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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.'"
I can see it now. Space Sailing, Moon Boarding, Zero G MotoCross... ESPN EXXTREME SPACE.
Anyone seen my jagged little pill?
I'm British. If I develop something, will the NASA reward actually manage to convert the units properly this time?
Obviously the $10M X-Prize got a few groups together to be the first. Most if not all of them have put in more money than the prize would bring in for winning, but there's something about our competitive nature as people... NASA should strongly consider this. If you want innovation, make it a contest. There's a ton of people out there who are that damn competitive that they'll sink their own money to win. I personally think it's great.
yes, this is exactly how research on high tech pie in the sky stuff like next generation space vehicles should be done.
then all NASA needs to do is sit back and let private companies do the engineering which means that they can send the rest of the ash over to propulsion research.
this works well because it helps mitigate the investments made by companies that win and the recognition of the win helps future sales of the products based on the new tech.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
Apparently, if you can think of a way of preventing NASA developing anything new for the next 20 years you win something called a "pork barrel"
The question is, are prizes of 10 to 30 million USD enough for corporations to spend that much or more developing space tech? Would it be cheaper than NASA developing the same things in-house? Or would the prize money be better spent on NASA projects?
Apparently one could receive a prize for:-
.for returning a piece of an asteroid to Earth."
". .
Does the asteroid have to originally be part of the Earth?
Does the asteroid have to be collected whilst it is outside the Earth's atmosphere?
How big of a piece is required?
Indeed,
"the first soft landing on the moon"
Begs the question what exactly is a hard landing?
$10 to the first company that develops a
spaceship that flies to Mars and back.
San Diego Padres, 100 Park Blvd, San Diego CA 92101
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by
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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No. The X-prize hasn't been claimed yet, and there are other avenues and goals to reach.
Diversity is a good thing.
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.
Much of the advancement in early flight was related to similar contests of the time.
plus-good, double-plus-good
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.
Maybe step one would be not to criminalize model rocketry
o ck etry_future_000823.html
e s/ body.html
http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/launches/r
and
http://www.sas.org/E-Bulletin/2003-02-28/featur
Anybody can work under ideal circumstances. -- Jeff K. (January 4, 2001)
... NASA wants some of this spotlight, and will gladly make hints of support and pose for the camera.
NASA has a budget of USD$16 Billion for this year alone. $10M to $30M?
Lets see prizes in the range of $100M on up. That would make the financial investment risks FAR easier to swallow, and we might actually see more serious commercial enterprises make the attempt.
Seeing SpaceShipOne's successes makes me dream of a brighter future. I'd love to see serious interplanetary space travel within my lifetime.
Hunt your preferred prey at Aliens vs Predator MUD. Join the war at avpmud.com port 4000
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.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Huh? How are a few fledgling attempts to break the 100km barrier anything close to a feasible manned Mars mission?
I guess its Lembeck's job to say nice things about NASA and those who control its purse-strings, but its a bit too optimistic to expect private industry to do a Mars launch anytime in the forseeable future. Heck, its hard to see NASA doing it, or any good reason to do it as a moon base would be safer, cheaper, and practical!
This sounds like damage-control after Scaled's success yesterday. Is NASA scared perhaps? Or maybe they don't want to look like a lumbering dinosaur to the tax payers.
Dunno, but the timing of this is very suspicious.
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'
Considering the roughly $900 million that NASA spent on the X-33 shuttle replacement before simply canceling the project, or the $400 million that they spend on each shuttle launch, I certainly think they should be able to spare a hundred million or two as a prize for someone can develop a private, x-prize style orbital vehicle.
I just opened my browser on slashdot and I saw two news, one under the other but very different.
:|
One is about a group of hard working scientists who dream of a world where new possibilities are created and human kind evolve to a higher level and the other about a group of litigious bastards who dream of a world where they have so much money that it leaks through their ass and everybody listen to the same crappy music made by some fake overpaid artist.
Mmm, we live in a very strange world.
Yahh, hiii haaaaa! -Major Kong, from Dr. Strangelove
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.
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!
There's probably a few people at Nasa see the big light bulb coming on. Scaled has achieved sub-orbital capability on a budget rumored between 20 and 35 million dollars. This included the design, build, and test flight stages of the program. The same program running in the Nasa culture, using Nasa methodologies, would not be finished the preliminary design study before it had burned up 35 million dollars, and to achieve the result of 'successful manned test flight', the program would have burned up at least a billion dollars. the efficiency delta here is close to 2 orders of magnitude. that's very serious when you are talking the differences between millions and billions of dollars.
It makes no sense to have the government effectively subsidize the development of a proprietary technology.
Here's the official and wikipedia links to information on NASA's Centennial Challenges Program, which is what the article is presumably referring to. The contests haven't been decided on yet, but currently things like "very low cost spacecraft missions", "breakthrough robotic capability competitions", and "revolutionary technology demonstrations" are under consideration.
Speaking of, has anybody heard about what happened at the Centennial Challenges Workshop on June 15-16? I haven't been able to find any reports on it. Hopefully at least one slashdotter attended...
The parent post is pretty insightful, IMHO. NASA's biggest problem in the last 20 years has had nothing to do with engineering, but with public relations. Add to it two major accidents and you're left with a pretty unhappy public questioning (unfortunately) the need for NASA. Imagine the kind of hell NASA would have to pay if it suffered another accident. NASA is already under tremendous scrutiny by Congress; what would happen if Congress was given yet another reason to cut the NASA budget? How much worse would public opinion get? Now consider the alternative: NASA offers a monetary prize for private companies seeking a route to space. The risks are the same -- people may die, and unlike the parent, I believe that NASA cares about these people. However, NASA avoids the added risk of organizational self-destruction. I've been pretty impressed with NASA in past years. Unlike many governmental organizations, they don't seem to demand credit for everything that is done; if someone gets to space on their own, NASA will be cheering them on. A monetary prize just allows them to promote the exploration of space (with all the risks that it carries) while avoiding the one extra risk of permanently turning the tide of public opinion against it.
The money will be paid in one lump sum.
In Cash.
Tax Free.
The Catch? The cash is sitting in an unmarked briefcase somewhere on the moon.
The Wired article uses information from this Reuters article by Deborah Zabarenko.
Reuters: "Within hours of the first private flight to outer space on Monday, a NASA official said the agency might offer millions of dollars in prizes..." This is misleading. NASA's Centennial Challenges program has been in the planning stage for quite some time now.
My opinion on prizes: Prizes are great, but they should complement grants, not replace them. An analogy: If we want to catch Osama bin Laden, we should put a big bounty on him. But that doesn't mean we should call off the military and the CIA. We should post a big bounty AND fund the military and the CIA. Same thing with space: Put a big 'bounty' on space achievements, but fund NASA too.
"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.
The thing is, Scaled has spent over $20M already. The $10M is obviously a big help, if they win- but it isn't the primary motivating factor. It couldn't be- you don't spend $20M to win $10M.
All you say is true, but this can be viewed as a retroactive subsidy towards R&D. If a company like Scaled has some plans to exploit this potentially lucrative market, the prospect of potentially spending 10 million if you win is much more palatable then a gauranteed expenditure of 20 million in R&D. Demanding success of the prize recipient also removes the risk of fraud by questionable contractors.
As has been mentioned, the aviation industry has progressed rapidly through such "contests", particularly the lockheed martins, et all. Stealth didn't become so common because private industry wanted it, or because government invented it. The government set the challenge, and let Private industry worry about keeping the margins low.
Finally, we've all,as you do in your post, griped enough about NASA expenditures to know this is a good idea. I'm inclined to think that a private company would not have come up with a re-entry shield that is composed of hundreds of ceramic tiles, all of which have to be inspected pre and post launch. It would simply not be cost effective. We already ran the crash program to space. Now lets run the slow, sensible one. Get private industry involved. Allow the profit motive in the lifting stage, not just the payload stage.
The sooner we ween space transport off of the government teat, the sooner we stop hearing about all the better ways government can spend money on this or that social program. If all that can be done is to remove that chestnut from the debate, I say it's worth it.
"Inattention makes clowns of us all" -Bean
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.
I can't help but wonder if NASA would be more effective if it took on a model much more like NSF's or DARPA's. Instead of splitting up tasks between their own field centers and painstakingly managing everything, it could become more focused on providing funding to foster the nation's space infrastructure and using programs like Centennial Challenges to accomplish specific tasks. Existing NASA centers could compete for this funding just like other organizations like universities and private companies. Doing things in this manner would also limit NASA's PR liability in the event of catastrophe, keeping the space program from becoming completely paralyzed every time a disaster happens.
Of course, this would also limit the potential for pork-barrel spending, and would thus experience difficulties in actually becoming enacted.
The successful suborbital flight of Space Ship One has left NASA in shock. Their first post-flight spin was that suborbital flight was not *that* big a deal and that orbital flight was waaaaay harder. Now they hint around about offering prizes of their own. The problem with NASA is not that they don't have smart people. The problem is that their bureaucracy tracks down and snuffs out any creative (read 'different') thinking before the words 'what if we tried...' are ever heard.
...to whoever develops the warp drive and twice that for the transporter.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
What a load of tiresome, pretentious twaddle. The end of the Apollo program meant the collapse of American society, creating a plague of lawyers and real estate investors. Gotcha. Why, I remember thinking as I watched the Challenger explode in third grade, "Screw this, I was going to be a soybean farmer, but now I'll just get a job securitizing mortgages instead."
You see, there'd be these conclusions you could jump to...
All employees must wash hands before seeking equitable relief.
Presumably, in the near future we'll be seeing a variant of the X Prize for orbital flights; perhaps in the interim we'll see things like X Prizes for transcontinental flights.
I'm curious though: How can contestants be able to deal with all the liabilities which that entails? With the test flights of Scaled Composites and Armadillo Aerospace, before being allowed to fly they've had to make various government official certain that in a worst-case scenario their craft would remain within the testing zone. With orbital (or even transcontinental) flights, their flight range will have to extend beyond the testing zone and into inhabited areas (even other countries). Governments are able to test things like this because they can deal with the liability, but what about private companies?
The government should not give $30 million dollars away for spaceflight when we have unemployment, poverty, unequal healthcare, violent crime, drug addiction, cancer, and AIDS - all of which would benefit *us* far more than space travel. Oh yeah and then there's also the fact that the market is taking care of the space thing already.
Quite honestly, I see this as NASA flat out admitting they can't do innovative development on the cheap.
Burt Rutan spent $20 million on his prototype. That's pocket change to NASA, yet I haven't seen anything come out of NASA that is even close to what Rutan designed. I haven't seen any NASA spaceplane prototypes even take off, let alone go sub-orbital.
He went sub-orbital on $20 million, I couldn't imagine what Rutan could do with a few hundred million. That's only a fraction of NASA's budget.
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
the incident you infer reference to was the loss of a NASA probe that didn't quite make it intact to Mars. Pretty darn hard to achieve the correct orbital parametrics with the differences between the two systems. It was not NASA but two different development teams working for a NASA contractor in Colorado that screwed up. One worked their part of the contract in metric units, and the other in English units. The project management never bothered to question the units worked in, nor provide the appropriate management oversight that would have discovered the anomalies. The result was the loss of a $250 million dollar Mars probe. I worked for that prime contractor, although not in that location, and not on that project. (Thank goodness.) Believe me, there was plenty of embarrassment to go around (including NASA.)
Anyon else think this is nasa basically shitting its pants in the reaction of spaceshipone being successful?
you're damn right it is.
Now they wanna try getting innovators to innovate for them, since they're stuck, one catch though, they'll basically take your idea, give you half the money you deserve from it, and then they end up getting 10 times the funding and the control over space again. Just like any good monopoly over anything, they're trying to pull anything to ensure they keep their superiority and political rights over space. My science teacher did contract work for NASA and recalls it being the worst job he ever had, spending was horrible, and many people were underpaid, and only the higher ups made the most cash. it was a job you had to have a passion for, and NASA did a great job at killing a lot of people's passion for space. My teacher actually gets paid more for teaching than he did working for NASA. Sad as it is.
I dont think too many people will jump at this, because the x-prize is much more fun, and you get to keep your soul afterwards.
"President Bush's plan to send Americans back to the moon" ;)
Yeah! That's were you belong! Damn yanks!
You cant fight in here, its a war room!