badminton birdie

an early-model telephone... you might recognize it from old movies or television. not everyone had one, but if you did,

you didn't own it, the government did, meaning you "rented" it from the telephone company,

which was "government-regulated." so, not so surprisingly, when it came to rates and services, one size fit all... very democratic, and as for any extras or options? dial zero. operator, number please? oh, sorry.

at one time this streamlined beauty was considered nothing short of a miracle. so much so that except for a few cosmetic changes, it remained the same for decades... generations! imagine having the same phone

that's in your pocket or purse 50 years from now. you can't. so why was it caught in such a time warp? simple. there wasn't any competition. it wasn't until the government stepped aside and allowed private businesses to compete

for the telephone dollar that this weighty invention emerged - in a comparatively short amount of time... into this. even this. that's the power of competition. tv's another example. when i was a kid there

were 3 channels. like the phone, television was government regulated. flash forward to today. subtract a few regulations, add a cable and a whole lot people who will entertain you if you let them sell you stuff and you've got what?

again, the power of competition. in case you're wondering, i am here to talk about space - the next era of space flight to be exact, so why all the telephone and tv business? because in just the same way, the more the space industry

can escape government confines and open up to commercial competition, the more likely it is that in your lifetime "manned space flight" could include you, and not necessarily just as a scientist or astronaut,

but as a private citizen, out to celebrate a special birthday or looking for an adventurous weekend getaway. i don't guarantee it'll be as far-reaching or effortless as in the imaginary world where i work... "this is captain archer

of the starship enterprise. please respond." it's not your grandfather's space anymore. the final frontier is getting new pioneers! what makes this next era of space activity so different is that it's

being run by entrepreneurs and private companies rather than governments. this competition is establishing space as a new, highly profitable marketplace. actually, space exploration began in the 1950's under highly competitive circumstances.

unfortunately, it was a war - the "cold war, "some called it - between the two most powerful nations on earth, the united states and russia. a war of threats and displays of power, one of the most famous occurring in 1957

when america was caught off-guard by sputnik, a basketball-sized, soviet-made satellite that began orbiting the planet, beeping an ominous signal to americans that they were neither the first nor the technological

leaders in space. president eisenhower responded by starting nasa, which retaliated by launching a us satellite called explorer, and the "race for space" was on. by 1961, a few heroic dogs and chimpanzees later, the competing superpowers

began sending men into space; short test flights then longer and longer orbits prompting president kennedy to set the stakes for the competition even higher. "i believe that this nation should commit itself. to achieving the goal,

before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon, and returning him safely to the earth." and in 1969, right on schedule, american neil armstrong landed on the moon and the intense "race for space" was over. curiously... ironically, the same government

that provided the vision and money for the moon mission still couldn't provide its people a more modern telephone, although, by that time- in their defense - they had just added area codes. so what was next for the future of manned space flight?

looking ahead from 1969 it seemed as though it had no limits. looking back, some might say it's been underwhelming. colonel richard searfoss, veteran of 3 space shuttle missions, explains. hi, scott... you know, it was an incredible

privilege for me to pilot two shuttle flights, command a third... at the same time, over the course of that nine years in the astronaut corps, i recognize that just by the very nature of being a government organization,

things sometimes move more slowly, it's more difficult to get things accomplished... it's just the nature of the beast. it's no secret that when the space race ended, the competitive edge went dull and the government reverted to "business as usual,"

never recapturing the space programs' early momentum. how to restore it? maybe the answer is to go back one hundred years to the beginning of the airline industry. it's hard to imagine that "the friendly skies"

started with a dare of sorts; a small contest with a large cash prize. raymond orteig, a french hotel owner so admired the pilots of world war i that in 1919 he offered $25,000- in today's money that's like one million dollars- to the first flyboy who could

make a nonstop flight across the atlantic ocean. at first there were no entrants, no one had the combination of technology, guts, and game until 1927 when american charles lindburgh signed up for the challenge. "new york to paris nonstop," he said.

"if airplanes could do it, there's no limit to the future of aviation," and even speculated that trans-oceanic flights could someday even turn a profit. so he took off, flying alone over the cold, black ocean in a plane so small and cockpit so cramped

that he had to use a mirror to see out the window. there was no way of communicating, so tension was high on both sides of the atlantic until his plane, the spirit of st. louis, touched down in paris, 33 hours later, and the world collectively

cheered the daring feat. a new era of aviation had begun and a new industry born... one that has pumped billions into the economy by making it possible to affordably fly anywhere while eating, sleeping and watching movies.

if a cash prize was critical in the development of the airline industry, perhaps a similar prize could launch a space travel industry. that was the thinking of peter diamandis. like myself and millions of kids in the 1960's, he grew up watching the

gemini and apollo programs and became fascinated with space travel. but by the 1980's and 1990's, he thought we could be doing so much more. inspired by the orteig and lindbergh story, he created the ansari x-prize.

my name is anousheh ansari and i've been fascinated and fixated on space all my life. i was inspired by the vision of dr. peter diamandis. he wanted to revolutionize personal space flight industry and i believed in that mission, so my family and i

decided to join him in this revolution and we became the title sponsors of the ansari x-prize. it offered a $10 million dollar award to the first private team that launched a manned craft with a 3 person capacity 100 kilometers into space, not once but twice within

2 weeks to prove its reliability. there were 26 teams from 7 different nations that competed. as you can see, the designs are unconventional. could one of these teams with no government help or resources actually solve problems of affordable

space flight that the $100 billion spent on the space shuttle had failed to solve? why would anyone expect solutions from them? then again, why not? 9 years ago, i first read about this thing called the x-prize. i read about it in space news

or one of the publications in the industry, and i virtually laughed to myself, "yeah, that'll happen in my lifetime." well, as it ended up, just a few years later, after i left government service i had the opportunity to get connected with the x-prize.

eventually became the chief judge for the x-prize competition. i was out on the desert in mojave, california on october 4th of 2004 with about 10,000 other people. now, these were the faithful; the people that just absolutely love space and

are excited about something moving forward in the private sector and saw the incredible possibilities. as the chief judge for the venture, i was responsible, along with my team, to verify the requirements so that fifty years from now they could look back

at the historical record and see that, yes, this historical event actually did happen. as with all prizes, there can be only one winner and the winner of the ansari x-prize was white knight & spaceshipone. white knight carries

spaceshipone under its belly and flies it to the height of about 50 thousand feet. that's when spaceshipone fires up its rockets which carries it over the limits 62 and a half miles. its re-entry to earth was inspired by the simple science

of a badminton birdie, of all things... like a feather whirling down to earth. it was beautiful. we could see on the jumbotrons and we saw spaceshipone glide down and land safely. on that second flight they blasted so far beyond the altitude required and it

was a slam dunk that i was as happy as anyone there to announce that, yes, they actually achieved the requirements, the x-prize has been won and we're marching down a new path to sending humans to space. a fantastic day! exactly. it completely

changed and revolutionized the way public perceives spaceflight. xcor aerospace a little company i worked with out in the mojave desert called xcor aerospace which is one of the great leaders of preparing us to fly humans

on a commercial basis to sub orbital space. i'm their test pilot and i helped them moved forward with the design. xcor has an agreement to sell rides on this vehicle with space adventures, an adventure tourism company. actually, space adventures

is the company responsible for making my dream come true. they're the ones who arranged my 11-day mission to the international space station. it was an unbelievable experience. what i was able to do as the first private space explorer

and first astronaut of iranian descent, was to share my experience through an interactive blog while i was training and in space station. over 25 million people from all over the world visited the space blog and

were fascinated by reading the details of my daily life and my emotions. if you're interested in space go to anoushehansari.com and read the blog. you know, it's very intriguing to me how, from a business perspective,

space tourism makes all kinds of sense. and that's the direction we're heading now as private capital flows into this new infant industry and vehicles are being designed and built as we speak. is it that close to

becoming a reality? hello. space tourism society; red planet adventures. john spencer, founder & president of the space tourism society can give you the big picture. uh, mars is a little bit cold, actually, and there's no oxygen, but other than that,

it's a pretty nice place. i started the space tourism society in 1996 because i saw there was a need to start organizing our effort to create a space tourism movement and then a space tourism industry. it's worked very well

over the last ten years, bringing some of the brightest and bravest together to brainstorm and create businesses and network around the world with this great idea of space tourism. current projects are the development

of a mars themed resort and hotel here on earth in the mojave desert, north of los angeles, as an immersive simulation. you'll be able to go there in a few years and pretend you're an astronaut on mars. i'm also developing orbital space cruise ships,

modeled after ocean cruise ships; moon resorts, sports stadiums on the moon. and i'm advising with bob bigelow on his space hotel project. when the space tourism society was first founded, the laugh factor was very, very high. and everyone laughed

at this concept. but progressively through the years as it's become closer to reality, it's no longer a laughing matter. in fact, it's very serious business, and people are investing an awful lot of money to make it happen. of course, there are critics that call space tourism "trivial,"

"of no economic value," a "waste of money." a waste of money? have they realized that government space agencies haven't reduced the cost of space travel from when the first men went up in 1961... 1961...

when phones still used operators and tv's only had 3 channels??? i think i need to lie down. seriously... private space tourism is going to have a huge effect, and it isn't going to be just a small part of future space activity, but the main one.

then when you spin off all the scientific, technical, financing, sales and promotion opportunities you're talking about a lot of fantastic jobs coming available. in a generation or so the earth's resources will be challenged and we know space

houses options and solutions. but we can only access the bounty of space- whether it's for iron or inspiration, energy or enjoyment- if we can get there and back quickly, safely and economically. can we? the likelihood is looking closer than ever.

if enthusiastic entrepreneurs with imaginative minds continue to enter the game, there is no limit to who can take part and how much we all can benefit. maybe in the future outer space will be called "everyone's space." is it for you?