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NASA Eyes Cash Prizes Of Its Own
joeldg writes "Wired is reporting that NASA is considering offering cash prizes for space innovation.
'Lembeck said NASA would consider offering $10 million to $30 million in prizes to encourage private investors to develop space vehicles. Such prizes appear compatible with the vision for space exploration released last week by a White House commission that studied President Bush's plan to send Americans back to the moon and possibly to Mars.'"
This is definitely a smart idea. Think about it? The smartest people are in the private sector, why not use their skills and efficiencies to benefit the race to the stars?
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More likely NASA is considering setting up contests to find new ideas and big talents. For a large and bureaucratic organization like NASA, hiring competent designers and engineers is a slow and painful process. First they have to apply, have a resume, have the correct degree, have the correct experience etc etc. Many talented individuals can get filtered out because they didn't meet some criteria. By setting up a contest, they motivate those individuals and allow them to display their talents instead of letting them work somewhere else as a keyboard monkey or a bicycle designer.
Another thing they will see is unconventional ideas. An unconventional idea might not get much attention in a taxpayer funded agency, but a contest will reveal these ideas and test their fitness.
So, they think their funding is under threat from private enterprise - so they plan to use Other Peoples Money to do what private enterprise can already do, only better than NASA. Thieving bastards.
Space exploration is yet another field that should be handled entirely by private enterprise & charity.
The problem is, if you try and make a bussnes around winning those prizes you might lose even if you have a good idea if someone else finishes first.
And that would, you know, kinda suck.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
100 billion USD to the first person to invent a workable interstellar propulsion system that could theoretically make it to alpha-centauri within 300 of our years (yes, you'd have to have sex in space). Any takers?
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
it's obvious that nasa's prize for a given achievement (even if it's as much as $30 million) will be considerably lower than the expense of funding that achievement in-house.
they will also probably make sure to offer prizes for achievements that they can make use of in their own work.
not that there's anything wrong with either of these things. the sooner that space stops being the sole domain of a government agency, the faster we (collectively) will be able to get off this rock.
Of course NASA is interested! Rutan's ship took a $20 million investment from Paul Allen to get off the napkin it was first drawn on. And it stands to win only a $10 million prize! NASA's must be hoping they can get work done for half the price.
Punctanym: alternate spelling of words using punctuation or numerals in place of some or all of its letters; see 'leet'
FUCK that idea!!!
This whole thing stinks. I'm fully in favour of private space research--but having NASA give money away makes it "publicly funded private enterprise." In other words, companies are spending tax money on personal profit.
Have one or the other, or even both, but don't give public money to private enterprise.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
The prizes are to small considering the scale of the achievements required. X-Prize was a 'radical' venture, with a 10 million dollar prize, but that's just for sub-oribital. If you want to truely inspire a 'gold rush' mentality, it's not hard. Set a worthy jackpot for an 'impossible' task.
The current environment of government contractors hanging around the 'space business' today just couldn't survive without a few open ended contracts to manage/maintain equipment on a cost plus basis. Serious prizes will generate serious ingenuity to win them. If Nasa offered 10% of it's annual budget in this fashion, they would achieve on the order of 10,000% the results they currently get by feeding the beaurocracy with nothing but money, money, and yet more money.
If you think about it logically, a martian sample return mission done by current nasa methodologies, would require a multi billion dollar budget, and it would still be looking at a high probability of failure. A billion dollars payable on reciept of 25kg of martian soil. this is not a contest, it's an offer to purchase. Publicize the offer, and verify the 'terms of purchase' via published documents. Sit back, wait. Somebody will deliver.
This is actually perfect for the existing bearocracy. They can get out of the business of doing scary things that kill people, but still keep enough beaurocrats on staff to administer the payouts. Not really a lot of change from what nasa is today, a 'space agency' that doesn't fly into space, just spends money.
The true elegance of this scenario, it's a results oriented system, that precludes any opportunity to pork barrel with the money. Fair value for work done will probably bankrupt a few companies currently working on Nasa projects tho, especially if contractual terms are changed from cost-plus to a results oriented system.
100 million to the first LEO vehicle that meets the same requirments for reusability that the X prize requires.
500 million ( or more ) for the first circum lunar vehicle that meets those requirements.
1 billion for first lunar landing system which can accomplish those requriments. ( launch withen two weeks of return though instead of two weeks from first launch date ).
10 billion for a man on mars and safe return.
I don't ask you to be me. I only ask you not expect me to be you.
If you're going to fund it and regulate it anyway, what the hell are you supposedly fixing? The only definite outcome from such a venture would be profit-making by a small group of unelected people.
Mike Lembeck is head of the requirements division at the exploration office at NASA headquarters, often referred to as "Code T". He is tasked with being the NASA architect for much of the new "exploration vision".
/.ers and their ideas on how NASA ought to be changed (and from reading this, he's sure trying).
What is interesting is his background....he is not a career civil servant, He's been at NASA for less than two years. Before that he was with small to medium sized companies trying to break into the space business, including Space Industries (who built Wake Shield, that flying saucer thing that was deployed by the Space Shuttle on three missions) and Orbital Sciences (which is turning a fairly nice profit from some of their projects, notably the Pegasus air launched booster).
And he's a damn smart guy with lots of cool ideas that I've known for about seven years. He very much breaks the mold of the staid NASA manager, I'm sure he'd feel right at home with most
Worst...sig...ever!
Makes you go hmm, that's for sure. I've been for this sort of thing for a long time, but now I have my doubts.
NASA is very competitive in its own right, having been invented essentially to put the Soviets out of the space biz. After Apollo (mission success?), the Agency refused to die, and, sadly, its competitive culture survived along with it, with dire consequences for progress in space.
Hallway talk at NASA centers is brazenly disdainful of outsiders. This results in frequent miscommunications with contractors. This broken flow of information played a major role in the failure of Mars Climate Orbiter and Polar Lander.
NASA officials routinely steer potential investors clear of launch startups. This happened to the Rotary Rocket engine team, who were labelled "amateurs." NASA recommended its own FasTrac engine instead. Investors went along with it, and Rotary's engine team got canned. BTW, the rotary team re-formed as XCOR, which, on a pathetically tiny shoe-string budget, built numerous rockets and the first rocket plane ever licensed to perform at an air show. Meanwhile, FasTrac limped along into obscurity.
NASA is brutally competitive. It's used every rule at its disposal for over 46 years to keep space exploration within a small, trusted club of fat insiders. It will be trivially easy for NASA to stack its prizes with enough complex filing and eligibility rules to keep the rabble distracted and on the ground.
Necessity and Incentives
Opening the Space Frontier
Testimony before the House Subcommittee on Space
by James Bowery, Chairman
Coalition for Science and Commerce
July 31, 1991
Mr. Chairman and Distinguished Members of the Subcommittee:
I am James Bowery, Chairman of the Coalition for Science and Commerce. We greatly appreciate the opportunity to address the subcommittee on the critical and historic topic of commercial incentives to open the space frontier.
The Coalition for Science and Commerce is a grassroots network of citizen activists supporting greater public funding for diversified scientific research and greater private funding for proprietary technology and services. We believe these are mutually reinforcing policies which have been violated to the detriment of civilization. We believe in the constitutional provision of patents of invention and that the principles of free enterprise pertain to intellectual property. We therefore see technology development as a private sector responsibility. We also recognize that scientific knowledge is our common heritage and is therefore a proper function of government. We oppose government programs that remove procurement authority from scientists, supposedly in service of them. Rather we support the inclusion, on a per-grant basis, of all funding needed to purchase the use of needed goods and services, thereby creating a scientist-driven market for commercial high technology and services. We also oppose government subsidy of technology development. Rather we support legislation and policies that motivate the intelligent investment of private risk capital in the creation of commercially viable intellectual property.
In 1990, after a 3 year effort with Congressman Ron Packard (CA) and a bipartisan team of Congressional leaders, we succeeded in passing the Launch Services Purchase Act of 1990, a law which requires NASA to procure launch services in a commercially reasonable manner from the private sector. The lobbying effort for this legislation came totally from taxpaying citizens acting in their home districts without a direct financial stake -- the kind of political intended by our country's founders, but now rarely seen in America.
We ask citizens who work with us for the most valuable thing they can contribute: The voluntary and targeted investment of time, energy and resources in specific issues and positions which they support as taxpaying citizens of the United States. There is no collective action, no slush-fund and no bureaucracy within the Coalition: Only citizens encouraging each other to make the necessary sacrifices to participate in the political process, which is their birthright and duty as Americans. We are working to give interested taxpayers a voice that can be heard above the din of lobbyists who seek ever increasing government funding for their clients.
Introduction
Americans need a frontier, not a program.
Incentives open frontiers, not plans.
If this Subcommittee hears no other message through the barrage of studies, projections and policy recommendations, it must hear this message. A reformed space policy focused on opening the space frontier through commercial incentives will make all the difference to our future as a world, a nation and as individuals.
Americans Need a Frontier
When Neil Armstrong stepped foot on the moon, we won the "space race" against the Soviets and entered two decades of diminished expectations.
The Apollo program elicited something deep within Americans. Something almost primal. Apollo was President Kennedy's "New Frontier." But when Americans found it was terminated as nothing more than a Cold War contest, we felt betrayed in ways we are still unable to articulate -- betrayed right down to our pioneering souls. The result
Seastead this.
Maybe some of the administrators at NASA watched Scaled do their thing, and suddenly believe that maybe private industry actually can pull this stuff off. I don't think anyone expects Scaled or anyone else to go to mars any time soon, but life is not an all or nothing game. If some company can figure out a way to get materials into orbit for significantly less money than is currently possible, that'll make it much easier for NASA to move their cool Mars ship pieces into space and then assemble them for the trip.
Sure, NASA doesn't have that cool Mars ship yet, but maybe if they can get other people to worry about figuring out all this earth orbiting stuff, then they can put all their talented engineers to work doing all that pure science stuff. It'll be hard to convince a company that they can make money sending probes to Saturn, so let NASA free up all the money they spend on things like the shuttle program, and we'll move those funds to lots of little rovers to drive around on Europa or something.
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
"Didn't work." was his reply. The thing was too heavy.
Considering the X-33 development case, obviously it would be much cheaper for NASA to 'prize out' all the innovation they can. They have fantastic scientists, but a glacially slow dev mentality caused to some degree by over abundant funding. (Three years of study after the second scramjet desinigrated was ridiculous.)
After a few years, and several millions of $$ in development, the big contracting hogs managed to get it all snuffed. Cost a lot of people their jobs, and led to a nearly useless space station at several factors the cost of the Industrial Space Facility.
Seems to me that companies would be very hesitant to get into this type of realtionship with NASA again.
Syntroxis
Wherever you go, there you are.
If NASA were to offer a prize that would actually encourage extensive development of space-faring technology in the private sector, might that not have the side effect of marginalizing NASA's importance? Not that I see it as a bad thing per se, but from NASA's point of view it would be.
English is easier said than done.
This is a great comment - right on target. I'm a NASA engineer (who currently works on shuttle and space station), and myself and everyone I work with were thrilled to see Rutan and Scaled Composites pull this off.
I don't quite understand a lot of opinions out there that imply that NASA folks think that this is "stepping on their turf". Nothing could be farther from the truth. We'd dearly love (and hope) to see the day where we are able to buy "cargo delivery" to low earth orbit at relatively low cost from private industry, so we can free up NASA to do research and exploration in areas that are (currently!) less profitable (and less appealing to private industry) like deep space probes or manned missions to Mars.
Worst...sig...ever!
This disgusts me. The Ansari family, and Peter Diamandis (I think) before them, took their hard-earned money to reward someone. NASA will take their "free" money (partially confiscated from any winner their prize would have, and from people like the Ansaris) and give it to someone who makes new craft. No thanks, I'd rather not take that blood money.
How long before NASA starts crying about how no private citizen should have the right to launch into space? That's the opinion they've held for ages, and now they have to get off their ass and try to codify it.
Losers. Death to NASA, glory to the new order.
"In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, 'Make us your slaves, but feed us.'" -Dostoevsky
Wow! I did not realize that there was a one-shot $30M solution to unemployment, poverty, unequal healthcare, violent crime, drug addiction, cancer and AIDS. For another $30M could you also eliminate tuberculosis, radiation poisoning, cultural barriers, pay inequity, corrupt government and pollution?