" The X PRIZE was founded on May 18, 1996 in St. Louis for the specific purpose of stimulating the creation of a new generation of launch vehicles designed to carry passengers into space.

The mission of the X PRIZE Foundation is to cause radical breakthroughs in space and other technologies for the benefit of humanity.

On October 4th, 2004, the X PRIZE captured world headlines when Mojave Aerospace led by Burt Rutan and Paul Allen built and flew the world’s first private spacecraft to the edge of space to win the $10 million ANSARI X PRIZE. " ... more

" The Space Frontier Foundation is a media and policy organization of space activists, scientists and engineers, media and political professionals, entrepreneurs, and citizens from all backgrounds and all nations. We are transforming space from a government-owned bureaucratic program into a dynamic and inclusive frontier open to people. We are determined to convert the image held by many young people that the future will be worse than the present, and we reject the idea that the world's greatest moments are in its past. Our central goal is the large-scale permanent settlement of space. We believe people have the "right stuff' and that everyone will benefit from opening the space frontier. We believe that free markets and free enterprise will become an unstoppable force in the irreversible settlement of this new frontier, and that our world is on the verge of a truly historic breakthrough - cheap access to space.

In summary, PERMANENT is for developing outer space on a very large scale, rapidly, by using materials already in space -- asteroids near Earth and/or lunar material -- instead of expensively blasting up from Earth all the materials used in space.

" The National Space Society (NSS) is an independent, international, educational, grassroots nonprofit 501(c)3 organization dedicated to the creation of a spacefaring civilization. The NSS has more than 22,000 members, and 75 chapters in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Australia, Germany, Ireland, and the United Kingdom. The NSS, founded in 1974 by Wernher von Braun, is widely acknowledged as the preeminent citizen's voice on space."