House OKs Dept. of Energy's finally offering competitive prizes. Senate stalls

MSNBC.com ^ | May 10th, 2006 | Alan Boyle

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WASHINGTON - Scientists, inventors and entrepreneurs will be able to vie for millions of dollars in prizes, including a grand prize potentially worth $50 million, under House-passed legislation to encourage research into hydrogen as an alternative fuel.

Legislation creating the “H Prize,” modeled after the privately funded Ansari X Prize that resulted last year in the first privately developed manned rocket to reach space twice, passed the House Wednesday on a 416-6 vote. A companion bill is to be introduced in the Senate this week.

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Now the federal government's last remaining of the top 3 govt. agencies with the largest procurement budgets (i.e. the Dept. of Energy) is on the verge of offering competitive prizes one of these years. The Defense Dept's DARPA already offers competitive prizes:

http://www.darpa.mil/urbanchallenge

NASA does too, but contractor-corruption has gotten in the way:

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&

states that:

"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 more generally here: http://www.spaceprojects.com/prizes

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space prizes ping

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DARPA's prizes program hit a snag but rebounded like hopefully NASA's and the DOE's will (especially if we take action):

"DARPA Raises Stakes for Urban Robot Race"
CNET News.com
http://www.zdnetindia.com/news/business/stories/164065.html

DARPA has granted prize money of $3.5 million for its milestone urban
robotics race next November, a far cry from its previously planned
trophies.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has approved prize money
for the first three finalists of its 2007 Urban Challenge after a
confusing twist in the government agency''s right to grant monetary
awards, organizers said Friday.

DARPA will now grant $2 million for first place, $1 million for second
and $500,000 for third. But the agency dropped award money for "Track B"
teams, or those roughly 78 teams (out of 89 teams total) competing
without government funding, according to DARPA spokeswoman Johanna
Spangenberg Jones. Instead, those teams, which could have won
supplemental prize money of up to $150,000, will race for the main prize
money.

When the 2007 Urban Challenge was first announced in May, DARPA said it
would dole out more than $2 million in prizes to the robotics teams that
could navigate mock city terrain over a set time. But DARPA presumably
lost its granting authority with the passage of a congressional act--the
John Warner National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year
2007--which gave money-granting power to another government agency,
Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics. So at the time,
instead of awarding $2 million for first prize, $500,000 for second and
$250,000 for third, DARPA said it would simply give out trophies to the
three finalists.

But after much complaint from contestants, Kenneth Krieg, undersecretary
of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics, approved the prize
money.

The race will see as many as 90 teams "drive" an unmanned robotic road
vehicle through city traffic, competing to finish a 60-mile course
within six hours. Set for November 3 of next year, the challenge will
call on robots to safely obey traffic laws, negotiate busy
intersections, merge into moving traffic, avoid obstacles and navigate
traffic circles.

DARPA has yet to disclose the race location, but has said it will be in
the western United States. The government research group didn''t unveil
the 2005 Grand Challenge location in the Mojave Desert until weeks
before that race, in order to avoid giving any team an advantage.

Despite the prize money, the teams will undoubtedly have a hard time
finishing the 2007 Urban Challenge, the first race of its kind. Of the
23 teams that competed in the 2005 desert race, only four teams'' robots
completed the 131-mile course in the allotted 10-hour time. The year
before, no teams finished the challenge.

Particularly difficult for the robots next year will be the complexity
of the urban environment. That''s because robot sensors can easily
stumble because of unknown objects or stimulus. "Stanley," for example,
the robotic SUV that was the 2005 Grand Challenge winner from Stanford
University''s Racing Team, got confused when a flock of birds fluttered
up in front of the vehicle during the race. The vehicle spun its wheels
in several directions before the birds settled down and it could proceed.

Excitement is building for next year''s race, nonetheless. Among the
teams racing are the Stanford Racing Team, Team MIT from Cambridge,
Mass., and a group called "A Bunch of Dropouts" from Kingman, Ariz.
Students from North Carolina State''s College of Engineering plan to
race a modified Lotus Elise in next year''s race.

"With less than a year until the National Qualification Event, teams
will soon begin road-testing their vehicles," Norman Whitaker, DARPA's
Urban Challenge program manager, said in a statement.

DARPA set out several years ago to foster new technologies for unmanned
vehicles in the military, under a mandate from Congress. The government
has required that 30 percent of Army vehicles be autonomous by 2015 to
save lives on the battlefield. And it approved research funds to be used
for a series of races, including the Urban Challenge.

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What's wrong with the Senate though? Funding for the DOE's "H Prize" passed overwhelmingly in the House:

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d109:h.r.05143:

but stalled in the Senate:

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d109:SN02796:

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It's nice to see space activism groups pitching in to fight to fortify prizes at NASA:

http://www.space-frontier.org/PressReleases/2006/20061127savechallenges.html

How can we get a domino effect underway? Is it not obvious from our record high $9 trillion dollar national debt that one's needed?

http://www.publicdebt.treas.gov/opd/opdpenny.htm

[rellimpank]

--although I would find it hard to believe, maybe a greater percentage of the Senate took high-school physics--and perhaps know something about where hydrogen has to come from and how you get it.

[Shuttle Shucker]

There are about a half a dozen scientists / engineers serving as elected officials in Congress. Outside of the petroleum lobby, though, who would side against hydrogen fuel-related breakthroughs?

Regardless, who would side against this efficiency-promoting kind of govt. procurement breakthrough? It's been hard-fought and it's spreading:

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/discoveries/2006-01-11-grand-challenges_x.htm

[rellimpank]

--there aren't going to be hydrogen "breakthroughs" in this universe. The principles of physics apply, even to the hydrogen-oxygen bond---

[Shuttle Shucker]

I heard that from a trusted scientist and business partner a decade ago. Since then numerous relevant patents have been awarded and various major auto manufacturers have thrown big money into the arena.

One thing's for sure, with folks being incentivized to throw their own money behind such endeavors (via prize pursuits), if it's all just a pipe dream like you claim, then taxpayers won't lose a dime. Is that not a healthy paradigm shift worth supporting regardless?

[Shuttle Shucker]

Ping

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Your tax dollars at work:

http://www.srs.gov

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

I'd personally prefer a simple, low 10 per cent flat tax rate on corporations in this country, and they could spend the money on whatever energy form they please. I would give them a tax break if they stay away from Middle Eastern energy imports, however.

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Lower taxes certainly make sense, and without them (and their corresponding economic growth) I don't see how we'll ever repay our record high $9 trillion dollar national debt:

http://www.publicdebt.treas.gov/opd/opdpenny.htm

[Shuttle Shucker]

Hopefully the upcoming presidential budget proposal for DOE will include a similar initiative?

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This news will likely mean that the 3 largest federal agency procurement budgets (DOD, DOE & NASA) will finally have competitive prizes included in 'em:

http://www.fuelcellsworks.com/Supppage6771.html

"U.S. Rep. Inglis (R-SC) and U.S. Rep. Dan Lipinski (D-IL) have re-filed
their H-Prize hydrogen incentive bill. It passed with overwhelming
bi-partisan support, 416-6, during the 109th Congress. It stalled last year
in the Senate, therefore requiring it to be re-filed and passed in the new
Congress."

http://www.fuelcellsworks.com/Supppage6788.html

"WASHINGTON -- U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-South Carrolina) continued his
push for energy independence and innovation by reintroducing legislation in
the U.S. Senate yesterday creating the H-Prize. The H-Prize is meant to help
overcome the technical challenges related to using hydrogen as a widely
available and abundant fuel source by offering cash incentives. Graham
introduced similar legislation in the last Congress."

Other interesting relevant articles / blogs:

http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2007/01/24/41211.aspx

&

http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2007/01/22/38371.aspx

"[p]rizes can provide an extra push, particularly for innovators who may be
flying under the big automakers' radar."

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Elsewhere in Washington, page 460 of NASA's brand new budget request:

http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/168652main_NASA_FY08_Budget_Request.pdf

suggests that prize requests for upcoming years have dwindled to merely $4 million annually. At least the Centennial Challenges program hasn't been eliminated though.

Hopefully momentum will nevertheless pick up for the paradigm shift in procurement with the Congressionally re-iniated "H-Prize" bill for the Dept. of Energy:

http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2007/01/24/41211.aspx

Meanwhile, DARPA's DOD continues to fund its own competitive prize(s).
The DOD, NASA and the DOE represented the U.S. federal govt's 3 largest procurement budgets at least a few years back. The more different agencies embrace the competitive prizes reform, the harder it could be for the NASA pork constituency to continue backing away from it at taxpayers' expense. Interestingly enough, now there are two different political parties in power in D.C. and competing for votes. Pork-reduction is supposedly on the agenda of both in the quest for votes in 2008. I guess we'll see how much they really mean it...

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The unprecedentedly large H prize's progress on Capitol Hill is documented here:

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d110:h.r.00632:

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d110:s.00365:

[Uncledave]

Renewable Energy Ping

Please Freep Mail me if you'd like on/off

[Shuttle Shucker]

There's a renewed push in the House here:

http://www.fuelcellsworks.com/Supppage6985.html

which mentions how a new committee chairperson in the Senate may help the bill reach the White House this time. The prizes concept is clearly catching on as this fundraiser at Google shows:

http://www.lcsun-news.com/breakingnews/ci_5343154