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NASA Prize Competition Solicits Ideas and Partners
colonist writes "NASA's prize competition program, Centennial Challenges, is asking for proposals and partner organizations. NASA plans four categories: Flagship Challenges (space missions), Keystone Challenges (technologies), Alliance Challenges (run by partner organizations) and Quest Challenges (students and other groups). You can also submit ideas for prizes."
Last time they had a competition like this, the winning submission was the X-4000 Launch Aparatus, which is yet to be successfully used.
The Uncoveror: It's the real news.
Its somewhat worse than that:
"to identify potential co-sponsor organizations interested in contributing cash toward one or more prize competitions,"
Before I start a rant let me preface it with an interesting URL, Kelly Johnson's rules. If you don't know Kelly Johnson he was the genius behind Lockheed's original skunworks and built two airplanes which are still engineering marvels and he did both in months not decades. His rules are the antithesis of all things that are now NASA's manned space program. In particular:
Rule No. 3
"The number of people having any connection with the project must be restricted in an almost vicious manner. Use a small number of good people (10 percent to 25 percent compared to the so-called normal systems)."
Now back to the Centennial prizes. NASA is apparently looking for organizations outside of NASA to give NASA money to help fund part of the prizes. The irony of an agency that wastes billions a year trying to suck cash out of little innovative organizations like the Ansari X prize is just to much.
Seems to me like they are trying to embrace, extend and extinguish the X prize concept much like another monopoly we know.
They make way to many references to "partners" in this program. Forming partnerships is how another monopoly we know destroys competitors.
NASA is obviously nervous about the X prize because its the first thing exciting to happen in manned space flight in a couple decades. Sure it was just a high altitude flight but they did it on a tiny budget and a fast schedule and it was entirely private and NASA was totally cut out of it and they have massive egg on their face.
NASA's effort would be a great program if they would take some of the billions they are now wasting on the Space Shuttle and ISS and put them in to either no string grants or real winner take all prizes.
If you are an organization that either wants to sponsor prizes or win them, partnering with NASA is about the last thing you want to do. In particular I'm guessing any work you do will end up belonging to NASA and not to your organization. If you want to get sucked up in to a money devouring bureaucracy that doesn't do anything innovative in manned space flight anymore, and now needs someone to do it for them but have it still look like NASA needs to be in the loop, then go right ahead. If you want to just feed at the NASA trough then this may also be a good route to go.
I'll reitereate what I've said before here. Giving Burt Rutan a billion or two in no strings grants to go to the next stage and build a vehicle that could fly to the ISS on a weekly basis would be priceless. Maybe he couldn't do it but manned space flight needs a new organization like Kelly Johnsons old skunkworks. You need a talented, seat of the pants, engineer who can put together a small, fast, agile team of the best of the best who are there to succeed and if they do get rewarded for it in a big way. Burt Rutan is the closest match I've seen to Kelly Johnson.
@de_machina
One of the keys to transportation economy is the time value of money -- and that translates into velocity.
For example, one of the fallacies of asteroidal mining proponents is that you can afford to bring the stuff back to earth. The problem is the round-trip times start killing you due to interest costs on the capital equipment.
If you had nuclear rather than chemical propulsion that helps, but you still have problems with the shear mass of fission systems.
What you ideally want is aneutronic fusion of light atomic nuclei in a device that has a very high specific power. The worst you have to do is provide gamma ray shielding and you may actually be able to do round-trips to the asteroid belt in weeks.
Anyway, here is an excerpt from the relevant legislative language:
Seastead this.