NASA to fund new X-Prize competitions

The Register ^ | 10/13/05 | Lucy Sherriff

[KevinDavis]

NASA wants to teaming up with the X-Prize foundation to fund two new competitions to develop technology for sub-orbital space vehicles, as part of its Centennial Challenges program.

Subject to statutory budget approval, NASA will stump up prize money of more than $250,000 for each competition, while the X-Prize Foundation will handle the business of running the contests.

[KevinDavis]

[Termite_Commander]

That's good. It's nice to see NASA begin to more actively draw private enterprise into the space program.

[xrp]

If the source of the article was actually accurate, it would read "US Taxpayers to fund new X-Prize competitions".

[dr_who_2]

Good point. This has "publicity stunt" written all over it.

[Young Werther]

Senator Hutchinson of Texas has been a driving force for the NASA budget. I met her at the Science Place at Fair Park in Dallas. She included the X-Fund monies in the 2006 budget request from NASA. These funds can be spent at the NASA Administrators discretion to further the commercialization of space. If it can motivate Rutan then so be it!

[isthisnickcool]

That's good. It's nice to see NASA begin to more actively draw private enterprise into the space program.

That's good. It's nice to see private enterprise begin to more actively draw NASA into the space program:)

[dr_who_2]

I met her at the Science Place at Fair Park in Dallas.

Did the right honorable Senator Hutchinson by chance try to sell you some beach front property in El Paso?

[The_Victor]

Thanks for the ping. Is see the thread has already been splattered by the anti-NASA crowd.

[KevinDavis]

I just ignore the anti-NASA crowd (I'm not a big fan of NASA myself), however, I see nothing wrong with this at all. NASA should have been doing this from the begining..

[The_Victor]

The truth of the matter is NASA has been trying to find ways to get industry involved in space flight since the Bush 41 administration's "redesign" of space station. NASAs attempts to partner with industry haven't gone anywhere because most businesses don't have much use for space flight.

Classic example is the ISS centrifuge module. NASA has tried to find industry and non-space flight uses for the centrifuge. They approached a friend of mine who is a cancer researcher in Houston's medical industry. But from his perspective, if he needed an induced gravity environment he could accomplish it on the ground. He didn't need space flight to perform centrifugal separations for research. And so it goes.

[Constitution Day]

Exactly!

[chilepepper]

Prizes like this are a great way to foster technology development. For very little money, many different designs get tested and the best get "naturally selected".

Compare with the closed political sweetheart deals and slanted bidding rigged to select a particular NASA vendor... What remains, of course is for NASA to actually adopt some of this innovative winning technology rather than just creating an illusion that NASA is "innovative" and forward looking while going back to the same old tired welfare for politically connected aerospace industries...

the brilliant WWII Supermarine Spitfire of course an example of what can result from prize competition, evolving as it did from the outstanding Schneider Trophy winners back in the 1920's...

[Lazamataz]

This is one of the few times I am not anti-tax-spending.

[JeffersonRepublic.com]

This is a great idea... It's a round about way to get Rutan to work for them.

[KevinDavis]

In fact this is money well spent..

[KevinDavis]

I think that was the idea.. Have people like him give NASA some ideas on how to go to space cheaper...