The X-Prize has to be one of the lamest contests ever. These people are dropping millions to build a suborbital craft and win a $10 million prize. Initially I though it was to go into space which would be cool. No, not really. They just want to almost go into an orbit. Obviously you have to keep your costs under $10 million to make a profit. Going into an actual orbit would be much more expensive than almost making it into orbit. 

There are 27 teams competing for the X-Prize. These teams are bankrolled by all kinds of wealthy, “hip” investors. For example, Steve Bezos (CEO of Amazon.com) has a team. Figure each is probably dropping 8 million on development. 27 x 8 = 216 million spent on this. All to prove that private companies can do what NASA can do.

For comparison, that estimated $216 million from the last post is about what Bush spent on his 2000 Presidential election campaign.