WThis list of challenge awards is an index to articles about notable challenge awards, or inducement prize contests. A cash prize is given for the accomplishment of a feat, usually of engineering.
WAmerica's Space Prize was a US$50 million space competition in orbital spaceflight established and funded in 2004 by hotel entrepreneur Robert Bigelow. The prize would have been awarded to the first US-based privately funded team to design and build a reusable manned capsule capable of flying 5 astronauts to a Bigelow Aerospace inflatable space module. The criteria also required the capsule be recovered and flown again in 60 days. The prize expired January 10, 2010, without a winner or any test flights attempted. The teams were required to have been based in the United States.
WThe Ansari X Prize was a space competition in which the X Prize Foundation offered a US$10,000,000 prize for the first non-government organization to launch a reusable crewed spacecraft into space twice within two weeks. It was modeled after early 20th-century aviation prizes, and aimed to spur development of low-cost spaceflight.
WThe Archon Genomics X PRIZE presented by Express Scripts for Genomics, the second X Prize offered by the X Prize Foundation, based in Playa Vista, California, was announced on October 4, 2006 stating that the prize of "$10 million will be awarded to the first team to rapidly, accurately and economically sequence 100 whole human genomes to an unprecedented level of accuracy." The 30 day evaluation phase of the competition to begin on September 5, 2013, was canceled August 22, 2013 and this cancellation was debated on March 27, 2014.
WThe Buckminster Fuller Challenge is an annual international design competition that awards $100,000 to the most comprehensive solution to a pressing global problem. The Challenge was launched in 2007 and is a program of The Buckminster Fuller Institute. The competition, open to designers, artists, architects, students, environmentalists, and organizations world-wide, has been dubbed "Socially-Responsible Design's Highest Award" by Metropolis Magazine.
WBetween 1906 and 1930, the Daily Mail newspaper, initially on the initiative of its proprietor, Alfred Harmsworth, 1st Viscount Northcliffe, awarded numerous prizes for achievements in aviation. The newspaper would stipulate the amount of a prize for the first aviators to perform a particular task in aviation or to the winner of an aviation race or event. The most famous prizes were the £1,000 for the first cross-channel flight awarded to Louis Blériot in 1909 and the £10,000 given in 1919 to Alcock and Brown for the first non-stop transatlantic flight between North America and Ireland.
WDARPA Shredder Challenge 2011 was a prize competition for exploring methods to reconstruct documents shredded by a variety of paper shredding techniques. The aim of the challenge was to "assess potential capabilities that could be used by the U.S. warfighters operating in war zones, but might also identify vulnerabilities to sensitive information that is protected by shredding practices throughout the U.S. national security community". The competition was sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), a research organization of the United States Department of Defense. Congress authorized DARPA to award cash prizes to further DARPA’s mission to sponsor revolutionary, high-payoff research that bridges the gap between fundamental discoveries and their use for national security.
WHenri Deutsch de la Meurthe, born Salomon Henry Deutsch, was a successful French petroleum businessman and an avid supporter of early aviation. He sponsored a number of prizes to encourage the development of aviation technologies, including the Grand Prix d'Aviation and the Deutsch de la Meurthe prize.
WThe Dole Air Race, also known as the Dole Derby, was a deadly air race across the Pacific Ocean from Oakland, California to Honolulu in the Territory of Hawaii held in August 1927. There were eighteen official and unofficial entrants; fifteen of those drew for starting positions, and of those fifteen, two were disqualified, two withdrew, and three aircraft crashed before the race, resulting in three deaths. Eight aircraft eventually participated in the start of the race on August 16, with only two successfully arriving in Hawaii; Woolaroc, a Travel Air 5000 piloted by Arthur C. Goebel and William V. Davis, arrived after a 26 hour, 15 minute flight, leading runner-up Aloha by two hours.
WElevator:2010 was an inducement prize contest with the purpose of developing space elevator and space elevator-related technologies. Elevator:2010 organized annual competitions for climbers, ribbons and power-beaming systems, and was operated by a partnership between Spaceward Foundation and the NASA Centennial Challenges.
WPaul Erdős was a renowned Hungarian mathematician. He was one of the most prolific mathematicians and producers of mathematical conjectures of the 20th century. He was known both for his social practice of mathematics and for his eccentric lifestyle. He devoted his waking hours to mathematics, even into his later years—indeed, his death came only hours after he solved a geometry problem at a conference in Warsaw.
WNicolas Appert was the French inventor of airtight food preservation. Appert, known as the "father of canning", was a confectioner. Appert described his invention as a way "of conserving all kinds of food substances in containers".
WThe Google Lunar XPRIZE (GLXP), sometimes referred to as Moon 2.0, was a 2007–2018 inducement prize space competition organized by the X Prize Foundation, and sponsored by Google. The challenge called for privately funded teams to be the first to land a lunar rover on the Moon, travel 500 meters, and transmit back to Earth high-definition video and images.
WThe Hyperloop Pod Competition was an annual competition sponsored by SpaceX from 2015–2019 in which a number of student and non-student teams participate to design—and for some, build—a subscale prototype transport vehicle in order to demonstrate technical feasibility of various aspects of the Hyperloop concept. The competitions have been open to participants globally, although all competitions and judging has occurred in the United States of America.
WKnuth reward checks are checks or check-like certificates awarded by computer scientist Donald Knuth for finding technical, typographical, or historical errors, or making substantial suggestions for his publications. The MIT Technology Review describes the checks as "among computerdom's most prized trophies".
WThe Longitude Act 1714 was an Act of Parliament of Great Britain passed in July 1714 at the end of the reign of Queen Anne. It established the Board of Longitude and offered monetary rewards for anyone who could find a simple and practical method for the precise determination of a ship's longitude. The Act of 1714 was followed by a series of other Longitude Acts that revised or replaced the original.
WThe longitude rewards were the system of inducement prizes offered by the British government for a simple and practical method for the precise determination of a ship's longitude at sea. The rewards, established through an Act of Parliament in 1714, were administered by the Board of Longitude.
WThe Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge (NG-LLC) was a competition funded by NASA's Centennial Challenges program. The competition offered a series of prizes for teams that launch a vertical takeoff/vertical landing (VTVL) rocket that achieved the total delta-v needed for a vehicle to move between the surface of the Moon and its orbit. The multi-level competition was conducted by the X PRIZE Foundation, with sponsorship from the Northrop Grumman Corporation who ran the ongoing competition. The prize purses were paid by NASA. It was held annually at the X PRIZE Cup, making its debut at the 2006 Wirefly X PRIZE Cup in October, 2006, until 2009 when the prize purse was awarded to Masten Space Systems and Armadillo Aerospace.
WJorge Antonio Chávez Dartnell, also known as Géo Chávez, was a Peruvian aviator. At a young age, he achieved fame for his aeronautical feats. He died in 1910 after a heavy wind broke the wings of his fragile airplane Bleriot XI, falling from a twenty meter height upon landing, after achieving the first air crossing of the Alps.
WThe Hyperloop Pod Competition was an annual competition sponsored by SpaceX from 2015–2019 in which a number of student and non-student teams participate to design—and for some, build—a subscale prototype transport vehicle in order to demonstrate technical feasibility of various aspects of the Hyperloop concept. The competitions have been open to participants globally, although all competitions and judging has occurred in the United States of America.
WThe Orteig Prize was a reward offered to the first Allied aviator(s) to fly non-stop from New York City to Paris or vice versa. Several famous aviators made unsuccessful attempts at the New York–Paris flight before the relatively unknown American Charles Lindbergh won the prize in 1927 in his aircraft Spirit of St. Louis. However, a number of lives were lost by men who were competing to win the prize. Six men died in three separate crashes, and another three were injured in a fourth crash. The Prize occasioned considerable investment in aviation, sometimes many times the value of the prize itself, and advancing public interest and the level of aviation technology.
WThe UAV Challenge - Outback Rescue, also known as the UAV Outback Challenge or UAV Challenge, is an annual competition for the development of unmanned aerial vehicles. The competition was first held in 2007 and features an open challenge for adults, and a high-school challenge. The event is aimed at promoting the civilian use of unmanned aerial vehicles and the development of low-cost systems that could be used for search and rescue missions. The event is one of the largest robotics challenges in the world and one of the highest stakes UAV challenges, with the current Medical Express version of the event offering $75,000 to the winner.
WThe Virgin Earth Challenge was a competition offering a $25 million prize for whoever could demonstrate a commercially viable design which results in the permanent removal of greenhouse gases out of the Earth's atmosphere to contribute materially in global warming avoidance. The prize was conceived by Richard Branson, and was announced in London on 9 February 2007 by Branson and former US Vice President Al Gore. However, the prize was never awarded. In 2019, Virgin quietly took the prize website offline, after keeping 11 finalists suspended in expectation for 8 years. Al Gore had withdrawn from the jury earlier and commented that "He was not part of the decision to discontinue the contest.".
WThe X Prize Cup is a two-day air and space exposition which was the result of a partnership between the X Prize Foundation and the State of New Mexico that began in 2004 when the Ansari X-Prize was held. This led to plans to build the world's first true rocket festival. Three X-Prize Cups have been held: in 2005, 2006 and 2007. Each X Prize Cup hosts different events and demonstrations, such as rocket-powered bicycles, rocket jet packs; but particularly notable are the Lunar Lander Challenge and the Space Elevator Games. 85,000 visitors attended the 2007 X Prize Cup. Although there was no X Prize Cup in 2009, there was a Lunar Lander Challenge.