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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."
As a challenge, I'd like to submit that myself and a partner be the first couple to conceive a child in space. If this is Sigourney Weaver - then that can be my prize. Like two peas in a pod.
Stuff that matters.
"Hey look folks, we're in a bit of a fix: we have a $15.5bn/yr budget, but we're stuck with this stupid space station, and we're also afraid to do anything in case we screw up again, and we're a big fat brain-dead administration. So, like, can we give one of you a teensy little big of our big pile of cash to give us some ideas? Thank you in advance!"
I say it's pathetic...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
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.
I can't help but notice the US continuing to press forward in experimental technology that will bring the world closer together, yet we are still in denial about the resulting effects of this.
The internet propelled the world rapidly into an era of global trade and communication and yet the US and most of the general populous continue to legislate and complain as though communication and trade were still a function that required a 12 hour flight, or 2 week ship ride to facilitate. Everyone is whining about globalization, WTO etc.., and then turning around and complaining when their job got outsourced to someone who would take a lower wage and not bitch about union rules and overtime. Once upon a time, this country was built on the backs of people who beleived in an honest days work to feed their families and getting the job done was a matter of personal pride, not of billable hours.
As industries continue to push the boundaries in space technologies, the day imminent where a business man will be able to fly to London, New York, Tokyo, Moscowand back home in the space of a single day. What will happen then when goods can cross the planet in a few hours. If you think illegal trade and outsourcing are bad now, wait another 5 years. I really think the US should start facing reality that it is no longer feasable to hold an economy so far above the rest of the world. Our current rhetoric about trying to secure our borders sounds alarmingly like the same thought that drove China from the World's formost superpower in science, technology, and economy in the 14th century into poverty and isolation.
All this new stuff from NASA sounds great, and I am a huge proponent of space travel. But the moment someone figures out how to do LEO flights, we are going to find that our $7 Trillion deficit and isolationist fantasy that we can still have everything "made in the USA" is going to drive us back into a 3rd world squallor.
I've dirtied my hands writing poetry, for the sake of seduction; that is, for the sake of a useful cause. --Dostoevsky
1) First privately funded orbital flight
2)First privately funded lunar rover
3)Compettions to design space habitats
4)Zero-G agriculture projects
5)Contest for student-designed zero-g experiment (to be put on space station and run for period of time)
I read the fine article, and came to the conclusion that some NASA higher-ups had to be embarassed by the success of the X-Prize competition and Rutan's SpaceShipOne. So, as a result, they are starting up their own competing competition. It even imitates that Anasari "next" X-Prize competition in the way it is set up. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, or something like that.
This should be humorous. I've spent some time reading NASA's publically accessible documents, and they are without a doubt the most overwritten documents I have ever seen. As long as the people involved in the program don't have to maintain NASA-level paper documentation, it might work. I have this sneaking suspicion that the managers NASA attaches to this program might end up killing it by force of documentation.
I am just an
-Obnoxious Twit.
I hope all of these prizes like this and the X-Prize will help hurtle technology forward so we can all get into space.
We develop a spaceship that doesn't explode when it goes up.
Brilliant!
AND (here's the tricky bit) it also doesn't explode when it comes down.
Brilliant!
The X-prize was a very cool idea. Offer cold, hard cash for people who successfully do something new and interesting.
Now NASA is looking for other suggestions for prizes that would have the same effect in other branches of space exploration. More prizes along the same lines could provide incentives for a wide variety of inventions.
So, here's a proposal. Some body (I'm thinking governmental, because I'm an evil liberal) would accept proposals for prizes, accept donations towards specific prizes from governments and private entities. The prizes can be rewards for any sort of accomplishment. For example, if somebody wants to spur leukemia research, they would draw up a request for a new treatment that reduced the mortality rate by 50%. Then they could front as much money towards the prize as they like, and others would be free to donate as well.
The prize organization itself would be in charge of determining whether the requirements of a prize had been fulfilled, and of taking care of the money in the meantime. If a prize went well beyond its expected lifetime--say a prize was offered for something truly impossible, like psychic teleportation, and has simply been sitting around for a decade or two--then the money could be funneled into other prizes.
Other prizes that might be offered:
*An "effectively secure" electronic voting system.
*A carbon nanotube with a strength of 150 GPa.
*A lightbulb that uses 1% of the energy of incandescent bulbs.
*A good Linux driver for WiFi card X.
*Gweneth Paltrow's phone number. Okay, maybe not.
*A way to make soy taste like meat, without putting it through an animal first.
I figure there should also be some sort of moderation system apart from money, so that good ideas that lack funding can get the attention needed to attract said funding.
Any improvements to be made, or fundamental problems with the idea?
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
So, you'd want to shut down one of the few things in the American government that does anythign useful for humanity to provide an incentive for private companies to explore space? that'll work as well as deregulating electricity did with California electricity prices. Somethigns are too expensive and have too few chance of a decent return for private companies to go into. Space is one of them.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
I'm trying to figure out how Bush can be blamed for this, but I can't. Perhaps I need to be enlightened.
Quest Prize Suggestion:2 Million For: First human in space wearing nothing but saran wrap!
NASA's Centennial Challenges program is just getting started, but it could lead to big things:
Robert Zubrin, The Case for Mars, 1997
We call this distributed prize system "the market". You may have heard of it.
so basically nasa is outsourcing the job that the dod outsourced to nasa... ah beaurocracy at it's best
All the torrents you could want.
When I first read this, I thought you were being funny. (I don't mean to disparage your post - you have some good ideas.) My first thought was, "Don't we already have that?". If I have an idea for how to reduce Leukemia mortality, I send a (grant) proposal to the NIH, and they review it and send me money if they think my idea has merit, and I have the means to carry it out.
I guess the way this is different is:
After thinking about it in more detail, I think such a program could complement the existing grant structure in various government organizations. (NSF, NIH, DARPA, etc.)
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Is this that thing they call "sarcasm"? I've been on Slashdot so long, it's hard to tell.
Now, despite the fact that the X-prize wasn't nearly enough to cover the research and development costs of even one of the teams, it spurred competition by creating interest and by setting a concrete goal.
You're insistent that "the market" functions better than any prize system could. And yet the X-prize was offered, and suddenly research started moving forward. Why hadn't the market impelled people to work with that sort of single-mindedness before then? Do you think that not having the prize in place would have significantly delayed things?
I'm not sure what the magic formula is that made the X-prize so successful. I certainly don't know if the same technique can be scaled up to bigger projects or down to smaller ones. But I find your dismissive sarcasm somewhat unhelpful.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
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.
It would be better to shut down NASA and give us our tax dollars back so that we can fund the X-Cup through private initiatives.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist