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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 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.
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.