^[1]While I was vacationing in St. Louis last week, I stumbled across this curiosity — the Google logo with Larry Page’s and Sergey Brin’s signatures.

This is the Google logo from 2004, commemorating SpaceShipOne winning the Ansari X-Prize.

Description from the X-Prize Foundation ^[2]:

The X PRIZE Foundation sought to bring about a radical breakthrough in the advancement of human spaceflight, the aim being to open up the space frontier. Our long-term goal was to make space travel safe, affordable and accessible to everyone through the creation of a personal spaceflight industry.

The Ansari family shared our vision and agreed to join the revolution by becoming the title sponsors of the first X PRIZE, jumpstarting 26 teams from 7 different nations to pursue their passions by competing for the prize.

The Ansari X PRIZE was modeled after the Orteig Prize, won by Charles Lindbergh in 1927 for being the first to fly non-stop from New York to Paris, and mirrors the hundreds of aviation incentive prizes offered early in the 20th Century that helped create today’s $300 billion commercial aviation industry.

On October 4, 2004, the X PRIZE Foundation captured the world’s attention when we awarded the largest prize in history, the $10 million Ansari X PRIZE, to Mojave Aerospace Ventures for the flight of SpaceShipOne. 

To win the prize, famed aerospace designer Burt Rutan and financier Paul Allen led the first private team to build and launch a spacecraft capable of carrying three people to 100 kilometers above the earth’s surface, twice within two weeks.

Larry Page’s signature:

^[3]

Sergey Brin’s signature:

^[4]

The logo is also signed by Burt Rutan, aerospace engineer and designer of SpaceShipOne:

^[5]

I spotted this while taking my nephew to the James S. McDonnell Planetarium inside the St. Louis Science Center ^[6]. My eight-year-old nephew is a fanatic about trains, Star Wars, and recently also he became an astronomy junkie. So, the visit to the planetarium was de rigeur.