The X-Prize is, of course, to see who can build the first civilian rocket to transport humans into space. Now, someone’s started a Mars Prize to encourage human settlement on Mars. I’m betting that it’s going to be a while before anyone claims this prize.
Hmm. The winner of the X-Prize gets $10 million to launch people on a sub-orbital flight. The Mars Prize pays $300k to the first team to send a manned mission to Mars.
I doubt they’re going to get any serious entrants without a much larger purse…
Eric
At least it will give enough time for the interest to increase the cash prize to something worth that big an undertaking.
According to the thread on Space.com’s message board about this, the plans are to increase the dollar value of the prize, but no matter how big the purse, I doubt that they’re going to have any serious contenders for a very long time.
Lets see - I have this really big steel plate, does anyone have a spare habitation unit or a bunch of nukes laying around?