Eighty years ago, Raymond Orteig helped spark the growth of aviation by offering up a $25,000 prize to the first pilot who could fly from New York to Paris (non-stop).  Charles Lindbergh won that prize.  And commercial flight soon took off.  

The X PRIZE Foundation has been following a similar model with space travel.  In 2004, the foundation gave out its first award--$10 million--to Mojave Aerospace Ventures for its early forays into private space flight.  The drive behind X PRIZE remains to encourage innovation and entrepreneurship as means to "bring about breakthroughs that benefit us all."  So has the early work of the foundation begun to spur a marketplace for the technology required to develop private space flight?  Peter Diamandis, chairman of the X PRIZE Foundation, addressed that question in an interview with Big Think.  Here's an excerpt:

Watch the full interview here.