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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.'"
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.
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'
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.
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
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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.
"Didn't work." was his reply. The thing was too heavy.
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.
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