NASA Prize Program Releases Workshop Report

colonist writes "NASA's prize competitions program, Centennial Challenges, held its first workshop June 15-16, 2004 to brainstorm ideas, define rules and set prize amounts. The post-workshop report (PDF) is available. New ideas for challenges should be sent to <ccideas@hq.nasa.gov>. The Centennial Challenges program is supported by the X Prize Foundation, the Aldridge Commission and some members of Congress, but not all."

Comments

Of course...

[Ariane 6]

When you open the envelope, they ask you to buy a dozen magazines, first.

"If entry xx3417fg71239s is correct, we'll say $NAME, YOU'VE JUST WON 100 MILLION DOLLARS! "

Re:here is an idea

[cmowire]

Not necessarily.

That's an awfully big chunk of technology that may take centuries and alot of money to develop. Most smart folks aren't going to try for it yet because they have no real idea about where to start.

What you want is prizes that are just barely feasable in a reasonable span of time. And they need to be big enough that they are worth something, but not big enough to make it a reasonable big-company gamble. You want to get college students, crazy millionares (John Carmack, for example), and tinkerers to build it, because they will question assumptions more.