Kaido Kert wrote:

Joe Strout wrote in message

[snip]
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 ?

I agree that you won't get CATS by just throwing money at the problem. That
is why the NASA approach of "give us 20 billion USD and we will develop
CATS" is so ridiculous.

But a prize of $1B for a moon shot is not an ungodly amount of money. You
might even argue that it is way too low.

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.

You don't give them billions up front. You give them billions once they have
earned it. That is a huge difference.

-kert