to See that it was it was really powerful and then thinking about you know maybe what we we learn from space is is what we need to survive on

this planet and then you guys were talking about space solar power lessening the burden of our resources you know here on space and that that dialogue you had earlier with Greg is if if you're not really thinking about space flight and what it can offer us as a species and and not just humans but all life on planet I don't I don't I Think you just poo poo it and that's one of the problems that space flight has had yeah I think one of the one of the things that is the most valuable asset from

the xprize and from our Collective efforts is the ability to dream big again right and I think that's one of the most important elements is is the human Spirit of dreaming big of there is no problem we cannot solve um so we we swayed you enough um and and offered you so you had never been to St Louis so Let's take you back to May 18th of 1996 there's some good stories to be told there um you flew in uh Morgan flew in as well Morgan's uh your younger brother yeah I was having trouble you

know walking and so I asked if Morgan could help me with that flight and get a wheelchair through the St Louis airport just you know on and off kind of thing because I really wasn't I wasn't living as a human yeah by the way uh Eric today is Telemark Skiing and having a blast and uh and climbing and hiking and we'll we tell the story of this rehabilit Rehabilitation as well but so you come you'd not been to St Louis before right right yeah no I so now I got a free dinner I got to

talk to these interesting characters and then oh you want to go to St Louis for a big Gayla with a bunch of astronauts I'm like woohoo more free dinners he said what was it like coming To St Louis cuz I mean like every other Street was Lindberg this and Lindberg that oh man Lindberg Boulevard and then of course the first thing car and we toured around St Louis and there's like the side of a building has an image of my grandfather on it that's way Larger than Life and it's Cubist it's cubes that look like

you know him in The Aviator helmet and the goggles and quite frankly I was overwhelmed and I think when you Grow up as a Lindberg there's a certain Lindberg of fol that goes with that because people say oh you're you're a Lindberg you must have grown up with three or four airplanes and so forth and people have all these preconceived notions but yeah uh my reality was obviously different so I I felt kind of really taken aback by all that but it was also really I started to get that glimmer of Hope and inspiration excitement

right not not just about you know space flight and what that could bring to humanity but my life I started thinking oh here's this crazy thing I could be involved in and wouldn't it be great if it actually happened little did I know back then about how risky these kind of startups are but but it really gave me a a a this incredible inspiration in my life that's carried through to today and that's I Think the greatest gift that I've ever received that's awesome buddy Greg uh what are your memories of May 18th um my

goodness well it you know it was a real tour to force um I I actually was just looking at some photographs from that event and the laser light show uh Neil Diamond looking to the Future uh I remember that was that was in the evening you know what I remember I remember one thing leading up to we had Everybody staying there in St Louis at the same hotel and we had a bus to bring all the astronauts and all the dignitaries to the stage and I remember that uh that uh Dan golden and Bert Routan

got into an crazy argument um almost lffs yelling at each other Dan yeah Dan golden is the NASA administrator and Bert Rutan is the radical Aviation soon to be space entrepreneur and um and world famous Airplan designer I mean yeah yeah you want so just go ahead and talk about Bert one second give him context here yeah well Bert routen at at at the time of um of our x- prise announcement he had started a company called scaled composits and what his biggest claim to fame he's real well known in the Aviation Space but his

biggest claim to fame was he built the Voyager aircraft that flew around the world non-stop his Brother dick ran was the principal pilot of that um so he's really welln uh but his philosophy is that logger has with Dan golden the head of NASA at least seemingly so I think Bert goes listen uh Dan I think you should take uh half of NASA's annual budget and like give it to X prise to do prizes because you guys are wasting the money I mean like what the hell have you done over the last you know since

the Apollo moon landing it's really an incredible And and and they got into a into an argument um and that scared the out of me uh and a lot of people there because they're about to be going on stage in an hour in front of the world media uh and they're going at it and we literally had to separate them on the bus um anyway that was that was crazy yeah I'll tell a short story on the other bus I'm hearing a conversation between uh um alen Ladwig who's who's an aid to Dan golden yeah

he was he was one Of the associate administrators yeah of NASA yeah and and and somebody who I don't know and uh and I'm listening to their conversation I'm sitting one seat in front of them and I'm this guy that's talking to to Ladwig who I know well really smart guy and he's talking about how he would go about winning the X prize and I remember discussion about what propulsion system had to do with using hydrogen peroxide I said ah this guy must be a rocket engine designer Turned out it was the guy who had

produced the movies The Blues Brothers and the Naked Gun series who later becomes our super close pal and and has my job Robert K Weiss of Hollywood Fame yeah so yeah I remember I just to very quickly I met Bob earlier when I had a film pitching about the winning of the X prize and my naive is like I'm going to sell this film for $10 million and the X prize I mean you have to understand we're desperate to fund this prize it's Like how they I'll fund it any way you know bake sales film

scripts yeah so we have this announcement um and uh uh Eric you were on stage um I think Morgan spoke as well uh we had Dan golden uh we had uh Buzz Buzz Aldren speaking uh we had the AL K of course was our MC and it was an extraordinary I mean just to watch this announcement it was it was uh historic in nature um and and we had media around the world uh you know just praise this praise St Louis everything And then the next day uh in the St Louis dispatch is an article

from a guy named Bill mclen and I will never forget this um because I was so proud of all incredible and this article by bill mclen says only in St Louis who built an Arch a monument to those who left St Louis uh would they be naive enough to give money to this crazy $10 million prize and I was so depressed uh by that article and I remember Al cth saying Okay listen you got to go and and and and explain to Bill go buy him a few beers and explain to to Bill what you're

what you're doing and why you're doing it and um I a few weeks later I did that and uh one of the proudest moments was he wrote a retraction um to that piece and he said okay I now get what x prise is doing and why it's doing it and uh very proud and I remember I framed the original one and the other one above my desk yeah in fact over time he wrote two Retractions and and because he was so welln in St Louis um as a brilliant guy but somewhat of a kogin he

apparently had never retracted anything so the fact of those retractions gave us much more good local press than than than and that was the only bad press we I think we ever got really uh I do remember that we had somebody uh we had some I I didn't discover till years later that that somebody in a British science journal had written we must be crazy Libertarians because uh our priz is for you know non governmental space flight and all this is true not well not knowing that the the head of NASA was there with us

and that NASA was very supportive actually a private space flight as they are now and and we worked through uh through Alan Ladwig at length to get Dan supportive and and one of the things that people don't realize is that when we before when we started this competition the the rules for the FAA For space flight did not allow for private uh for people to go on Rockets commercially did not allow for re-entry and one of the biggest things we had to overcome uh during this competition was to get the FAA to rewrite the the

laws that would allow for a commercial space flight industry to exist um and today you know SpaceX and blue origin and all the other companies are are beneficiaries of that that legal reconstruction that we spent the better Part of five six years working on um you know I think it's it's worth telling some of the stories between uh uh after the launch and where we were you know I'll tell one quick story which was I remember getting a call one day um uh at Sunday morning from one of the teams uh saying uh listen uh

we built our V it wasn't a team it was a Proto team we' built our vehicle we're about to launch do you have the $10 million and I'm like who are you and no I don't And and where did you get my phone number from and and so the the there was teams started to register you know and again we had like 26 I think uh teams in full from seven countries at the end of the day who cumulatively spent $100 million to go for this $10 million prize but we were under a lot of

pressure to try and get get the funds and uh and I remember we went first um who' we go to first after that Greg well one I I have some specific memories I remember going To the mer merits Corporation yes merits Corporation so mer merits is a company that um does a lot of work in the Auto industry uh and is headquartered in St Louis and they they my my memory Peter is you and Colette and I spending all night in a Kinkos uh putting together about 150 slide presentation we we we blew them up

onto onto poster board and then we were like putting spray glue on to create These poster boards and Merit is in the in the um in in the like gold watch industry the uh the benefits and incentive uh business right yeah so if if you if if you want to reward your salespeople you can get merits points and they can pick incentives from a catalog like trips or whatever so that that's what they did and we really I think we were actually fairly close on that we we felt as if it was our first big

pitch to to a company and we felt Like they were sincerely interested and I I think they were and actually Bill Meritt signed up as a new spirit member yes and you know we pitched um God knows everybody right 100 100 150 more know the crazy the crazy thing about those days was that it was all using you said power Point earlier but I think in the early days it was on Kodak Chrome slides you know bringing our projector to the uh to the presentation and and and it was all those mad Scrambles I remember

going to Emerson which is also a St Louis area company and going up on the elevator and seeing a call from my wife and I silenced it because we're about to walk into the meeting that taken a while to get to and we pitched them and it went great and we left and I was driving West to go back to Gregs or something and I listened to the radio and I heard there was an earthquake in Seattle and I was like oh no my wife and son were went through an Earthquake and I tuned them

out for a couple hours um but that's what those days were like they were they were just it was all shoe leather and it wasn't this sort of virtual presence that we have today that I don't know if people understand I don't even know if I grock that yeah I mean the the countless number of of heart felt pitches and this is the one this is the company that's going to back it and it's like it's like can't you see it like you know we Pitched virgin we pitched Richard Branson I think uh uh two

or three times we P we pitched him personally we pitched him for Virgin Atlantic X prise Virgin Mobile X prise we'll get to the point where he um um basically uh sort of uh uh didn't um back us but backed the winning technology to commercialize and create Virgin Galactic um but it was it was crazy and and we had so many people telling us I mean especially after the Colombia failure and after 911 people telling us give up there's no way this this is not going to happen um this is this is just a a

reach too far yeah you know interestingly you mentioned Colombia but and and we really I remember that morning that Saturday morning when Colombia was lost and we really thought we were over one of the surprising effects was that NASA came to us um after Colombia and um the the CFO as it were of NASA uh that that equivalent St Steve Isak witz his son Matthew was a teenager and it turned out an ex affectionado he made a bet with his Dad he he said dad I bet X prise will fly a person in space before

NASA flies another person in space yes post Challenger came to us and said help us this is a year before the success of of they exerprise flights for the Ansari exerprise U they came to us and said Peter Greg can you help us figure out whether NASA could do incentive Prizes and if so which one should we do and that was critical money for us that kept us going during 2003 and resulted in NASA's sentennial challenges which are their equivalent so one of the things we we did to keep things going again you know we

announced a prize in 96 uh we don't have any money we are trying desperately to keep the engine going by going and raising $25,000 at a time I mean that was our economic engine going out and pitching somebody and Getting the next person the next person to join the E Spirit of St Louis and I remember in in in 1998 uh two years later um we would have we had a Gaya at the St Louis Science Center where we invited all of the teams to come and display themselves right and we had actually Peter it

was it was 97 97 okay it was it was 97 we held it at the planetarium which is part of the science center out in at Big Tent yep and we had our first teams come and in Fact they looked at a possible launch site over in Illinois at the scotfield Joint use air base it became it became real at that point when you when you saw the teams and what they were attempting to do and then I got a call one day from Gary Hudson who was one of our teams he was running rotary

rocket which was uh the helicopter version of going into space beautiful I wish I wish he had actually built his original version of it and not the larger one later but uh And and Gary says uh you know you should go and and meet Tom Clancy and um I get a meeting with Tom Clancy who had invested in rotary rocket and was interested in in space flight and I remember meeting with you and and Bob Weiss who we mentioned earlier and um I'm going to one of uh to meet uh Tom at his owner's box

Fox at a uh baseball game he was an owner of uh uh which team was it the Orioles no Baltimore Orioles yeah Baltimore Orioles and and you and Bob pull me aside and say Peter whatever you do do not Pitch him for money don't pitch him for money and like but but but what do you mean that's like it's what I do it's like no no no no you want to build a relationship with the guy do not Pitch him for money and I'm like I feel like this like uh I I feel like I'm

just like got strapped you know and gagged in the moment okay he said just get to know the guy don't pitch him for money probably the best advice you know cuz I Was going to pitch him to become a $25,000 donor to New Spirit of St Louis and to use a celebrity support us and so I'm in the owner's box with Tom Clancy and um and I'm trying to get some time to talk to him about space and his um his team is uh is neck and neck neck and neck and the uh the other

team pulls ahead I for I forget who they're playing and all of a sudden uh in the next inning uh its base is loaded and uh and the next batter It's a Grand slam home run and Orioles pulls out ahead by four wins and and Tom's ecstatic and I'm like okay now is the moment and so instead of pitching you know it's always about timing instead of pitching him for money I I said listen we're having our ex prize Gaya we're bringing all the teams to St Louis would you come and be our honored speaker

and um and I think he was on a you know endorphin high from that grand slam home run he said sure I'll come uh And uh that was a magical moment do you remember what was going on there Greg oh I sure do tell me so two things were going on one sounded really bad and one turned out really well the the bad one was that our our good friend Buzz alren who we Peter and I have both known for years he stayed at my house in New Jersey in the old days and um he

was going to come and be our sort of featured headliner speaker for our event and a couple days before the 97 Gaya he Had a problem and to pull out and we asked Tom actually to to speak and he did a nice job but before he did a nice job he's walking around this Gayla and new spirit members are wearing these big beautiful medallions large bronze golden medallions yes I remember on big big uh red colored ribbons yeah things yeah and uh so he asks Cindy Ked who was Peter's your PA at the time yes

uh what what what's with the medals and he she says Well those are folks that are members of the new Spirit of St Lewis organization they've they've each donated $25,000 to the xprize and he says I'll take four and in those days and and so that that put our event seriously into the black yeah you know it was it was unexpected and it came from me not asking him for money but it did it did something more than that Peter oh yes it did that's right it resulted in a it resulted in the next day

a tiny little Story a couple paragraphs in the Boston Globe and it turned out that there was a company in Boston whose job it was to come up with opportunities for the Visa credit card one of the Visa credit card offering banks in Delaware to find Affinity groups so like if you're if you went to Northwestern College they go out to all the new Northwestern alums and say get the Northwestern wild cats purple Visa card and every time you use It we we'll give eighth of a penny to North your mama moer well they said

hey maybe there's an opportunity there they contacted us and the result was first USA can I can I tell the story I get I get a message um um I get a message who was who was our admin at that point do you remember her name I don't remember but you were in the magnet Place building with Mar I get I get a message that a organization first USA from Boston has called about a donation and Of course I'm thinking what they want us to give them a donation it's like it's like we don't have

money to donate to them for God's sakes and uh and so uh and then who the admin calls them to get more clarification no no no they're calling about giving us a donation I'm like you know speed dialing to call them yeah that was Lori Mets was Lori Mets that was it from Lor that's right Lori did that and then uh ultimately uh it ends up in a a meeting You Bob Weiss and I and Doug King I remember were in the St Louis Science Center and we look out the window and we see this

large black sedan pullup with like three guys in black suits pull out I remember like the Men in Black moment so take it from there Greg well it it resulted in um uh us making a deal where whereby first USA would pay $5 million of the $10 million prize if somebody uh won our contest did the required feat By um by a date certain in the future which we hadn't picked yet yeah uh we did later we picked uh the W Brothers 100th anniversary it was December 17th 2003 yeah originally so that was the contract

we made with them and we also got some we got a little bit of upfront money and and and some fractional money as and some beautiful looking credit cards yeah so there was this great company in uh if we could put drop Pictures into the editing we can I've got pictures a company called shamlan Fred shamle and an associate S I was still living in in the Princeton area um when this deal started and um uh and I was fact I was sitting around trying to think about a slogan that we could use and and

I remember because it this was in Hopewell where I was living at the time and we were thinking about giving the winner uh they were going to have a sort of a lottery And we were going to give the winner of the lottery a chance to fly on an next prize ship second prize is you didn't have to fly on the ship but anyway um I came up with the idea of your ticket to space yes and and that was and we had we had uh people around the world getting these xprize credit cards and

the challenging thing was $5 million was great but it wasn't $10 million and we still needed to raise that $10 Million and we're we're barely hanging on by you know uh our fingernails operationally there I mean you then move your family out you know we're operating I'm volun I'm a volunteer chairman of the organization um and we had like you know one and a half salaried individuals and and but Bob Weiss comes up with an so we're we're still we're we're pitching we're pitching pitching pitching every CEO every large car company every company and and

I remember Bob Weiss Corners us one day to talk about something called hole-in-one insurance and yeah so so B Bob had got really involved Bob was that guy that that I met on the bus uh on the day of our first Gayla and he turned out to be um we didn't know that he was a he was a um a serious techno geek um and uh he he came on board to help us when uh when we had our first title sponsor Peter we should talk about the whole blastoff Saga at some point but um

uh Bob was aware of a kind of insurance that we had never heard of before cuz we're not Sports guys we don't watch golf games it's called hole-in-one insurance so if you watch a golf tournament uh and they say if someone hits a hole in month today they win a brand new Corvette some insurance company has taken the BET basically that that and They know with fine detail the Actuarial possibilities of you know how hard it is or how easy it is to hit all and on and and so instead of having to pay for

a whole Corvette you pay some some some amount maybe 10% of it or or 5% of it well Bob had the crazy audacious idea that we ought to try to see if we could find an insurance company that would be crazy enough to take our bet that uh one of our teams would complete the required feat by some date Certain and and maybe we could find a deal that would let us leverage the money that we did have and indeed we went to because we knew the space business this is mostly on you Peter from

your microspace days we went to Insurance Underwriters in the satellite business and to our surprise they agreed to take our bet now I think the statute of limitations is pretty much wrong on all this stuff so we can we can tell what really happened so one Of the things that happened I got the most extraordinary phone call one day um it was after 2000 because I was in the offices that we had on Spirit of St Louis Boulevard at Spirit of St Louis airport um and it was the insurance company thinking about whether or not

to do this deal with us and they asked me to provide them with the names of space experts that could help them figure out the the Odds basically yes so that's like when you're a trial lawyer and you get to pick the jury yourself without the other side being so because I gave them the names of very serious people that I knew in the space Bas business who believe that only NASA and God could they didn't they weren't even sure the Russians could do it I knew you you obviously prove that they could but um

um they were I I picked the the the biggest Skeptics of of um yeah they were serious People I didn't load the deck completely but but uh they were very credible well-known people but they had the common belief that it was it wasn't going to happen so we did find Uh u a company and it enabled us to roughly almost double our our striking power for that so we end up um basically negotiating a deal that this insurance company would pay out the other5 million by December 17th 2003 and we'll go into this a little

bit Later but of course no one won the X prize by December 17th 2003 and the $5 million from first USA was going away and there was going to be there was ultimately a renegotiation of the deal where the insurance company needed to back it through what we set the new date of through the end of 2004 most people don't know that the original ortigue prize ended in 1925 and Raymond orte actually extended it um and so it was not unusual in fact to this day x prize Sometimes extends the prize deadlines but deadlines are

important I hate the use word were dead but deadlines are important because they incentivize teams to do you know to like like make it happen to take their shot otherwise if you had forever you'll you'll you'll be lazy and you'll take the time Peter what what what one one of the things that strikes me right here as we're talking through this history about about the Ansari X prise is that the time scale is A lot longer than we're able to discuss yeah and and those those deadlines of making the payments on on on the premiums

for the prize and the and the and the pressure on the fundraising it lasted for whatever nine years and that was just the beginning yeah I mean so I'll I'll tell a little bit and um uh and I want to lead us to two stories one Eric your story of recreating your grandfather's flight and the second is of meeting our other patron saint anusa Ansari um so we negotiate this deal with the insurance company and ultimately um uh they are going to charge us on the order of I forget the exact amount it was like2

and5 Million $3 million of that it's a bet there like okay if you pay us this premium um and someone wins we'll pay the $10 million if you pay this premium and no one wins we keep the premium so it's it's legalized gambling it's what this insurance policy is and uh we get We get the you know when we got to the point where uh the insurance company is going to have to cover the whole 10 million and go through the end of 2004 uh we get their premium requirements and um I remember Bruce Keli

Keli and uh and Miss Eid were negotiating this for us and the problem was we they were asking us for like two and a half three million Greg was that your memory of the the premium amount yeah I mean but at the end of the day our total premiums were Were close to 5 million bucks so but we didn't have that money and um and so I was like what are we going to do and I had uh an inside that said okay listen here's the deal I want to I'm going to pay you $50,000

a month for the next year and then we'll do a balloon payment that $50,000 a month is going to give us time to go and raise the full amount whatever whatever it was $3 $4 million and I remember you know uh we would have it would be Monday and we Would have $50,000 due on Friday and if we didn't pay it the whole thing was over uh you know we'd announce the fact that we had the $10 million through an insurance policy to the teams we didn't publicly announce this yet but the teams knew cuz

they were like do you have the money yet do you have the money yet we're building Vehicles do you have the money yet and it it was a lot of a lot of stress um and yeah by the way I mean we should we should say Peter we always Told the teams exactly what was going on these people were risking their lives yeah and you know not just their time but they were they were doing something that we knew was hazardous and you know we were we were very straight up with them and it it

formed the basis for all of our team agreements going forward into the future and so uh you know but but where you're going with this is that the pre Eric you're Exactly right the pressure was incredible my hair was a very different color at the beginning of this process uh you know Peter Peter and the burden was mainly on Peter to to raise the money and I I made a lot of new friends right um I paid one myself Deo ressie who came in and paid one and Barry Thompson who came in and paid one

and and the one of these $50,000 Fridays um but the the pr was on an extraordinary fashion um uh to keep the organization Alive and to keep this prize and I think one of the things I want folks to understand is we died a thousand deaths we were over so many times and it was just this belief this absolute heartfelt perseverance in belief that this was one of the most important things this was our massive transformative purpose to open the space Frontier for Humanity and every time we hit a wall we' pull you know every

time there was a no and a no and a no from someone were absolutely Sure and every time you know we had you know 9/11 happen and the Columbia accident happened we just pick ourselves up off the ground and start again um and there were there were two uh important moments uh one was Eric um you making uh the decision because we were hand to mouth as an organization um and you made the decision that the 75th anniversary of your grandfather's flight was coming up and that you were going to recreate your grandfather's Flight for

the purpose of raising a million dollars for operating capital for the foundation um Greg and and uh and Eric would you would you tell that story because uh Greg you were in the middle of this you get a call from Eric lber one day take it from there yeah it was it was a 2000 and uh we we had had a um a company uh that was going to be our title sponsor that had lost half of its funding due to the dotc Meltdown uh but this has that the Meltdown hasn't happened yet so I'm

out with you Peter and Bob Weiss in in this company called Blast Off in Pasadena and I get a call from my pal Eric who says Greg you've been a pilot for 30 years I'm thinking about recreating my grandfather's flights for the the 75th anniversary in May of 2002 what do you think and my my quick response was what are you crazy you have a four-year-old Little boy beautiful wife you want to go New York Paris non stop as part of that flight and that's about 3,000 some miles 2600 of which is over wet stuff

you can only get rescued the first 50 and last 50 miles over that wet stuff by helicopter why and Eric had three reasons he said uh I want to understand what my grandfather did and the only way to understand it is to do it I want to showcase the future of flight including X frisee And I'm thinking about those and he I I'm there are legitimate reasons um but do I want to be complicit in my friend's imulation probably not and then when he talks about the future of flight and xprize well that's my job

to promote X prise is it worth is it worth success there and um against his life probably not but he got me with the third reason he said well you remember when I was in a wheelchair and on crutches when you met met me under the Arch in St Louis I got my life back I'm going to do something with it and where you really got me Eric was when you said I want to show people especially kids that if they're suffering from something like my rheumatoid arthritis something horrible There's Hope Oh I said okay

I'll I'll help you you'll think about it I I I remember that conversation well because it it it you know the the the gestation of that story is I have dinner with Peter and and Byron and then I go to Visit this crazy you know cabal of astronauts and Space Geeks and I get excited and I you know my first trip up on stage to say this is pretty cool um I'm I'm wobbling with a cane and then the 97 Gayla I was actually walking up the stairs I had had my knees replaced both total

knee Replacements in 1996 and I had some measure of my life back and then and then a couple years later I started taking a break through biotechnology Drug that gave me another chance at life and and I got back into flying so I was flying again and I realized I might not get a a third chance at life I had this sort of second chance at a physical life and I started thinking and in those days I was doing a lot of sculptures and Furniture in my shop and I was um selling them at the

local farmers market and other venues and one of my clients um asked me if he'd make a if I'd make him a Spirit of St Louis because he and His brother both read my grandfather's book The Spirit of St Louis like Peter did and it inspired them to become pilots and that that inspiration LED them to you know him to ask me would you do this for my brother and in the process of building that airplane and investing myself into that unique shape and sanding the the grains of of wood that I had in the

wings I made a spirit that looked like a bird um it got me thinking what would it be like to fly Across the Atlantic and and what was it like for my grandfather and so I started flying this thing in in my shop in my hand and putting my my mind's eye into the cockpit and wondering what it was like for Charles Lindberg to fly an unstable aircraft for 33 hours across the Atlantic and I thought huh could I do it and since I was working with Greg a lot we were talking fairly you know

weekly I ran it by him and and and he he said no you can't do that for all those Reasons and then but but as we kept talking it's just like the whole idea of space I think the more you know and the more you start to realize and understand what the potential is the better it seems and and that led me to that you know desire to retrace I I realized I couldn't couldn't walk in his shoes um but having this disease that killed my sense of physical self my state champion gymnast when I

was young yeah can that picture one second because You know rheumatoid arthritis really I mean you were the Pinnacle of physical health right oh get that picture a second from one end to the other end I guess you know when I grew up I just had a natural physical ability and I could I could climb the rope and PE all the way to the top with just my hands and um I climbed and skied Mount rineer and I was Washington state champion gymnast and anything I wanted to do physically I could do pretty well if

I trained a Little bit I could compete so I have you know boxes full of water ski trophies and things like that and that that physical sense of self when I was in high school I I thought if I ever got stuck behind a desk pushing a pencil for a job I would kill myself I didn't know what I would do with with that because I was so physical and then of course rheumatoid arthritis came along and it's like having your knee sprained and then your other knee sprained at the same Time and then it

moves around your body and it mirrors itself in your joints and and slowly decays your cartilage and I ended up bone on bone in my knees and that's when you guys met me yeah really a low Point um and I think that was a you know a bottom that led to this incredible achievement and I think in 2000 uh Greg the x- prise foundation was at a low Point as well we're on fumes um uh we are basically everybody's employed by by I think you're the only employee At EX prise at this point and maybe

even part-time and when when Eric said I'm going to recreate this flight and we'll do it as a a fundraiser I'm like uh awesome all in um not being uh as worried about about your my family was concerned as Greg was it's like I'll do anything to get this damn prize funded um and so yeah I mean just to give you a feel for how bad things were uh uh we were pretty sure we were losing our title Sponsor I remember you and Bob Weiss and I had a meeting at Pasadena and I took a

Redeye home from that and discovered that my car which I had to park outside at the airport because we didn't you know cuz we were broke basically had been hit by hail and uh I took the car into to to u a whole many cars were were hail damaged so they the insurance company set up these tet cities where you could go and get an Estimate and my my number two daughter needed like $5,000 for orthodontia and they offered me $527 18 and I I said woooo I have $278 uh because my car looked like

a Pock like a basket like a like a golf ball we were re we were totally broke and yeah I just want to point this as a as a low point for the foundation in 2000 right um and just to remind everybody today the xprize has launched nearly $600 million in in competitions Has driven billion dollars in R&D and you know this is not an over night success this is an overnight success after 30 years of hard work um 11 years for the first competition I just want to bring it back to the notion that

we're the only thing kept us going was this fundamental belief uh of this this importance to the human spirit that we were on a an extraordinary Mission and nothing would keep us from that and the only way that we would fail is if we Gave up along the way and so um uh let's take a second and before I introduce anusa Ansari who is um uh is the next chapter in the story um you make a decision uh to go forward with this uh with this flight across the Atlantic and what was entailed in doing

that oh gosh well it it was we had about a year and a half to get to the 75th anniversary and we quickly you know uh had some meetings around St Louis to understand feasibility back of The napkin calcul ations of you know distance mileage and money what was it going to take and who do we need on board and what could what's the messaging that we could carry and and how big could we go and I mean it it technically it was it was feasible some guy did it 75 years before you know so

uh in an old airplane um the family feasibility for me was much tougher I mentioned I had this lurap phobia and I think the rest of my family was used to Not putting themselves out into the public eye and just and just a for perspective right uh your grandfather's first child was kidnapped and killed yeah and that because of the Pinnacle of attention um and then there was this reaction to pull back and to really become a private life and I think all of your siblings and cousins you know didn't like the attention they they

didn't they reacted negatively to the idea that you were going to put yourself Out there visibly and physically uh to do this and you had to overcome that it it wasn't just that oh you're going to you know hurt yourself Eric and we could never forgive ourselves for that um but it was you know what are you doing and and and you you know you're stepping into a legacy that has a tremendous amount of pain involved in it and and and and positive and negative sides of that there's an amazing new book out right now

called called the convenient Villain where it it it details all of the reasons why my grandfather was who he was was this incredible entrepreneurial character who was brilliant in the field of Aeronautics and astronautics as well but politically naive and he stuck his neck out and he he was a patriot and and did all these things but it it kind of it that gets you a better feel for the kind of focus that was heaped on the family that that has this burden of legacy and for me I Realized in that feasibility study that um

uh that I had to do this Mission I had to break free of those chains from that Legacy that were not mine I just inherited them and so I I I realized that that the resistance I was getting from family I needed to push through and that aligned me fully to do this and to take the physical risk and then Greg and I of course you know went about finding sponsors for the flight and and we went to Oshkosh air Venture where you know It's my first trip there and we I forget if it was

the first trip or the second trip we spent the night in a school room and some out near the prison we got a whole classroom to ourselves but we found most of our sponsors there and then we talked to the company that was making the Breakthrough biotechnology drug that really wanted to get the news out and and of course X prise was on board so we started pulling together the funding for That and then made a partnership with the Lance a company and Lance nbow um to to take a plane and make it worthy of

the transatlantic flight by adding uh a ton of fuel to it um and give it that longevity and then we started training and and that was uh you know an extraordinary period of all of a sudden I'm really laser focused on my prime directive which was not necessarily to raise the money or fly from New York to Paris but it was to Survive yeah you know it it it as we tell the story um we were in the middle of our fundraising what 911 happened in fact I was driving to meet with the Missouri historical

society which had heard through the grap Vine that we were going to get American Airlines funding for our flight and they were trying to get funding from American Airlines for a traveling Lindberg exhibit so the the boss of the museum wanted to cut a deal With me to to split that money somehow and get you know get a piece of the action and as I was driving to that meeting the first plane hit the towers and and the head of ohis and I saw the second one hit because we had set up a TV in

his office and that was the end of that so we we lost about half of our potential funding um from that but as it was of course it turned out to be the bridge that kept us going in fact Eric and I Were in New York City doing media training and then driving out to to the Long Island to take a ferry to gron Connecticut to get dunked and learn how to escape from airplanes in the dark underwater when when uh when we uh signed our agreement with our next guest inia so we'll segue to

that but but you know the the the um uh that story of Eric's flight still has legs today in fact the airplane has just been Restored to air worthy condition and Eric and I have each just uh we'll come back we'll come back to that um but uh a new show was part of that story too everybody I want to take a short break from our episode to talk about a company that's very important to me and could actually save your life or the life of someone that you love company is called Fountain life and

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you go to Fountain life.com Peter will'll put you to the top of the list really it's something that is um for me one of the most important things I offer my entire family the CEOs of my companies my friends it's a chance to really add decades onto our healthy lifespans go to fountainlife decomp it's one of the most important things I can offer to you as one of my Listeners all right let's go back to our episode all right next guest a pleasure to bring uh a dear dear friend uh another patron saint on this

incredible journey uh anusa Ansari who is our benefactor um uh anusa a pleasure to have you here it's great to be with all of you it's this is family time again huh so we're at this point in the story and it's um 2001 Eric Lindberg has just decided to make his transatlantic flight um hopefully you know we're at a low Point in the xprize um blastoff which was a company that was going to potentially be our sponsor had splashed down that money was not going to materialize I did a podcast with Bill gross talking about

about blast off and folks can go and hear that incredible journey um but uh uh we're at a point where I'm not sure how we're going to fund the foundation we have this this whole in-one Insurance in place and I'm having these $50,000 Fridays but there's This balloon payment coming up of millions of dollars and I've been wholly unsuccessful you know I missed the entire do Revolution where you know these dot companies were spending millions and tens of millions and holy I forgot to like pitch them properly and I'll never forget I am uh in

my apartment on uh Third Street in Santa Monica and I I'm pick up this copy of Fortune Magazine and the cover issue says the wealthiest 40 women under 40 And I'm just flipping through this and I happen to land on this page about anua Ansari and says nanari has just sold her company uh Telecom Technologies to sonus networks for $1.3 billion and her dream is to fly on a suborbital flight into space and I'm like say what and I read I read that line like three times it's like to fly on a suborbital flight into

space it's like who says I want to fly in a suborbital flight you know people say I want to fly to space and I'm like Oh my God this is her this is her and I am like I'm start like you know Googling around or whatever searching for Telecom Technologies in Nan sari and um it turns out that your company had been in asset sale the company was no longer around and I'm able I'm not sure how I don't remember exactly uh I might have been uh member of my team I tracking you down tracking

down a your past executive assistant and uh I get that person on the phone and I'm like like like this is Her this like I've been told no Greg's been told no Eric's been told no you know 100 times 150 times and and like I have to meet you I have to I have to meet you and I I extract a a promise out of your past EA um who tells me that you're vacationing in Hawaii that if i s send her a stack of materials that she would forward it to you and why don't

you pick up the story from there yeah so uh I was uh taking some time off with family because we had Worked non-stop for over 10 years building a company sold the company and then ended up working for sonus Network um up until you know the deparle of of 2000 uh in 2001 and um and so we were taking some time off and I received a call I said I had said no meetings because all of a sudden because I was in the papers everyone wanted to talk to me uh about money and donation and

I wasn't ready I um so um she calls me and says that There's someone who wants to meet with you and talk to you uh and he said he wants to talk to you about space and uh at that time when we we had sold the company I had made the decision that I wanted to go back to the passion I had since childhood and going to space I had enrolled in a masters in astronomy I was studying I was researching to see what are my possibilities and how can I get involved in an industry

that I had nothing to do with um and uh decided That suborbital was probably the most viable option for me at that time uh and when uh she mention in space I'm like oh 100% first meeting when I come back um and we came back I I don't remember exactly about a few weeks after that and you and Byron were the first people I met with in our office I remember I like byon you have to come with me first of all you were in Dallas and Byron was I think in in Houston and it's

like I have to bring my my astronaut with me where I Go I used that game card with uh with Eric and I was going to use it again with with a new sh and um that made a big difference because I had never met an astronaut and Byron was the first astronaut I ever met and you know just sitting next to him and and having him talk about his experience in space flight and uh giving me an autographed picture that was like I was in heaven so we so I want to tell this story

a little bit so um to get Some context here you were born in Taran and you grew up what was your childhood like and what was your connection to space well um I uh I felt in love with the night skies basically I wasn't thinking about going to space But as a child I was very curious I I'm still very curious and that gets me into all sorts of trouble but um I slept outside we didn't have air conditioning I slept outside at night uh summertime and just gazing at the night Sky was this field

of possibilities uh a place where your imagination can basically make up anything you want and and that's what I did as a child because I had a normal childhood until I was 12 and Revolution happened in Iran which brought you know guns and violence and screaming and shouting to my door for the first time in my life and then the war between Iran and Iraq happened where you know all the things that come with the war again Death destruction uh lack of food water electricity blackouts all the time bombings Sirens going to bunkers and um

all of that was too much for me to handle so space became this refuge for me a place where uh in my mind I would go there and tell myself stories of this wonderful peaceful place the Star Trek world and you were Trey along with me yeah I was I started watching Star Trek um in Iran D in farsy all sorts of Sci-fi but Star Trek was my favorite and Spock was my favorite character because I wanted to I didn't want to be the captain I wanted to be the science officer the person who discovers

all sorts of things and um so I was on a journey of Discovery uh when I looked at the night skies so fast forward a few decades later um in your office uh who was your husband then Amir your uh brother-in-law then um another uh uh brother of of Hamid are there and by and I are pitching you and we're saying U basically listen we're looking for a title sponsor um we're looking for at that point um the money to cover this whole- in-one insurance balloon payment and then Monies to operate the foundation and I'm

like it's it's like I remember I couldn't sleep the night before cuz I was so excited like this is the person this is the person I felt that feeling before but not anywhere Near as much and um I I remember leaving your room your offices without a yes and I was dismayed by that um and so what was what was going on in your in your mind back then and uh and you know what did you what did you think why didn't you tell me yes on the spot you could have saved me a lot

of Heartache it's Iranian in me uh no but um so we were sitting there and you you know gave your PowerPoint presentation and we had a good Conversation and I remember thinking to myself that you were describing this competition and I had not thought of a competition at all um but you were describing how you're going to ask the world to build a spaceship in their girl and then fly not once two times before they would get any money and I'm thinking to myself wow what a brilliant approach to Innovation as an entrepreneur you know

I had selected teams built teams asked them to build Things usually you know they were late they didn't deliver exactly what I wanted I had to pay them up front before they delivered anything I'm like we should do this more in building things and especially high risk thing which is what U you know most of the companies that my family and I built were about doing things at the edge so I I had the risk-taking gene in me already and I saw this as a way to do risky things but risk mitigated through a competition

so In my you know sort of calculating head I was thinking oh this this is a brilliant approach on the other hand my you know kid the space uh kadet in me just loved it because um I wanted to go to space myself but I also didn't want it to just be about me going to space and I wanted it to be um something that lasts afterwards so the fact that we were asking the teams to basically build a reusable access to space that twice within two weeks um told me that this is Going to

happen we wanted to build a business I mean part of what you described to me at whole industry in space and that sort of also struck a note with me I didn't I in my mind I had said yes but not verbally to you but uh and I wanted to consult with the rest of the family frankly also uh we had glanc across the table I felt like you know some were skeptical some of them were okay um but I wanted to make sure everyone was on board because it was Significant even though we had

sold the company for 1.3 billion soon after that the stock when you know no take cash new always take cash next next time next time but uh but uh so it was a significant um investment for for us to do this it wasn't uh nothing and so I wanted to get consensus as we were all making this bet together and and I truly didn't think of it as a donation I felt it was an investment in the future and it was an investment in the future that I wanted to be a part of and uh

so it took us a little bit uh to get back to you and say yes so I'm back in my apartment in Santa Monica the same place where I'd read that article and just like hunted you down um and I get a call from Hamid uh your then husband uh with you on the phone and I'm like I'm just like I'm a nervous school kid right like what's going to happen my my entire future the future of humanity in the balance here are they going to say yes Or are they going to say no and

uh and you said yes and you said uh that you would you would fund uh the capital uh it was on the order of like5 plus million dollar I forget the exact amount it covered all of our insurance payments it gave us a couple million dollars of operating Capital um uh to keep the foundation going um and it was interesting right because you said listen uh we will back stop this um if you can find another sponsor to put up The money um to put up the $10 million will give you some of it and

and so you you know you realize that as a family um you weren't bringing a massive PR budget to the table and if we had you know virgin X prise or Amazon X prise or some other large organization that would put a PR push behind it would be better for the overall thing um but we never did find that person and uh yeah and I remember setting up those meetings with you and going to them we went to Houston Rockets we felt like they probably will say yes we talked to Dell we talked to Bill

Banks and so many others and um nobody saw the opportunity the potential we all saw in it now everyone wants to be part of it or people did see the opportunity but then thought oh what's the downside and decided not to yeah I remember people telling me actually um I remember people saying that you guys are crazy um because You're going to get people killed and especially with the you know Challenger accident Columbia accident everything that was fresh in everyone's mine and I had to actually write an AIT about it because I was saying that

you know people who go to the space business or flying to space they understand the risk there is a bigger purpose and and a and a belief in the future and they do it with the knowledge of the risk and you know stopping all the progress in space Exploration is dishonoring their memories because we're saying that what you believe and didn't matter or it wasn't right or it was not a good idea and I think that's what people miss and um so you just needed the sister in your Brotherhood that's that's why yes for sure

uh you were were definitely the the missing missing component and then you know it was a it was you know if this was a movie this would be uh the you know end of act two you know we're at The low point and we're coming out into the high point and I want to bring us back to what was going on Circa 2001 uh 2002 uh we're after the dot bust we're after 911 um anua comes through uh Eric you're flying your flight now in 2002 anua Ard Mission Control uh there and then we also

started meeting all the teams um and let's let's go back to some of those stories of some of those teams um because they were truly extraordinary Um anua or Greg where do you want to go I remember two teams uh specifically one was of course Bert and his big character Bert Tran and U meeting him at scale composite and um I remember him showing us the sketches and the designs he had um and I also remember he didn't take me that seriously because he's like uh I don't know if she's serious about this whether she's

you know truly passionate about this and uh and I think it took me a While yeah it took me a while to to to get him to warm up to me but I'm I'm used to that being in the tech business and a place where women are not taken as seriously but it was um it was truly exciting to just see all the different designs and approaches the other one that I remember and I think I met him at an ISU event um he was the part of the Argentinian team it was this guy who

was building a balloon takeoff up and and he was basically having his neighbors and The entire you know Community bringing him material and stuff and helping him build this balloon and you know he was the most unlikely person to build a spaceship uh and in this case a balloon that would uh applying and uh but he was like determined this is GRE do you want to recount the uh the details there yeah well the Argentinian guy was Pablo de Leon um and I visited him after lecturing at ISU in Chile I realized South America's skinny

it's easy to get To to the uh buenos Aris from Chile so I went to see him and I you're right it was a sort of a neighborhood organization but this guy was he was very serious and he's he he was actually a space suit expert and was doing quite a lot of work with NASA so he was very interesting uh we had a a Canadian U company Brian feni was headed heading that up that that was a balloon launch and he said look I'm not Bert routen I I'm not a he's using an Airplane

to drop his spaceship but I I'm not good at designing airplanes mine's going to be stupidly simple I'm going to use balloon and when I saw they call those they call those raccoons right Rock and balloons that's right raccoons from the 1950s the only other person I ever knew who knew what a raccoon was was our own Bob Weiss yes but um because he's a student of space history but Um that was interesting because they were they had actually filed the notice with us that they were going to launch about the same time as Bert

and we really couldn't afford to put on a Big Show at Canada and the US and and we we thought that actually his notice was probably more than optimistic it was probably it was sort of a a ploy to ride on the coattails of of where we were but um hard to tell and they were but they they they built some Hardware uh the Company that surprised me the most was some folks that said what's the most produced rocket that's ever flown to space and the answer is it's the German V2 yes because those Rockets

flew sub orbitally during World War II and they said what we're going to do is we're going to replicate the V2 design now we we had a uh there's a professor uh who had worked at McDonald Douglas for many years and he was Teaching at at parks College of St Louis University named um Dr Paul Siz and he called me one day I ju I had just moved to to St Louis so it was 98 it was winter of 98 and he says um one of your teams is coming to visit me and I want

to invite you to they hadn't told me so he said I want to invite you come along and I I met the folks and um they were based in paradoxically in London Ontario London being the target for many Of the V2 rockets in World War II and the reason they were coming to St Louis was because uh St Louis University had been given a V2 rocket engine by Warner Von brwn during the 50s and they were going to come and look at it and take some measurements on it well do you you know what what

was interesting was the comp the team was called Canadian arrow and uh shortly after 9/11 um they they drove fullscale V2 rocket on the on a flatbed truck into Time Square yep and so and it was like what is it was like this missile in the middle of New York City uh and we had a lot of a lot of exerprise media on that they did it they did it for our event uh yeah I remember that yeah but the the the funny thing was was that um uh well anyway they said that they were

going to make a stretch version of the rocket and and the head of the the outfit whose name I forget this moment said we're not going to do I'm not allowing my Engineers to make any changes whatsoever and that's how we're going to do it within the budget and I I I figured they're going to try just to come up with a rocket engine for $10 million if you have to build it yourself is pretty close to Impossible given the economics of the situation but they did it they they they reproduced the engine and they

test fired it uh Thanksgiving is 2003 and we had a team that was um in Huntsville Alabama and I went down to Huntsville for their for their opening announcement and one of the original German rocket guys who was in charge of propulsion for V2s was still alive and he was down there and he had given some advice to that Canadian a team so Canadian Arrow people sent me a video of the test firing of the engine and I took them off on the side so it was not to steal any Thunder and showed it to

him and he said with a great German accent Oh they're running it must be running at pressure fed because it's running too rich and I could see it nobody had seen one of those engines for 60 years but he pulled he was exactly right so we we had some serious teams but but uh it was always a challenge to make it look like a horse race when there weren't a whole lot of horses there were 26 horses but uh the challenge of course was funding as with all of these right um you know I had

set it at a $10 million prize amount Because when I thought about how I would do it and how much would cost me to take a run at this um back from my International microspace my rocket days um uh you know a few years earlier I said it's going to be at least 10 million so 10 million x roomal 10 it works well X for experimental uh and 10 million was I think a minimum amount that would get someone serious and it was the largest prize ever in human history at that time By by a

significant amount um and and we all knew Bert Rutan um and and Bert of course Very famously uh on May 18th of 1996 uh we had just announced the competition on the stage under the Arch in St Louis hundreds of reporters cameras there and that night we had a Gil at the St Louis sence Center with the laser show and all and Bert Rutan stands up um as one of our speakers and he's there because he's an aviation expert uh and he's there because of his Fame um you know with voyager and all he' built

more uh FirstLight aircraft than all the prime contractors put together but he stands up and he goes um I'm not going to tell you what I've come up with because I want to win this thing and he threw his hat in the ring as the very first team that very night the night we announced the competition and then very quickly we had a teens a team from Romania which was amazing we had you know uh we had teams from around the World um and but Bert was always the Dark Horse meaning not the dark course

he was always the most experienced but he wouldn't tell us what he was doing um and uh it's worth stating that you know at one point uh Greg you and I went to go and Pitch Paul Allen uh to fund the X prise um meeting with Dave Moore and others and they were very cryptic um because I was you know Paul was a Star Trek fan uh and super wealthy but uh but we got a no and I was like man I got Richard Branson says no Paul Allen says know what's going on and little

did we know that in fact beran and Paul Allen had been talking and Bert had talked Paul Allen into being his sugar daddy to fund uh the compet his his vehicle spaceship one and virgin had a sneaky deal on the side that we didn't know about till the very end yeah yeah that's interesting because he was willing to write a bigger check a 30 million million dollar check To scale then to X prise and I think you know when I look back at all the people who said no to you Peter I can't understand their

logic because uh you know at that time since we had taken off the operation with the with the insurance they really didn't have much at risk they only paid if someone won the prize yeah and to you know that to me was like if someone has already built it and demonstrated a spaceship it's definitely worth more than 10 million I Mean why wouldn't you and and I couldn't understand the so it it's interesting how I see that again today you know in in philanthropy one thing that was fascinating was that Paul uh required Bert to

keep his involvement secret and the only time that he allowed it to be publicly disclosed was after uh uh the first successful powered flight uh through the transonic uh period And I think what's interesting is you know when you've gotten so wealthy um that uh You don't want to seem stupid uh you don't want to uh you don't want to publicly um announce that you're doing something and then have it fail so I think at the point at which Paul was willing to say that he was backing uh one of the teams was when the

the technical risk had been reduced I I guess I can understand that but again when you look at it uh you know anyone who's been an entrepreneur when you ask them uh you know one of the ingredients Of being an entrepreneur and succeeding is the fact that you need to understand that you will have failures and that you need to feel comfortable with those failures and learn from them and build again and and sort of have this grit this perseverance to be able to push forward and without RIS and without failure you can really take

those giant leaps forward you will always be just incrementally inching your way up and I think um that's something that I feel It's important to highlight and people who reach a certain amount of notoriety wealth recognition uh unless they Elon Musk and they don't care about you know what everyone thinks um they um they become risk averse uh and it's a sh they surround themselves with people who are their blockers who um are are you know there to say no all the time and you become so uh entrenched um that you stop uh you stop

taking risks that got you to That point you know um I want to take us back to a moment when we all saw spaceship one for the first time um and so uh bur in the Mojave Desert uh and we're uh you know we're invited for the veiling and I would have loved to have been on the inside a little bit more but we weren't um and appropriately so we running this competition uh but uh we all go there together um what was your what was your what do you guys think when you first saw

spaceship one to me It was unlike anything I imagined and and uh so different that normal ways of traveling to space and it felt like a little you know mini plane and and uh and I was like it looked beautiful it looked beautiful high degree of beauty and I exactly and and the fact that actually it was on a plane and taking the first part of the flight on a plane and then just uh you know firing the Rockets later on at I think 60 miles um 60 60,000 6 60,000 ft um uh it sort

of Made it less risky I don't know it doesn't necessarily make it less risky and then he also talked about the landing and the special so feather feature and and all of that was really unique and fascinating and beautiful what do you think well you know I I had one of the same responses you had anha it's little I mean I knew it was going to be little but I've flown stuff Lots bigger than that and it's like well that's Tiny what actually I remember the most about it was you know poor Bert had lost

his voice remember that he could barely speak and he was up at the lecture and and talking about it and he said something really interesting we what nobody knew was that Bert had just faxed his master team agreement to us like less than 24 hours before that roll out so Bert you know he was a signed agreement that he was going to compete actually Compete in the competition yeah so that was a big deal and I think that was on his mind because he one of the things he got up and said was something that

Justified the work that we had done in setting up the prize cuz most people you know now we now we kind of know how to do it but we spent a year on the rules for the Ansari X prize before we did the announcement Pro probably more than a year really and um yeah 94 95 yeah for sure yeah part of 96 So Bert said quite publicly that the genius of xprize was was in the rules and he was right he said the rules are as valid today as they've always been um which was a

big compliment you know it wasn't it it I mean ber was as you sayha you know you talked about your your relationship with him I had a similarly stormy relationship um goes back way before xprize because he knew that uh I a good a dear friend of his invited me To to meet him and and uh I think uh he would have thrown me out if I wasn't with his pal but I I had two strikes against me I was there on some NASA business and and brt goldworthy uh introduced me to him as this

is my friend Greg he's he's here working on a project for NASA and he's a former trial lawyer so yeah ber did not Bert loved needling people he oh you could not have a straight conversation with him he would Needle you and just abuse you and insult you just to have fun just to see what he could do he would poke poke the system yeah he did so so so get heav BT say anything good about us as an organization and as as people was was was nice and actually he he paid me a compliment

when he introduced me to Doug Shane it was his successor eventually it scaled and and we'll tell a Doug Shane's story later um he he said that I was the toughest son of a that he ever had To negotiate a contract with and that made me feel quite good actually Eric you're an artist do you remember seeing the the spaceship one what was your thoughts about it oh man you know I think what struck me most was that these guys are having fun and um the pressure and intensity all aside they're having fun and this

this you know scaled composits and Bert rutan's genius was was to take this new material the the the composite uh materials and start to Re redo rethink how we build airplanes so if you look at any one of his airplanes they're all crazy they have wings on the nose they have you know they're upside down this one if you look at it upside down looks like an alien and and and he was having fun with it um and so the you know sort of the red white and blue and the stars and the crazy portol

more portol yeah more portoles damn it it it it was super exciting from an artist standpoint and From from a breakthrough cut from this stodgy old stuck industry that was you know big business and governments and only this way and it struck me that we were rewriting the rules and while exerprise was rewriting the rules we were kind of running around like kids and these people were doing business as old school and and Routan was kind of a part of that but he was an earlier breakthrough yeah and and so we were just pushing all

the limits I just Thought it was amazing so the day is June 21st of 2004 uh it is uh 6 months till this competition is over because there's no re extending the competition right we had bought the ho in one insurance policy it was over on December 31st of 2004 if no one did it by then and Bert knows that there's pressure on and we get invited out for what we have since called the xzero flight this is a flight that Mike Melville his most seasoned Pilot is flying um and it's a it's the first

time uh that the vehicle spaceship one is flying with a full tank of nitrous oxide its power source uh Is nitrous oxide and polyad of rubber um and it's called a hybrid rocket engine um for those who haven't heard of it and uh and it's going to fly to uh trying to achieve 100 kilometers altitude um Greg do you want to tell the story of what what happened on this xzero flight do you remember Or well um I'll I'll tell one of the stories so please um Mike who's an excellent pilot and a dear friend

of of um of berts um was given a box of airspace by the FAA to stay Within and in the short stories he didn't he there is a there is an illusion of of um that happens during acceleration and basically Mike over pulled and instead of being over Mojave he winds up over Lancaster California Which is far way Out of the box completely safe because he's high enough that he can glide back down they make it to space with only a few hundred feet of altitude so this causes a real interesting situation which is that

he's not sure he can win The X prize with that vehicle and to rec to recount the point here Greg which is important is he to win the X prize you have to fly with the weight equivalent of two people in the back seat and he was flying without that and You're right he cleared uh 100 kilomet let's not mix metrics here right uh 62.5 whatever 62.5 miles he clears by a few hundred ft or to say it differently he clears 100 kilm uh by a few hundred meters yeah um and it's like holy can

we can we do this we don't have enough oomph to get there and he starts thinking about maybe I should strap some Sidewinder missile Motors to this thing and asks us whether or not uh that's going to fit our rules and Our rule said you had to use commercially available Tech so are Sidewinder missile parts available commercially pretty much not we had some interesting discussions a more fun story was uh Peter and I are at ashkash and we want to show the funny John Stewart bit where he goes Port holes damn it we need more

portoles that we're all laughing about and his wife says oh Bert don't don't don't do that that makes fun of you because it makes Fun of his his sideburns and he said oh no they have to do it he's a ham so uh we got permiss what was more interesting is get a call from our from the insurance company that is uh is giving us the whole One Insurance and they say we'd like to meet with you and I flew to Santa Barbara or I drove to Santa Barbara where they're located and I'm thinking that

they are wanting to maybe get involved as a sponsor they see it's going to be one And I'm there to say listen um why don't you put your logos on the side pay us a few hundred th000 and we'll we'll promote you and they said well actually uh we noticed that on this flight on June 21st the vehicle is barely made it without the you know uh two probably 400 lb in the back and uh you're unlikely your your leading horse is unlikely to win and so we want to make you a deal if you

cut back the payout from 10 million to 5 million we'll reduce the altitude Requirement from 100 km to 80 km and I'm like uh no freaking way and I just storm out of there and I say you guys are going to be writing a check um and I and and and left um yeah although although Jim Clark from that company who whose office you were in did us a big solid at X1 uh when uh Paul Allen people went diverging on us so let's move forward so it makes the flight Bert is and his team

are trying to figure out how do we possibly get More oomph to use the technical term and they do they they find out that they can actually pack more nitrous oxide into the uh into the oxidizing tank and um we're there now interestingly enough Bert gives us official notice um that he is going to make his first flight attempt on September 29th of 2004 uh in the Mojave Desert and um uh we're like you know we the one of the things that's so important about this competition is it's not just about building a rocket it

Was about changing the global perception that spaceflight was possible for everybody that was the most important thing it wasn't the specific rocket that got people there it was changing the global mindset it was saying that space flight was now available to everybody and that we were on the verge of making Humanity multiplanetary species that was our mission that's what we're there to do and so on September 29th of 2004 on our X1 we called it the first official Flight to try and win this $10 million then now we're calling it The Ansari ex prise um

and uh our logo uh or our phrase was go you know just like the word go that was all about like go go forth go to space go to the go to the frontier um and and we wanted to make this a big event and so we invited uh the world to that first flight and we had you know tens of thousands of people uh uh in campers and lining up the Mojave Desert We had Stu wit who was helping us organize that we had William Shatner there uh Captain Kirk was there how fun was

that to have have William Shatner there that was amazing I I remember we were all staying at this uh really nice little motel Old there no hotels in Mojave Mojave and it's 4:00 a.m. we are all you know we had very little sleep that night before I did not sleep at all I was so excited at the same time I was so scared it's like oh my God if Something happens to anyone so I prayed entire night that everyone will be safe I wasn't praying that someone win I just wanted everyone to be safe but

um I remember waking up coming down the stairs to the lobby and I see the first thing I see is William Shatner Captain Kirk with a hat that says I'm sorry exerprise I'm like in my entire life never ever imagine Captain Kirk with my name on a hat like oh my God my day was made oh my God that was awesome awesome Um and uh and Stu wit was our partner at Mojave organizing all this and you know so the question was who's going to be our pilot uh and Mike Melville who did the Reginal

flight on June 21st um was again nominated the the pilot on this flight and so Mike Melville was doing that flight and what most people don't know is Mojave is one of the windiest places on the planet and if you fly there and I just took Greg I took my 13-year-old boys uh they took pilot Lessons and all three of us and three planes flew to Mojave uh on Runway 31 where spaceship one took off and landed but all around you are all these windmills and like hundreds if not thousands of windmills cuz it's super

windy but why would you put a test Flight Facility in the middle of this windy desert and it's cuz at dawn the wind stops at dawn it's perfect flight conditions so anua you're right we're up at 4:00 a.m. uh to go out for a a Sunrise launch I I remember driving down with the bus to to the test flight site and I didn't expect a big crowd to be honest with you I'm like no not many people will show up and because it was just in the middle of nowhere um and not you know we

had a very small marketing budget so it wasn't like it was blasted all over the news and I see going there this line of you know just headlights you know going toward the in the dark And I'm like oh my god look all these people so many people excited about this because it was a pivotal moment for anyone who had any interest in uh you know commercial space program it was a religious experience for the space it was it was because we've been promised since the beginning of space program that eventually we will all go

to space this will be for everyone and nothing was done for almost 50 years and and this was the first time an attempt was Made to really change that Paradigm to really open up space and and create an opportunity eventually for everyone to fly so I think anyone who was like a Star Trek fan or someone who was from the Apollo a or anyone who ever imagined of going to space what was not a the right stuff that was not part of any um you know government Space Program they saw this as an opportunity and

and it was apparent and it created so much exciting and it made me very proud at That moment I like oh my God Pride was Pride was a Primary Emotion Dan Pila had set up this incredible production facility uh in the desert we were transmitting uh TVs Greg correct me if I'm wrong we were using um uh Edwards Air Force Base uh and their radar and their uh their Imaging system to help us determine whether we hit a to help us whether they were part essential part of the judging for both of the flights and

they they did a optical tracking with a Big telescope and they had radar tracking and anua to to your point you know I love I love hearing the emotion in your voice about this because one of the people that was there uh for both of the flights both of our Express flights was the original pilot of the X15 Scott Crossfield and when I was a kid before the Mercury astronauts had been named he was the person that everybody kind of thought of as as America's first person to to knock on the door of Space and

and in fact I I after the second flight I saw him while I was running back from hanging the metal on Brian Benny's neck back to the announcer stand and I I stopped in my tracks and he was standing next to the FAA administrator Marian Blakey who would cut the gordian knot so that we could make these flights that there are really two women that made this the besides you anosha in addition to you that made this possible and they are Mary and Blakey And and Patty graay Smith um both of whom were there and

anyway I stopped and I saw Crossfield and I I took his hand and I shook it and I said oh I'm so pleased that you that you came back to see the second Xpress flight he said are you kidding nothing's happened for 50 years I had to be here it's just what you just said anua it was really touching and Eric and I had gotten to know Crossfield after his after Eric's flight And great guy so to to have you know we had we had the royalty of of test flight there for our thing and

and uh we learned later Neil Armstrong was watching it because he was on the board of space.com and our pal Dave Brody set it up so that that he could watch it so that cuz he made him stop the board meeting of space.com to watch the flight it was great there was some drama going in the background yeah I'm going to give You that uh now so it is it is uh uh again September 29th X1 the first spaceship uh spa space one flight they um uh uh we had Mike Melville at the controls and

uh he takes off beautiful takeoff ignites the engines and as he is beginning to climb to altitude all of a sudden we start to see spaceship one begin to roll and it's rolling and it's accelerating and it's accelerating and it's rolling and going up and up and up um and at this point it's there's a hush On the clowd right because the worst thing for the entire space flight industry would be that that they would fail and have a death that would shut down like yes okay space flight's only for governments you private guys can't

do it properly um and of course uh he survives that and when he gets out of the atmosphere he's able to use his reaction control system to nullify the flights but it was only because Mike Melville was so experienced and had the Right stuff that he stuck with it you know I remember um Pete seabold was supposed to fly that flight he was the third astronaut there were there were three Pilots Mike Brian Binny and and Pete and and Pete pulled himself out of the running but in an interview later Pete cull said that yeah

he would have definitely just cut the engine as soon as it started spinning and it was only because they didn't cut the engine and they had data for those 29 rolls all the Way to space that they were able to figure out what went wrong and how to very simply fix it for the next flight you add any commentary there Greg or Eric Peter I think I was standing next to Ania and we were watching the Jumbotron screen which was kind of blurry cuz the camera was obviously so far away but we're seeing this rocket

trajectory and and it looked to me I mean the crowd went quiet it looked to everybody like the spaceship was coming Apart it was out of control because it was grainy enough and and I remember Ana's hand was on my arm squeezing it like oh my God and everybody got quiet and the whole place place was just hushed it was so stunning and we thought this everything leading to now has changed it was like Steve Austin the $6 Million Man kind of greeny and the oh and it turned out it was great 29 Victory rols

or whatever he said so so uh Mike Mike wasn't supposed To fly that second flight um originally um uh but when Pete pulled out bird asked his pal if he would do it and he said the only thing a person in his situation could say he said I'll ask Sally Sally's his wife yeah because they knew this is death defying stuff and Sally's a pilot too and then talked it over and he agreed to do it so now Mike goes through this death defying thing and the reason he started spinning was he flew a Perfect

straight up trajectory because he didn't want to be out of the box like he was on the last one and he flew it so perfectly that it was like balancing on a pin it was able to he caught a a control surface in the last bits of atmosphere and he ran out of he ran out of molecules of air to to to so he couldn't null it out until he got into a vacuum but when he came back in he um and he got the the feather back and locked down now now the vehicle now

It's just a glider and Mike's a really good pilot so he knows he's going to be home safe and sound and Paul Allen's beautiful Alpha jet trainer that they were using for high chase pulls up alongside the uh the gliding spaceship one and there's a guy in the back seat and he's one of Paul Allen's guys uh who who shall remain nameless but his initials are Jeff Johnson who gave me a very bad time earlier that morning maybe we'll talk about that later but um Jeff On an open microphone uh said uh is watching uh

Mike and Mike decides he he's flown his two space missions he's done everything's cool he's so elated that he does a victory role he literally does a victory role now um that would have been cool except that Jeff Johnson says holy smokes and he didn't say smokes Jeff just rolled it now what uh what he didn't know was that his words are Booming inside of the hanger of uh scale composits where Doug sh is acting as the flight director and their loudspeakers and standing behind Doug Shane are are the top 15 people from the FAA

office of commercial space transportation and their boss Mary and Blakey so any of these people have the power to pull Mike Melville's pilot's license forever for for doing that which was which was not was not approved Advanced but Doug Shane without without A a any perceptible time between him saying Mike's just rolled it dub chain clicks his microphone as flight director and says uh copy roll inspection program complete beautiful which is why I love Doug TR so so Mike Mike lands successfully and uh X1 is complete uh and checked the Box um uh and we

then find out from B that he's going to fly he has two weeks to successfully conduct a second flight To win this competition and were there you know taking measurements and weights and making sure he's abiding by the rules when I say we I mean Greg and his team um and re suros chief of our judging team is Rick was a who was a space shuttle astronaut extraordinaire um and uh uh and great and we hear from Bert that he's going to do his second flight uh not two weeks later uh but basic basally uh

6 days later on October 4th uh 2004 why because it's the Anniversary of Sputnik and uh and Bert loves sticking it to uh uh historians and and our our Soviet uh e Soviet historians and so he's going to do Humanity's first private space flight xprize winning flight uh on the anniversary of October 4th I me ask you Qui a question um you know it we're we are dealing with death defying Feats um and you know if someone died in that program it would have been on our heads for uh creating the program and Funding the

program um did you think about that at all did you think about the potential that we were initiating something that would potentially cause people to lose their lives I I did as as as someone who you know was worried about it frankly and uh Peter you talk about people who reach certain you know level of Fame they're afraid of failure to me failure would would be not winning but something that from a reputation from just personal guilt would not Be uh good for me was that if uh something that I supported and and sponsored really

caused uh a human life but at the same time and I had said this to in many of my interviews before that well people asked me if I would go to space and I always said I would go on a one-way ticket to space I believed in it so much that I was ready to you know give my life to actually go to space so I understood the motivation of everyone who was involved on xise side and on the Um you know entrepreneurs and innovators who are building the spaceship so it was it was a

big burden uh but it was not loss on me and you did go to space on a Russian saw not a few handful of years later and but you came back so that was the good new I came back yes thank God Greg how about you and Eric I mean Eric you risked your your life uh uh on your transatlantic flight on his 75th Anniversary um did you feel like your life was at risk at that time um yes Uh although I think you know it's one thing to have personal risk and for me I

was risking my own life and Greg was worried because he was associated with me right he was being Mission Control you know the the he was running the whole thing behind the scenes and mission control of the science center and so forth so I felt like it was the right thing to do for me to risk my life but also to take all the risk out of it like grandfather Did and and that's why we were successful because we we we went at it methodically the xprize dialogue about what if someone dies was I mean

we had a lot of trepidation about that and and in fact I think scaled lost some people in an engine test out in the desert that was later theirs and it affected them for spaceship 2 develop deeply oh that's right that was later but but but but it was a huge question and and I think it it it this is where X prise separates Itself from everything and this is that we we constantly look at how to create the most leverage and create the right uh conditions for people to risk their development their money Etc

and leverage that because companies get protective people get prot protective governments get protective and they can't take those risks anymore that's why they have locked Skunk Works and Phantom works and so forth and and X prise has stepped into an entire Niche here and that's What we were talking about then as this risk factor we've Now sort of taken a whole two whole Industries the Aerospace industry and the incentive prize industry to a new level to help break through those grand challenges you mentioned early on in the podcast and Eric that's a just to build

on what you said it's a very important point because yes we haven't launched an an ex prise that puts human life at risk but what we've seen is the teams who compete in Ex prises they put a lot at risk they mortgaged their home they put their uh you know family at at some risk they they put their careers at risk they bet everything because they believe in what they're building and I think at the heart of the Ansari ex prise and at the heart of every competition and any successful entrepreneur this is this belief

and passion about what they're doing so yes the prize is enough incentive to get them interested and Attract them to the competition but uh it's not the only thing they're not doing it for the money they're doing it because they believe in what they're building and uh and believe in the purpose of the competition not just the yeah the the risk communication around xprize was actually one of the most important things um the reason in in terms of in terms of the Lasting impact of it uh it looked to people that were outside of us

that that the FAA and and related agencies uh made a huge change in a very short period of time when they came up with the the present space law that exists which was just a few months after we gave away the $10 million the reality was that that those people were with us from the beginning they were standing there on the stage with us in in 1996 they were working with our teams uh the US teams anyway um and around 2000 about the time that we had our our our nater we were really in in

in Jeopardy of going out of business there was a um a meeting in Washington DC put out by the KO Institute about about um the future of commercial space flight and we talked about at that meeting uh and I noticed the seat change that happened after this discussion we we had a discussion a presentation about What we were doing and we showed a comparison with risks that people are willing to take so for example I'll just make up the number because I don't remember the real number every year something like 32 people in America die

by skiing into trees uh we have not seen fit to Outlaw either skiing or trees you know PE people figure it's worth something worth doing when you look at the stuff that When you look at the real risks that Society takes what you find out is that the there's a about people being risk averse companies may be risk averse organizations may be risk averse but people actually take a lot of risk and actually company good good companies take a lot of risk too but they mitigate the risk Eric's flight was all about and Charles's flight

were all about risk mitigation in fact the reason ly Charles Lindberg won the ortique prize was he Had a superior knowledge of what the real risks were on Long flights everybody thought multiple engines big heavy planes were safer but he realized they were not the purpose of that second engine was to get you from where the first engine failed to the scene of the crash he realized it would be safer to to have a a smaller airplane um and sacrifice everything for fuel yeah and and get margin so so this Area this discussion is actually

where we had some of the biggest impact first of all to get people to try stuff uh second try new things and secondly to you know but but we were this is not to say we were callous about it in fact we I'm looking at The xprize Credo that the Creed that we wrote in 96 do you want to read it for us I do we believe that space flight should be open to all not just an elite Cadre of government employees or the ultra Rich we believe that commercial forces will bring space flight into

a publicly affordable range we will use our best efforts to achieve this goal we believe that the resources of space are the key to enhancing the wealth of all Nations and people while preserving and repairing the environment of our home planet we believe this is our duty to our species and our fellow passengers on spaceship earth we believe that the risks involved In human space flight are far outweighed by the benefits to the participant and to humanity we will use our utmost efforts to Foster safety for participants observers and the public in all xprize activities

and uh we talk about our own standards of conduct I'll skip over it just because it's it's not it's not unusual we finished by saying we believe that a small group of people with Passion for a cause can achieve that which has never been attained this is why we stayed competitions that challenge issues that matter most so right in our DNA we have risk we have the benefits to everybody by Opening space and and you know what our mission was and and it it actually still fits our you know we're seeing it through the lens

of our original goals but it it fits and and I had forgotten that we Talked about stage competitions plural in the first one glad that we did we had the siege there real quick I've been getting the most unusual compliments lately on my skin truth is I use a lotion every morning and every night religiously called one skin it was developed by four PhD women who determined a 10 amino acid sequence that is a cytic that kills scile cells in your skin and this literally reverses the age of your skin and I think it's One

of the most incredible products I use it all the time uh if you're interested check out the show notes I've asked my team to link to it below all right let's get back to the episode so a few days later we hear from Bert October 4th is the date um and uh we are back in the Mojave Desert um getting in at 4:00 in the morning uh the crowds uh even though we were not ready to Stage another party in the desert the Crowds Are there back again uh and this time uh Brian bin is

the pilot in control uh Brian had done a hard landing on spaceship one uh some uh year December 13 the the first powered flight which by the way was the first privately developed supersonic flight ever yeah we showed this uh these are these are images from uh from the X1 flight date yeah we had uh M&M's as a sponsor we had SD's Rockets being built forgotten about those and it was quite a Extraordinary uh event there's there's Greg at uh uh at Mission Control um and that turned out to be one of the biggest webcasts

in history um thanks to Jack Bader who arranged all the arranged all of that um yeah so so Brian takes off um uh earlier that morning he tells a great story by the way there's an amazing book called how to make a spaceship uh Julian Guthry Road who New York Times bestseller that tells in detail uh the Story around all of this um my story Eric Lindberg and and Greg anua Bert Routan Brian Binny and uh that morning uh Brian is getting ready to take his flight and his mother-in-law steps up with a 7-Eleven Giant

gulpy in her hand to give him a hug and as she's approaching Brian and he's thinking to himself what is she going to do with that giant you know gulpy in her hand actually it was it was not a gulpy it was a it was a vanilla coffee a giant One of those styrofoam giant vanilla coffees and she reaches over to give him a big hug and of course uh the coffee goes down his back and uh and and uh he's having to fly with uh you know with like 24 ounces of vanilla flavored coffee

down his back and that vanilla smell you can imagine in the cockpit and he calculates that uh that additional you know uh half a pound of of liquid cost him like hundreds of of hundreds of feet of altitude on apigy although he Set an altitude record on that flight he did he did he sent he you know uh Bert ran in the cockpit just before they close it up says you know with their they were both golfing buddies you know it's like straight and narrow down the uh down the Fairway and he went after the

X5 altitude record uh which had never been broken and he flyed a perfect flight he was our Charles Lindberg um hid a new altitude came back beautiful Landing um uh we're sorry we lost Brian Binny just uh uh 18 months ago or so it was a it was a a tragic loss to the community we also lost Dick Rutan uh within this past year uh but it was uh this magical moment right here we are uh uh 8 years after announcing under the arch uh 10 11 years Greg after you gave me the Spirit of

St Louis book and this incredibly crazy journey of a thousand deaths and a thousand picking ourselves off the floor and trying to convince every single person out there that this Was doable possible they should back it changing the laws and regulations um you know and and it was done and it had been achieved I know in that moment uh I had this incredible emotional experience and I saw myself at the top of of this mountain peak like it was the journey we had achieved the goal of reaching this Pinnacle and then as I looked around

all I saw were bigger mountain Peaks um that was a it was a like wow it were're here um I want to ask each of you what was it like for you seeing seeing this Greg I want to start with you cuz you had been on this journey with me longer than anybody you gave up you know a lot of security and a lot of um you you know relocated your family you you took huge risks uh to be on this journey um what did you feel in in that in that moment you know what

I remember Peter was Um I was listening to Bob boy was was talking to me through a tiny little earpiece and he was getting the the altitude feeds from Edwards Air Force Base and I was the color commentator announcer for things so I'm talking to the crowd and I remember I remember that uh as Brian was going up and was in the coast phase I said Brian Benny's knocking on door and I heard some people start singing knock knock knocking on heaven's Door and then I got the call the apy call actually I got the

call that you know they surpassed our our um 100 km 100 kilm and I as I announced that to the crowd you were standing next to your dad I remember I've known for you know for many years and you guys gave each other a hug and and it was a it was a it made you realize that you know all of us uh had had basically bet everything BET our reputation yeah uh And and it was beginning to sink in that it really had happened um that was a beautiful moment and and other Beautiful Moments

happened there after but but you know I I still remember that actual second where where that altitude call came in and uh I felt it it was a great feeling to have been part of something as a team that we live forever I felt the real sense of community yeah I know it was it was Great I'm proud to have worked with all of you on it yeah buddy it was um it was harrowing and and and uh had we stopped at any point it would not have happened right it only happened because we refused

to give up um coming back to that human spirit that passion that purpose that that much and and and people listening need to understand this was not about a suborbital flight this was about Opening uh the cosmos for Humanity this was about uh about the first lungfish moving out of the oceans onto land this was about lighting the fuse and saying we can this was about dreaming big and I think in this nation in this world today uh what we need is people to dream big uh to get out of their complacency and their complaining

and start saying you know instead of complaining we can fix things we can reinvent things we can do extraordinary Things that's what humans do Eric about you did you just call me a lungfish I I I'm I'm resembling that remark right now because I I just I can't escape the parallel of my life as Greg had some emotions come up uh my life changed dramatically as a result of one meeting you guys and I mean all of you I mean the whole ecosystem that continues to grow as X prise it's the most powerful force in

my life and and and the feeling that we Were a part of a small team of people that it obviously grew bigger the weird thing about those launch events and the flights was that there were a lot more people there all taking part in the celebrations and the rocket flights but it was a small team of people that changed the way the world thought about space flight and opened up um not only this uh private space space flight industry where musk Bezos and Branson are trying to sell us tickets to fly our Stuff into space

or our bodies into space but the incentive prize industry this you know the X prize we we we went from a bunch of Rocket Geeks and I'm not even rocket scientist you guys actually are but but as an aviation guy I just got sucked in and and it it it I grew with xpres I I had my low and I grew my life it it empowered me in a way that has allowed me to look at Aviation as oh what are the problems are we facing and how do we fix them and how can I

apply Myself in a in a different way and that's what the ex prise did and that's why it grew into this incredible industry where we have approaching $600 million in prizes to solve the grand CH challenges facing Humanity that's freaking EXT ordinary and to have you know empowered us all of us to go out and apply our passions and our industry and and and apply those Lessons Learned to try to break through the problems that We're facing it it gave me hope being there on that launch day and seeing Benny and all those launch days

and and and then the meetings afterwards should we focus on Space uh yes a good business focuses on and we have our space focus and I remember trying to argue a lot well we should do some closed loop living systems and Earth B you know coming back to my environmental roots and everyone's like no we need to focus on space and then I remember Larry Paige Was at that meeting as a guest and he said towards the end he was quiet most of the time he said strikes me that you guys have figured out a

real good way to solve big problems using a small amount of money and of course then we we broadened out from our space Focus to lots of other things and that that that's to me what the whole xprize journey it is a hero's journey because it was really tough but it's empowered all of us to do a lot more in that hope That we never stopped yeah Rippling out it it's extraordinary and and I just have to thank each of you for your ability to persevere we all had big lows and we exited at different

times to take a break or try to survive and and we all came back together and that that that story is the most epic of stories it we never stopped dreaming and we're having this conversation now and there are 600 Million dollar worth of prizes out there because in this universe we didn't stop dreaming had we stopped had any of us not continued on we would not be here and I think I want to have people inter internalize that lesson that if you care about something enough uh and it is your massive transformative purpose um

despite how difficult it is despite being knocked down over and over and over again if you truly believe in your heart of hearts this is the definition Of human Spirit um you only fail by giving up anua um drawing the the dotted line between a young girl in t staring up at the stars um and that moment in time uh what was going through your mind so um it was very emotional moment for me as well because um I could feel that we have just made history we had changed the course of space flight and

Humanity forever there was no dying it and and you know I the emotions and all the Activities s ort of uh was just a distraction at that moment I wanted to sit down and just understand what was happening and I remember shortly after we had a quick meeting behind the scenes with me and Blakey and um and paty graay Smith talking about regulation because I remember that was a whole other Journey behind the scene that was happening and we didn't even know if we're going to have permission from FAA to allow the teams to fly

and we were trying to you Know change the mindset at FAA and Regulators that this was important I remember numerous meetings with NASA administrators and others um and all this sort of push back that you guys are crazy you don't know what you're doing you're going to get people killed this is not a good idea and and trying to say commercial space is not here to replace NASA but commercial space is here to work handin hand with NASA and to push boundaries and bring activities That will never happen inside a government and that policy change

and the group that ended up giving us the launch licenses became the reason today we have a vibrant growing healthy commercial space uh community and uh I remember a few years ago I saw this ad for Goldman Sachs space investment conference and I'm like the day has come Goldman Sachs is having a space investment conference oh my God it was not that way 20 30 years ago it was not It was like nobody was putting a penny unless they were Renegades and we were all a bunch of Renegades it was only government it was purely

Government Contracting it was it um you know it's it's worth saying a couple of uh of pickup items here you know uh we met I met Elon Musk in uh in 200 uh 2001 uh just after the bust um he came over with uh with Deo ressi the two had been uh College roommates and and uh Deo got Involved on our board at xprize Elon went and joined the mar Society for a little bit but then came back and joined the new Spirit of St Louis um which was which was amazing uh and uh uh

you know he was there on all these flights and uh you know I think uh you Peter Elon Elon joined when he heard your pitch for the new spirit organization at the Explorers Club when we were getting Eric the party for Eric before he crossed the Atlantic and I was sitting with Elon and his Mother may musk and he leaned over to her right in front of me I mean so he wasn't doing this quietly and remember he's a roughly a billionaire at this point and he says mom okay with you if I join this

club it'd be like me asking if I could buy a Snickers bar right for my m it was just charming and uh oh and and he's gotten on since to be an extraordinary supporter for the foundation uh backing our Global Learning X prize and $100 million uh you know Carbon extraction uh sequestration prize and I mean Greg I mean listen it's kind of like pinching ourselves to say after our we would go to IHOP and celebrate on a $25,000 that we now have three hundred million or greater X prizes so my takeaway is that that

we we're log do for going to IHOP together you know what my I I know you're showing this to the To your community Peter and and what a what a what an amazing thing to to be able to say that that if you follow the lesson of radical persistence in pursuit of passion that you get to be in this place of profound gratitude which is how I feel toward you guys yes all of that is the overwhelming feeling of Pride and gratitude that comes from from all of this it it is truly the same for

me and and uh Eric said that X prise changed his life I Cannot even tell the story of my life it becomes a story of EX prise and uh for me Peter you know coming from a country without Space Program through all the hardship and difficulties coming to a new country without without money without hope without um you know anything to hang on and then being able to become part of a story that's so important um in my life and and uh has shaped everything I do I joined the board immediately after we became Sponsors

and and just being part of the community that Eric described and the sense of hopefulness positivity anything is possible has been ingrained in me in everything I do and and I uh owe that to ex prise and the board and everyone who surrounded me during that time and continues to surround me and eventually you know sort of made my dream of going to space possible and 11 days at the space station 11 days in space 10 days in the station thereabouts yeah yes it Was I want to say thank you Ana for coming back as

our CEO you know um it's been amazing to have you as a extraordinary CEO and leader uh take X prize forward uh you know and I'll just say you know we did have that first meeting Eric that you recalled with with uh with Larry Page um I was we were able to recruit Larry Page on our board and Elon Musk and James Cameron and go from here into prizes of cleaning up oil spills mapping the ocean floor pulling Water out of the atmosphere pulling carbon out of the atmosphere uh reversing age Rel ated uh degradation

of our health by 10 20 years um it's been a crazy ass journey and it's been one I think of coming back to the human Spirit humans are amazing there is nothing we cannot do when we are committed and we persevere within the laws of physics I I'll I'll put that peris at least laws of physics as I'm currently understood um guys I I just want to say Uh thank you for recalling this journey um anybody listening uh you know we're here having this conversation because the four of us didn't give up um and if

you care about something deeply enough and it's your purpose in life um you only fail by giving up yourself um this is a story of uh of a thousand Nos and uh and an extraordinary band of of Renegades uh all the teams all the backers all the sponsors all the people who worked and still work the x prise Foundation um anyway uh thank you guys uh for this past 30 years uh cannot wait for the next 30 years it's going to be awesome thank you Peter for um you know giving us an opportunity to partner

up with you and uh be part of this incredible journey and I'm grateful so I have the best job in the world to be able to continue building this engine of innovation that will truly when I look out there is the only place the only group who's really Driving massive change toward solving these big problems we face today and it's a source of Hope For Humanity so uh it's such a privilege to to be able to be at the helm these days and and continue to drive it forward thank you Eric the 100th anniversary of

your grandfather's flight is coming up in 19 in 2027 um uh any special thoughts for the 100th anniversary oh man well we just moved the Lindberg Foundation to St Louis because it has a real Spirit there and um we're building education programs and and working on sustainability for Aviation one of the hardest Industries to decarbonize um so super excited about that want to invite you guys along Ong the journey I think I don't have an airplane that I'm flying across the Atlantic I kind of told myself I didn't need to do that again but you

know if scaled came up with a cool design maybe uh it has to be electric though or hyp Elric yes for sure so you know you guys infected me with your crazy um entrepreneurial space dreaming and I in turn am infecting other people people it it really is the the gift of Hope as Anusha mentioned that that inspiration of and the spirit that's alive and the and the greatest gift are these people you my family but the Ripples and all the people that end up in the orbit of X prise are the most extraordinary people

on the planet and no question thank you Pal Greg um thank you for that gift of a book thank you for your friendship now uh four decades uh thank you for giving up so much and for persevering and and being Mission Control throughout this uh Incredible Journey we've we've covered to quote those philosophers The Grateful Dead what a long strange wonderful trip it's been Thanks to each of you H and adios for now all right take care everybody I hope you guys enjoyed This special episode of moonshots uh truly a chance to dream big uh

I encourage all of you to take uh uh the limiter off you to dream as big as you can to find that purpose in your life to remember the human Spirit enables us to do extraordinary things and that today we're living during the most extraordinary and most exciting time ever powered by exponential Technologies powered by the ability to to dream Beyond even the concepts that have held Us back in the past there is nothing we cannot do nothing that the committed and passionate human mind cannot do thank you all uh if you want more information

about the X prise please go to x pri.org um and join us in going after solving Humanity's biggest challenges form a team become a supporter become a member just follow what we do uh Eric where can people find you on social media and on Lindberg galleries yeah LinkedIn Lindberg gallery.com is my sort of my What I do for uh my health make furniture and sculptures and L of your Lindberg art forms they they're beautiful um I got excited about rocket ships in the day and um you know that stuff just keeps that practice keeps me

from blasting off into space and keeps me grounded here on Earth which is important to have that balance in life okay all right I want to blast off into space so I'm jealous anua that you had a chance to go and I did not yet um but I Working on it I'm working on it we have to go together we doise Mission I love that Ana where do people get a chance to follow you well I'm on um social media on X and Instagram uh at anusa Ansari or anusa X on Instagram and also x

prise foundation of course uh I everything I do today is X prise so all of our activity we're excited to have seven active prizes and a lot more to come so definitely sign up so you learn about our future prizes and Join us in our community in any way you can contribute and be part of this amazing journey with us onwards to the Future and as the slogan for the unari X prize back in 2004 go [Music]