When Peter Diamandis COuld Not Become An Astronaut; He Decided TO Become A Space Pioneer

Peter Diamandis: the joy of taking risks

22:18 04 November 2009 by Ivan Semeniuk
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Peter Diamandis, CEO of the X Prize Foundation, wants to use our competitive instincts to make the world a better place. After handing out $10 million to the first private team to achieve suborbital space flight, he's extended his X-prize concept into earthly realms such as automotive engineering, genomics and health care. And while he still sends billionaires to the International Space Station as managing director of the firm Space Adventures, he's lately teamed up with futurist Ray Kurzweil to create the Singularity University, where young entrepreneurs are trained to think about global issues. Ivan Semeniuk spoke with Diamandis about his ongoing ventures on and above the planet.

Why do you think prizes work?

First, as humans, we're genetically predisposed to compete; we do it in sports and in business. That's what encourages us to take risks, which drives breakthroughs. Secondly, if you're going to try to do something on your own that's considered audacious or outlandish and you fail, people say, "Look at that stupid idiot who tried that crazy thing." However, if a third party puts up, as an objective, a very difficult goal, which you attempt but fail to achieve, then it's, "Good try old chap, too bad you didn't make it." The psychology of the prize changes the way society views you as a risk taker.

How do you scale up a prize into something that's useful to society?

When we design a prize, it's really important that the prize deliver a team and technology to a point where a business can then take off. It's of zero interest to me to have a competition where the result ends up in a record book or on a museum shelf. For us, success means there's an industry launched on the heels of a very visible achievement.

The Ansari X-prize was intended to launch a space tourism industry. As Apollo fades into history, are you worried that interest in space is diminishing?

I think I'm glad to see Apollo recede into the past because we've hung our hats on the Apollo legacy for far too long. It's important to get people to relate to space in an exciting way today. I think that means making space a personal experience, not a third-hand experience. The other thing we need is to have the first "Netscape" event – the first company that makes a lot of money at it. That will bring in capital, and capital will fuel additional risk-taking that will drive us forward.

Speaking of risk, your business Zero G offers parabolic airplane flights for 'space tourists' who want to experience freefall – including Stephen Hawking in 2007. What was it like to put Stephen Hawking in zero g?

From the beginning, I thought it was going to be a great opportunity and that everyone would love it. Then I had people come to me and say, "You're crazy. You're going to kill Stephen Hawking and you're going to destroy your company." But when we did it, we planned it well, it was extraordinarily easy and it was really fulfilling. After the 11 years we worked to get the company operational, that was the payoff.

When is Peter Diamandis going to space?

That's my question. When the suborbital flights go, I will hop on one of the first of those. I can afford the $100,000 for that. As for the $40 million to go to orbit – as soon as I can afford that, I'll go – but I can't yet.

Meanwhile, you've now set up a heath care prize. How can you improve health care with a prize?

I was honestly dubious at first. You can't change what you can't measure and in health care, there is no real measurement of a community's health. If you say a community is healthy, how do you know that? So we've created something called a community health index, which includes things like how many missed days of work, how many hospitalisations, how many deaths – concrete, objective measurements. What we're inviting teams to do is demonstrate how they would improve a 10,000-person community health index by 50 per cent or more over a three-year period.

You've also started the Singularity University. How is it different from a conventional graduate school experience?

Instead of focusing on a particular DNA sequence or ion channel or piece of computer code, we take you way out of your depth so that you're looking at global issues. You'll be exposed to many other disciplines. You learn about AI and robotics and nanotech and human-machine interface. We ran our first class this summer and out of that class the students started six different companies, so it's a real hotbed of entrepreneurship and big-picture thinking.

What do you hope to achieve with SU?

My hope is to create a network of people who are focused on the world's problems and equip them to make transformational change. I want to spawn a new generation of young entrepreneurs from diverse backgrounds that can approach these problems in ways that traditional institutional groups are not. Ultimately, while the X Prize Foundation sets the objective goals, I'm hoping that the Singularity University will generate the teams to compete for them.

Have you come across any problems that are not amenable to being solved with a prize challenge?