You are correct, Nobel intended the rewards to be timely. Creating a system to evaluate the technical merits of such complex fields required compromises, one of them being letting the technical merits of the ideas play out a bit.
The point being having a prize bestowed upon you after the fact for something you did anyway is not as much incentive for a person to go off and create innovative discoveries. While some probably funnel the money into new research that may or may not pay out, it’s not required. So if the goal is to drive new innovations, it is not a strong plan. It does have some weak driver because people can say “And hey, this may even earn me the Nobel Prize”.
But the goal as providing a reward to people who have done a service, it works pretty well. And in some ways it is easier than trying to evaluate proposals and guess which might be beneficial - the typical investment route.
Your calculations are seriously off. Taking the diameter of Neptune’s orbit (about 910^9 km) as the size of the Solar System, the ratio between that and the distance to Alpha Centauri (about 410^13 km), comes out to about 1/4500. Ergo, your “teacup” is evidently about 2/3 of a mile across.
(Now, if you mean to represent the Sun itself, you only need about a 6-inch teacup – a bit large, but within reason.)
Yeah, well, tough noogies Reverend (Fort) Meade, because this is IMHO, not GQ or GD. Slimy spooks don’t get a pass, whether you think they’re all that and a bag of chips or not. I’d like to see any evidence that DARPA (not their own propaganda) really wants to go to a star, because pretty much every entity that knows about such things knows it’s not in the cards. Again, they’re trolling for something else, and trying to be cheap about it, and they can fuck off.
So what? So what if what they really want is improved space propulsion so they can send Space Marines to Neptune? Or harvest Helium3 from Jupiter? Or ice mine Saturn’s rings? Who the hell cares, if it spawns investment in space technology?
The same technology that can deflect a projected Earth impacting asteroid can also deflect an asteroid into Earth. It’s all in the targeting and timing.
Touche, I am slain by the sheer majesty of your wit. You must have a truly cunning mind to catch that I have the same name as NSA headquarters and try to make that somehow relevent. Verily, such skill is only humbled by the excellence of your argument, that anything related to the military can only be used to kill or spy because they’re slimy. Bravo my good sir. In addition I must applaud the strenth of your moral fiber to be able to public proclaim that you don’t mind reaserch into such devices of destruction as long as the government wastes money doing it. In these tough economic times many would quail at saying such things but you have no problem objecting in terms that I’m sure would impress a four year old.
Leaving sacasm territory, I will point out they never said they’re trying to get to a star. They are looking for ways to convince people to invest in long term research, towards getting to a star. If you can think of a way to weponize an investment scheme I’m sure you could get a good deal more than half a million.
