Your attacking a tiny percentage of how NASA spends it’s money, challenging people with difficult tasks is NOT wasteful if in the end it produces new better ways to accomplish a task. Even if they do not meet the final goal, they still will push themselves and come up with new solutions that would not have existed before otherwise.
Risk, challenge, attempting difficult tasks.
Have you ever failed?
Did you learn from it?
Do better next time?
Falling on your ass persuing tough goals is often more valuable in the long run then attempting easy things without fail.
NASA is in that game, remember?
I’m certainly not against NASA’s spending money on offering competitive prizes, but I believe the money would be better spent on them if offered by an independent prize-offering authority like that described at http://www.ProSpace.org . NASA has an inherent conflict of interest to preserve its MONOPOLY so it makes prizes that can’t be won in hopes of continuing with the miniscule amount that it offers for these prizes from its exorbitant budget. NASA is no more risk-taking than my granny was. We’ve been going around in circles on the Shuttle for decades while the Russians can do space stations and launches 30 times more cheaply, and without casualties off the ground in nearly 4 decades (whereas NASA keeps having them). We won’t be able to repay our national debt and finance the wasteful social security and other programs imposed on us if we don’t start pushing the envelope in space. NASA bureaucrats do not deserve our trust any longer.