The race to commercialise space, and to win the $10 million Ansari X prize, has intensified. The Canadian da Vinci Project announced on 5 August that it will try to launch its spacecraft Wild Fire for the first time on 2 October, and will do it again within two weeks, as the prize rules require. “We are determined to win the X prize,” says Brian Feeney, head of the project and the craft’s prospective pilot.
This pits Wild Fire against SpaceShipOne, the spacecraft developed by US company Scaled Composites, which is to make its attempt on the prize on 29…
