In article ,
(Kaido Kert) wrote:

Joe Strout wrote in message
...
From the report: "Given the complexity and challenges of the new vision,
the Commission suggests that a more substantial prize might be
appropriate to accelerate the development of enabling technologies. As
an example of a particularly challenging prize concept, $100 million to
$1 billion could be offered to the first organization to place humans on
the Moon and sustain them for a fixed period before they return to
Earth."

Zow! I don't for a moment believe any such thing will happen, but it
sure is neat to see it recommended in an officially commissioned
report...

Can you imagine the trophy that would go along with a $1B prize?

Careful, here. How can you get cheap spaceflight when you pay ungodly
amounts of money for it ?

$0.1B to $1B is not an ungodly amount for placing humans on the moon,
sustaining them a while, and returning them to Earth. It might just be
enough to spur a company to actually do it, but then again, it might not
(and the company that won the prize, might still lose money in the short
term, though presumably they and their competitors would leverage that
into profitable businesses thereafter, just as is happening with the
X-Prize).

One of the reasons why small enterprises are sometimes innovative in
developing low-cost methods is that they HAVE TO make do with limited
resources. Give them billions and they'll spend billions too.

But they're not proposing to give anyone billions. They're proposing to
give the *winner* of the contest an amount up to one billion. The
contestants will be making do with limited resources anyway, both
because they have no guarantee of winning (and thus recouping their
costs at all), and because even if they win, they at these stakes they
will certainly hope to make a profit.

There is a big, huge, enormous difference between "here's a big bag of
cash, go build us something" and "here's a bag of cash you will get if
you are first to achieve a specific goal, otherwise you get nothing."
Interesting that virtually all past space development has used the
former model.

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