Mars Prize

The Mars Prize site has been updated. For more information go to
www.marsprize.org .

Kevin Davis

"Kevin Davis" wrote in message
om...
The Mars Prize site has been updated. For more information go to
www.marsprize.org .

Kevin Davis

Yeah but $300,000 is hardly an incentive to spend $300million+ !

Nathan

"Blurrt" wrote in message . au...
"Kevin Davis" wrote in message
om...
The Mars Prize site has been updated. For more information go to
www.marsprize.org .

Kevin Davis

Yeah but $300,000 is hardly an incentive to spend $300million+ !

Nathan

IMO, the main problem with prizes is that prizes do not do
much to encourage investment or sponsorship in competing
teams. Corporate sponsors spend their budgets a year or
two in advance. Individual sponsors are hard to come by
in sufficient numbers and/or size of contributions to have
much effect. Investors do not look at winner-take-all
contests as good investment opportunities.

Prizes can be effective if more effort is put into
mechanisms to provide funding for competing teams.
Special exemptions from the myriad of securities laws
could be especially helpful. Runner-up prizes would
also be helpful. Most helpful would be market guarantees
that would guarantee minimal usage for any concept that
met the originally stated goals for that concept. This
latter implies that the stated goals are sufficiently
attractive to the sponsoring entity to justify the guarantee.

As to the goal that qualifies for the prize, incremental
goals have much to offer. However, no more altitude
goals, please: 100 km at low speed is already outside
the normal abort corridor for getting to orbit. The
goal should emphasize velocity at any appropriate altitude
--not altitude without reference to speed. This is the
road to orbit. IMO, the next goal should be enough velocity
to enable a "once-around" capability or more. Payload might
be small--or alternatively enough to accommodate one or two
persons.

All this having been said, I would like to see-under the new
space policy announced by the president--market guarantees of
up to $500 million to each of as many as ten teams attempting
to provide alternate manned access to ISS and to Hubble.
Another aspect of such a policy might provide 50 percent tax
credits to investors in one of these companies. Any taxpayer
investing up to ten percent of the taxpayer's tax bill would
qualify for the tax credit and would also be considered an
"accredited investor" with respect to various state and federal
securities laws. Companies competing for the market guarantees
would be subject to fraud prosecution, but would otherwise be
exempt from secuiries laws with respect to advertising and
aggregate amount of an offering to investor/taxpayers. Market
guarantees would go to the first ten teams meeting acceptable
qualification criteria with respect to concept sanity check and
the qualifications of at least the team leader. (The rest of the
team can be hired, once funding is available; leave "management
team" evaluations to the investor/taxpayer). Failure to meet
stated milestones could jeapordize market guarantees--thus
opening another slot for another team.

Best regards,
Len (Cormier)
PanAero, Inc.
(change x to len)
http://www.tour2space.com