Inside the Personal Spaceflight Industry with Peter Diamandis

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Life on Mars, space colonies and inspiring innovation with Peter H. Diamandis (@peterdiamandis) Chairman and CEO, X PRIZE Foundation, a key figure in the development of the personal spaceflight industry.

Peter has created many space-related businesses and organizations, including the X PRIZE Foundation, an educational nonprofit prize institute whose mission is “to create radical breakthroughs for the benefit of humanity.”

The foundation, which presents a $10 million award to the first team to achieve its current goal, is best known for the Ansari X Prize, a competition to launch a reusable, manned spacecraft into space twice within two weeks. This was the first private-sector manned spaceflight.

Citing anecdotes from X PRIZE competitions in exploration, life sciences, energy, environment, education, and global development, Diamandis shares stories of innovations that are changing the way we think, work, and educate future generations.

He promotes intelligent risk-taking, maverick thinking, and environments where failure is allowed and celebrated. Diamandis reveals how organizations can incentivize breakthroughs for new products and strategies and reinvent their industries.

His presentations address technology and how to spur innovation. A Passion and Business Savvy for Spaceflight. Diamandis is an international leader in the commercial space arena, having founded and run many of its leading entrepreneurial companies.

Among many other ventures, he is the co-founder and managing director of Space Adventures, a space-tourism company, the co-founder and CEO of Zero Gravity Corporation, a commercial space company which offers weightless flights to the public, and the chairman & co-founder of the Rocket Racing League.

Diamandis co-founded the Singularity University, an academic institution who aims to foster thoughts leaders who will work on humanity’s largest challenges.

Diamandis also co-founded the International Space University (ISU) where he served as the University’s first managing director. Prior to ISU, Diamandis served as chairman of Students for the Exploration and Development of Space (SEDS), an organization he founded at MIT in 1980.

SEDS is currently the world’s largest college and high school-based student pro-space organization He is the winner of the 2007 Arthur C. Clarke Award for Innovation, the 2006 (inaugural) Heinlein Award, the 2006 Lindbergh Award, the 2006 Wired RAVE Award, the 2006 Neil Armstrong Award for Aerospace Achievement and Leadership, the Konstantine Tsiolkovsky Award, twice the winner of the Aviation & Space Technology Laurel, and the 2003 World Technology Award for Space.

Peter Diamandis attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) where he received his undergraduate degree in molecular genetics and graduate degree in aerospace engineering.