I Don’t Need These Russians 122
sians,” Elon said.
The problem wasn’t that mankind didn’t want to go
to space – the real problem was that it was too expensive.
And without an existing threat, we didn’t want to spend the
money. “I came to the conclusion that my initial impression
was wrong about not enough will to explore and expand
beyond Earth and have a Mars base,” Elon said. “That was
wrong. There’s plenty of will, particularly in the United
States. Because United States is the nation of explorers,
people came here from other parts of the world. The United
States is a distillation of the spirit of human exploration.
If people think it’s impossible and it’s going to break the
budget, they’re not going to do it.”63,278
Elon wasn’t the first to understand that the major
problem with space was the costs involved. To attack this
problem by finding cheaper solutions, the X Prize Founda-
tion established numerous competitions.
Google Lunar X Prize is one of these competitions,
but the most well-known was the Ansari X Prize. If you
were a non-government organization and could launch a
reusable manned spacecraft into space twice within two
weeks, you would get a $10 million reward. The name
Ansari originates from Amir Ansari and Anousheh Ansari
who donated a larger sum to the competition. Other donors
included Elon himself. Anousheh became the first self-
funded woman to visit the International Space Station as
a “spaceflight participant” – not a “space tourist” as she
explained. SpaceShipOne won the price in 2004.