Empowering Humanity, with Anousheh Ansari (XPRIZE)

This week’s Pathfinder podcast features the CEO of the XPRIZE Foundation, Anousheh Ansari – our first guest who’s actually been to space (it’s shocking to us too that it’s taken this long). After immigrating to the United States from Iran as a teenager, she co-founded Telecom Technologies, a telecommunication company that integrated voice and data. In 2006, she became the first first-privately funded female and Iranian-American to travel to space and the International Space Station.

Catch up: The $10 million purse, sponsored by the Ansari family, set forth a competition to stimulate innovation in private spaceflight. It challenged private entities to design a reusable crewed spacecraft capable of two flights within a two-week period. In 2004, the Mojave Aerospace Ventures team's SpaceShipOne clinched the prize, catalyzing a paradigm shift in the realm of commercial spaceflight. Virgin Galactic eventually licensed the technology for its SpaceShipTwo vehicle.

In addition to Anousheh’s background, we discuss:

• The origins of the XPRIZE Foundation
• How to focus on the right global challenge
• The future of commercial spaceflight
• Structuring the incentives to promote innovation
• XPRIZE Wildfire
• And much more…

• Chapters •

00:00 - Intro

01:02 - Moving from Iran to the US

07:45 - Going to space

10:09 - Becoming the first Iranian-American astronaut

13:47 - The Overview Effect

17:18 - Introduction to XPRIZE

27:28 - The XPRIZE Brain Trust

33:00 - Equity ownership at XPRIZE?

38:21 - Wildfire detection & suppression

39:45 - XPRIZE & Crowdsourcing

41:58 - How has the experience of space flight changed?

46:41 - Regulations in the commercial space flight industry

51:37 - Game changing technology for humanity

55:12 - What does Anousheh do for fun?

56:15 - Favorite sci-fi movies?

56:42 - How to get involved with the X Prize Foundation

• Show notes •

XPRIZE website — https://www.xprize.org/

Anousheh’s socials — https://twitter.com/anoushehansari

Mo's socials — https://twitter.com/itsmoislam 

Payload’s socials — https://twitter.com/payloadspace / https://www.linkedin.com/company/payloadspace 

Pathfinder archive — Watch: https://www.youtube.com/@payloadspace Pathfinder archive — Listen: https://pod.payloadspace.com/episodes 

• About us •

Pathfinder is brought to you by Payload, a modern space media brand built from the ground up for a new age of space exploration and commercialization. We deliver need-to-know news and insights daily to 15,000+ commercial, civil, and military space leaders. Payload is read by decision-makers at every leading new space company, along with c-suite leaders at all of the aerospace & defense primes. We’re also read on Capitol Hill, in the Pentagon, and at space agencies around the world. Payload began as a weekly email sent to a few friends and coworkers. 

Today, we’re a team distributed across four time zones and two continents, publishing three media properties across multiple platforms: 1) Payload, our flagship daily newsletter, sends M-F @ 9am Eastern (https://newsletter.payloadspace.com/) 2) Pathfinder publishes weekly on Tuesday mornings (pod.payloadspace.com) 3) Polaris, our weekly policy publication, hits inboxes Tuesday (https://polaris.payloadspace.com/) 4) Parallax, our weekly space science briefing, hits inboxes Thursday (https://parallax.payloadspace.com/)