Prizes as Part of the Future of Commercial Space

From RLV News comes a link to a Space News article on the state and possible near future of the commercial space industry. Peter Diamandis considers some possible developments, many of which are related to prizes:

"We need some wins," said Peter Diamandis, chairman and chief executive officer of the X Prize Foundation in Santa Monica, Calif.

Those wins next year, he said, might constitute a successful flight of the Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) Falcon 1 booster; possible rollout of Virgin Galactic spaceliner hardware; demonstration flights of the Rocket Racing League's X-Racer; first flight to orbital altitude of Armadillo Aerospace gear; and a couple-dozen fully registered teams competing for the Google Lunar X Prize — a robotic race to the Moon for a $30 million purse.

Although I often post about NewSpace space access prizes on this blog, I also find the space-related communications gear companies mentioned at the beginning of the article to also be incredibly interesting.