More on the 7 Year, $300 Million X PRIZE Foundation Commitment

A couple days ago I posted on a commitment by the X PRIZE Foundation to have a number of prizes in the areas of energy/environment, health and medicine, poverty alliviation, and education. The Nation has a blog post that gives more details about the event where this commitment was announced, and a few comments about the X PRIZE Foundation's commitment:

... and Google, which will cosponsor a $300 million award-program designed to motivate innovation to address CGI's four priorities ...

I don't know how much that means Google will be involved (certainly some, since Larry Page was there for the announcement), but I assume (since the X PRIZE Foundation news ticker linked to the blog post) that it's not saying more than it should be.

The blog post has the following to say about personal spaceflight:

It's backed by the X-Prize Foundation, the non-profit that spent millions to incentivize the (odd) ambition of civilian space travel.

How nice that they went out of their way to put that adjective there. Apparently the "giggle factor" hasn't been eradicated in some quarters.