The prize: $10 Million Reading Answers

Jul 31, 2025

The prize: $10 Million Reading Answers is an academic reading answers topic. The prize: $10 Million Reading Answers has a total of 13 IELTS questions, such as the text has 6 paragraphs (A-F). Which paragraph contains each of the following pieces of information? Write NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS for each. And do the following statements agree with the information given in the text? Write true, false, or not given.

The candidate's understanding and assessment of academic and general texts are examined in the IELTS Reading Section. Using IELTS Reading Practice Questions, you can increase your vocabulary, sharpen your critical reading skills, and become more familiar with the various question types in reading tasks. Furthermore, practice enhances vocabulary and improves analytical reading skills, both of which are necessary for success. It's critical to comprehend the guidelines for every question type and create effective ways to manage time to receive excellent band scores.

Check: Get 10 Free Sample Papers
Check: Register for IELTS Coaching - Join for Free Trial Class Now

Topic:

THE PRIZE: $10 MILLION

A.They are an elite club of billionaires, movie producers, dotcom wizkids and the occasional astronaut and between them they hope to change the face of scientific research. With money and influence, the 20-strong team among them the producer of the Blues Brothers and Naked Gun movies, the co-founder of Google, a former White House aide and the Vietnam veteran-turned-billionaire genetics entrepreneur, Craig Venter, are to launch a series of multimillion dollar prizes to accelerate scientific breakthroughs that otherwise might be decades away.

B.Together, they make up the X-Prize Foundation, an organisation set up by Peter Diamandis of Space Adventures; the company that arranged for Dennis Tito to fly to the International Space Station in 2001 and so become the world's first space tourist. The foundation (motto: "Creating radical breakthroughs for the benefit of humanity”), plans to launch three prizes of at least $10 million this year to crack some of the toughest problems facing genetics, nanotechnology and the car industry.“ goal is to build ourselves into a world-class prize institute and focus on using those prizes to attack some of the grand challenges of our time,” Dr Diamandis said.“ setting up prizes with a big enough purses, you can reach across space and time, and problems will get solved”

C.The move follows the foundation's huge success with the Ansari X-Prize, which promised $10 million for the first commercial manned spacecraft to reach suborbital space twice within two weeks. Named after Anousheh Ansari, a dotcom multimillionaire and one of only two women on the foundation's board, the prize attracted 26 teams which spent more than $100 million trying to win. The prize was triggered by what Dr Diamandis calls his “absolute frustration at the glacial pace of progress” and was won in 2004 by Burt Rutan, an American aeronautics expert, with his rocket-plane SpaceShipOne. The competition forced US officials to draw up regulations for commercial space flight and paved the way for Richard Branson to add space tourism to his portfolio with the launch of Virgin Galactic, a spaceflight venture that will use a rocket designed by Mr Rutan.

D.Now the foundation is looking to repeat its success in other areas of science. Dr Diamandis is cagey about the finer details of future prizes, but one will offer $10 million for the first company to sequence the genetic code of 100 people in a matter of weeks. The prize is intended to force private industry to find ways of making full genome sequencing cheap enough for everyone to afford. It will be no Cakewalk: a full genome sequence now takes around six months to read and costs $20 million. “The value of having the human genome doesn't really occur until you have it for tens or hundreds of thousands of people, so the prize will make that happen,” Dr Diamandis said. “To say this gene correlates with adult onset diabetes, that this gene reacts badly with that drug, you need a huge statistical database.”

E.A second prize is aimed at kicking America's self-proclaimed addiction to oil, by spurring research into greener vehicles. “This is a hot button that can affect our reliance on energy from around the world and our production of pollution, which are major problems from a national security standpoint and an environmental standpoint,” Dr Diamandis said. “We're still using the internal combustion engine after 100 years, and getting 20 miles per gallon for the past 40 years. It's ripe for a major prize to break things open.” The foundation is also planning prizes in nanotechnology and education and is considering a second space prize, which could see the first commercial team to put a person into orbital spaceflight win $50 million to $100 million. “We're always looking for where things have become stuck, where there are bureaucratic, technology, government or industrial problems stopping things evolving.” According to Dr Diamandis, in the future such prizes will shape research by focusing minds on a particular problem and ensuring the goalposts do not change with political whims. Soon, he believes $100 million and even $1 billion prizes will be put up by organisations keen to draw on the mass intelligence of the world's experts.

F.The money for the prizes comes from donations from wealthy individuals and sponsorship, and entry is usually open to all. “In general, we want these open to the most brilliant minds on the planet,” Dr Diamandis said. “A lot of the value is not just the cash; it's the heroism that goes along with winning the competition. It's what drives people to work around the clock and take risk to levels required for breakthroughs.” The X-Prize Foundation has inspired others to follow suit, notably NASA, which believes its money might be better spent setting up a prize fund than running parallel research projects in-house. This month, it released details of six $5 million “challenges” to solve technical hurdles standing in the way of typically NASA projects, namely how to build extraterrestrial fuel depots, human lunar all-terrain vehicles, low-cost space pressure suits, lunar night power sources, micro re-entry vehicles and “Station-keeping solar sails”.

Questions 1-4

The text has 6 paragraphs (A-F). Which paragraph contains each of the following pieces of information?

1. The reason that having the genetic codes of many people would be advantageous.

Answer: D

Supporting statement: “The value of having the human genome doesn't really occur until you have it for tens or hundreds of thousands of people, so the prize will make that happen,” Dr Diamandis said. “To say this gene correlates with adult onset diabetes, that this gene reacts badly with that drug, you need a huge statistical database.”

Keywords: human genome, tens or hundreds, statistical database

Keyword Location: Para D, Lines 6-9.

Explanation: Paragraph D directly explains why having the genetic codes of a large number of people is valuable – to build a “huge statistical database” for understanding correlations between genes and diseases or drug reactions.

2. Who can enter the competitions.

Answer: F

Supporting statement: “The money for the prizes comes from donations from wealthy individuals and sponsorship, and entry is usually open to all.” and “In general, we want these open to the most brilliant minds on the planet,” Dr Diamandis said.”

Keywords: open to all, brilliant minds, planet.

Keyword Location: Para F, Lines 2-3.

Explanation: Paragraph F directly addresses who can enter the competitions by stating that “entry is usually open to all”.

3. The number of women on the board of directors of the X-Prize Foundation.

Answer: C

Supporting statement: “Named after Anousheh Ansari, a dotcom multimillionaire and one of only two women on the foundation's board, the prize attracted 26 teams which spent more than $100 million trying to win.”

Keywords: only two women, foundation's board

Keyword Location: Para C, Lines 3-4

Explanation: This sentence explicitly states that Anousheh Ansari was one of only two women on the foundation's board, directly giving the number requested.

4. The backgrounds of the people who make up the X-Prize Foundation.

Answer: A

Supporting statement: “They are an elite club of billionaires, movie producers, dotcom wizkids and the occasional astronaut and between them they hope to change the face of scientific research…………. multimillion dollar prizes to accelerate scientific breakthroughs that otherwise might be decades away.”

Keywords: elite club, movie producers, astronaut, scientific, dollar prizes

Keyword Location: Para A, Lines 1-6

Explanation: Paragraph A introduces the members of the “elite club” that make up the X-Prize Foundation, detailing their diverse backgrounds from billionaires and movie producers to an astronaut, a Google co-founder, and a genetics entrepreneur.

Questions 5-8

Write NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS for each.

5. Dennis Tito was the ...................

Answer: FIRST SPACE TOURIST

Supporting statement: “the company that arranged for Dennis Tito to fly to the International Space Station in 2001 and so become the world's first space tourist.”

Keywords: Dennis Tito, Space, tourist

Keyword Location: Para B, Lines 2-3

Explanation: The passage directly states that Dennis Tito became “the world's first space tourist” after his flight.

6. SpaceShipOne flew in space.

Answer: SUBORBITAL

Supporting statement: “…the Ansari X-Prize, which promised $10 million for the first commercial manned spacecraft to reach suborbital space twice within two weeks… was won in 2004 by Burt Rutan, an American aeronautics expert, with his rocket-plane SpaceShipOne.”

Keywords: X-Prize, SpaceShipOne, suborbital space

Keyword Location: Para C, Lines 2-7

Explanation: The passage states that SpaceShipOne won the prize for reaching “suborbital space,” which is a specific type of space flight, not just “space” in general.

7. Diamandis thinks American reliance on oil is bad for the environment and for

Answer: NATIONAL SECURITY

Supporting statement: “This is a hot button that can affect our reliance on energy from around the world and our production of pollution, which are major problems from a national security standpoint and an environmental standpoint,” Dr Diamandis said.”

Keywords: energy, pollution, national security, standpoint, environmental

Keyword Location: Para E, Lines 3-6

Explanation: Dr. Diamandis explicitly states that the reliance on oil (energy) and pollution is a major problem from a national security standpoint and an environmental standpoint.

8. Diamandis believes that money and make people interested in winning the prizes.

Answer: HEROISM

Supporting statement: “A lot of the value is not just the cash; it's the heroism that goes along with winning the competition. It's what drives people to work around the clock and take risk to levels required for breakthroughs.”

Keywords: value, cash, heroism, drives people

Keyword Location: Para F, Lines 3-4

Explanation: The passage states that the value of the prize isn't just the cash but also the heroism that goes along with winning the competition, and that this drives people. So, both the money (cash) and the heroism are factors that motivate people to win.

Questions 9-13

Do the following statements agree with the information given in the text? Write:

TRUE if the information in the text agrees with the statement.

FALSE if the information in the text contradicts the statement.

NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this.

9. One of the reasons for setting up the X-Prize Foundation was that the founders thought scientific development was too slow.

Answer: TRUE

Supporting statement: “The prize was triggered by what Dr Diamandis calls his “absolute frustration at the glacial pace of progress” and was won in 2004 by Burt Rutan, an American aeronautics expert, with his rocket-plane SpaceShipOne.”

Keywords: triggered by, absolute frustration, glacial pace of progress

Keyword Location: Para C, Lines 4-5

Explanation: Dr. Diamandis, a key figure in the X-Prize Foundation, explicitly states his absolute frustration at the glacial pace of progress as the trigger for the Ansari X-Prize, which is a core part of the foundation's work. This directly supports the idea that the founders believed scientific development was too slow.

10. Anousheh Ansari is one of the richest women in the world.

Answer: NOT GIVEN

Explanation: The passage states that Anousheh Ansari is a “dotcom multimillionaire,” which indicates she is very wealthy. However, multimillionaire does not necessarily equate to being one of the richest women in the world.

11. If you wanted to know your full genetic code, it would currently cost you about $20 million.

Answer: TRUE

Supporting statement: “It will be no Cakewalk: a full genome sequence now takes around six months to read and costs $20 million.”

Keywords: full genome sequence, costs $20 million

Keyword Location: Para D, Lines 5-6

Explanation: The passage states that, at the time it was written, a full genome sequence cost $20 million.

12. Diamandis doesn't want politics to prevent scientific development.

Answer: TRUE

Supporting statement: “According to Dr Diamandis, in the future such prizes will shape research by focusing minds on a particular problem and ensuring the goalposts do not change with political whims.”

Keywords: political whims, goalposts

Keyword Location: Para E, Lines 11-12

Explanation: Dr. Diamandis explicitly states that prizes will help ensure the goalposts do not change with political whims, which directly indicates his desire for political factors not to impede or alter the direction of scientific research or development.

13. NASA is using prizes instead of conducting its own expensive research.

Answer: FALSE

Supporting statement: “The X-Prize Foundation has inspired others to follow suit, notably NASA, which believes its money might be better spent setting up a prize fund than running parallel research projects in-house.”

Keywords: NASA, money, prize fund, research projects

Keyword Location: Para F, Lines 6-7

Explanation: The passage says NASA “believes its money might be better spent setting up a prize fund than running parallel research projects in-house.” This doesn't mean they've stopped all their own research. They are exploring a different strategy for some funds, possibly in addition to their existing research, or as a more efficient way to tackle some projects.

Read More IELTS Reading Related Samples