Space prize confidential

The Space Review ^ | 05/15/06 | Robin Snelson

[KevinDavis]

NASA unveiled its biggest and best space prize ever ten days ago, at the National Space Society’s biggest citizen space event ever, ISDC 2006 in Los Angeles. NASA Deputy Administrator Shana Dale announced the space agency’s contribution of $2 million in prize money to the Lunar Lander Analog Challenge. The competition will be managed by the X Prize Foundation and first staged at X Prize Cup 2006 in Las Cruces, New Mexico. The X Prize press release handed out after the announcement spoke of a richer pot: “X Prize Foundation and NASA offer $2.5 million Lunar Lander Challenge.”

[KevinDavis]

[Jotmo]

I win.

[Shuttle Shucker]

Can you believe what the pork-barrelers are doing to the NASA-funded
competitive prizes program?

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/cpquery/?&dbname=cp109&sid=cp109s0tv8&refer=&r_n=sr280.109&item=&sel=TOC_385521&

"The Committee does not provide any funding in fiscal year 2007 for the
Centennial Challenges program. Funding provided in previous fiscal years for
this program is sufficient for NASA to run a prize based competition, as
well as to verify that NASA will see tangential benefits from running such a
program. Providing additional funds to a program based on prizes only
creates a pot of unused funds while other aspects of NASA's mission are
being cut or delayed due to a lack of funds."

Discussed here:

http://www.spacepolitics.com/archives/001028.html

and indirectly here: http://www.spaceprojects.com/prizes