[KevinDavis]

[Shuttle Shucker]

Wouldn’t age discrimination, reverse discrimination and pork barreling diminish considerably if there were more competitive prizes offered like that?

For interesting information about other prizes initiatives from other agencies, as well as NASA:

http://www.spaceprojects.com/prizes

Now then...are any presidential candidates (or potential ones) besides Newt advocating an increased role of such prizes in U.S. government procurement? Should I NOT be baffled that John McCain is apparently silent on this issue even as he says he’s against pork-barrel spending? Incidentally the H Prize for hydrogen-powered vehicles remains without his sponsorship in the Senate, where its lack of passage last year killed that bill even as the House had overwhelmingly passed it. Same goes for Hillary & Obama, the supposed opponents of global warming.

For more information on the H Prize’s progress, or that of DARPA’s Urban Challenge or NASA’s (vastly underfunded) Centennial Challenges:

http://www.spaceprojects.com/prizes

[Shuttle Shucker]

Several dozen media outlets worldwide have covered this breakthrough story:

http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=&ie=UTF-8&ncl=1116001939&filter=0

so hopefully the competitive prizes movement will be allowed to spread and people will increasingly stand up to pork barrelers across the globe...

[BenLurkin]

Very interesting. I heard somewhere that gloves were the trickiest part of a space suit and that each astronaut had to be fitted individually.