Was having a discussion at work earlier and we were talking about how our manned space program has really stalled since the missions to the moon. There doesn’t seem to be much that can be done about that, especially in this economy, but really even in good times there doesn’t seem to be much political will for large manned missions.
However, maybe we don’t need NASA to do large missions…maybe what we need is more ambitious X-Prize type challenges. The question is, what would it take to spur people to attempt, on their own dime so to speak, to do missions with a realistic expectation of having someone not only take up the challenge but also have a reasonable chance. Of sucess? Let’s say, an orbit around the moon? An orbit around an asteroid? A moon landing? An orbit around Mars?
Feel free to set other goals, or even offer unmanned challenges. Set time frames and what you think a reasonable prize would be to get people to take up the challenges and really take a shot at doing them.
Well, obviously, the BIG prize is steady commercial return, which seems to be where Branson is heading.
Personally, I’d like to see a manned Mars mission within 20 years - I think $1-Billion is proportionate with the difficulty, relative to the original X-Prize. I can see intermediate stages e.g. orbiting station, orbiter resupply vessel, unmanned Mars pre-supply drop ships, unmanned Mars Base robotic builder landers, each with their own prizes.
Not a lot of responses (:p) so I’ll just give my thoughts and let the thread die. I think your $1billion (I’d even make it tax free, like the Brits do with found treasure that the state buys at market prices from the finders) is right on the money for a flyby of Mars. I was thinking something along the lines of a $10 million (tax free again) prize for an orbital mission around the earth (perhaps a docking with the ISS), $100 million for an orbital mission around the moon and something in-between for an orbital mission for an orbital mission to an asteroid.
To me it seems a win-win…NASA spends a lot less money than they would have, private industry and interested citizens are spurred to start doing a lot more serious manned space exploration, and my guess based on the public’s interest in stuff like the LDRS contest and stuff like Spaceship One is that it will capture the public’s attention. Hell, could be the next reality type show like Pawn Stars or IRT’s.
I’d also like to see a separate prize group for unmanned exploration…maybe a prize for landing an exploration robot on the moon and doing a series of tasks, one for landing on Mars and doing a series of tasks, one for landing on an asteroid and one for landing on, say, something like Europa…or some sort of prize for the team that can successfully get a craft to Venus or one of the gas giants and get a craft the deepest into the atmosphere before the thing dies.
If I were really rich (Bill Gates level of rich) this is what I’d use my money to do. I wish our government would see the value in offering these sorts of prizes for really difficult challenges, and how this can spur development AND public interest at the same time.
No imagination! X-Prize for a working Dean Machine. X-Prize for any workable drive not requiring expulsion of reaction mass. X-Prize for any constant-boost drive. X-Prize for antigravity. X-Prize for a bottomless storage battery like the Shipstones in Heinlein’s Friday.
The original X-Prize, for reaching space, has been won. The next step, necessary for any further space project, is to get people into orbit. There’s an X-Prize for that, too, but nobody’s won it yet, so there’s no need to start worrying yet about the steps beyond that.
I thought the big prize was getting a back asswards state and a retarded pay-to-play governor to build him a nice new space port. And the icing on the cake is the extra sales tax I get to pay for Branson’s/Richardson’s Folly.