Moon Walking

The Times has a short article on the Google Lunar Prize: $20 million to the first team to land a spacecraft on the moon and explore 500 meters. The article's largely about the very different approaches people have, not in getting there but how they intend to make money beyond the prize. One wants to sell cargo space to the Moon, another wants to do lunar mining, another wants to send American Idol contestant there (I'm for that) by transmitting the sound waves of their voices through the lunar surface and see who sounds best (oh, never mind).

This really highlights how far we've gone since 2004, when the Ansari X Prize awarded $10 million to the first private group that could get to space. It was all about how they are going to get their. I remember hearing very little about the post-Prize business plan.

But the biggest obstacle of all still looms: funding. Still, a lot of these guys are backed by a member of the super-rich. It reminds me one of the under appreciated benefits of having a bunch of very, very wealthy folks: they are willing to pay god-awful amounts of money for high-tech gizmos, allowing them to be affordable for the rest of us just years, rather than decades, later.

Congress COMPETES

The America Creating Opportunities To Meaningfully Promote Excellence in Technology, Education, and Science Act (America COMPETES Act) was reauthorized by the 111st Congress. I admittedly don't know much about these prizes and will be looking closer at them in the near future. Here's a link to various prizes the government's offering (the core of the law's been around since 2007; it looks like the reauthorization, among other things, increased the role of prizes).

Ten Red Balloons

DARPA's awarding $40,000 to the first person or team to find ten red balloons which were spread all over the country on December 5th. The goal is to learn how people organized in large teams use computers to socially network. What software will we see? Will there be spying? Attempts to misinform other teams? I'm not clear how they will measure all they want to measure, but the prospects look very interesting.

December 5th was the 40th anniversary of Arpanet, the Internet's precursor.

HT: Alex Tabarrok

Update: Here are the results.

Car of the Future?

I mentioned recently a $1 billion prized if you can "Achieve 150 miles per gallon of gasoline in a 3,000 lb. car, using EPA standards; without increasing the cost of a normal car more than 10%." I wonder if this guy knows about it. It looks like he is working for a different prize, although for a bit less money.

More Prizes

Via Arnold Kling, here are four billion dollar projects.

1. Develop a cure for breast cancer.

2. Develop a cure for diabetes.

3. Reduce greenhouse emissions from petroleum powered automobiles by 95% without increasing the cost of a normal car more than 5%.

4. Achieve 150 miles per gallon of gasoline in a 3,000 lb. car, using EPA standards; without increasing the cost of a normal car more than 10%.

Gingrich Kerry Debate

Yesterday I attended the debate between Newt Gingrich and John Kerry on Climate Change. Both took the position that man is the driving force behind the warming earth and something needs to be done and quick.

Gingrich stated that economic growth matters, and leadership should start with science, entrepreneurship, innovation. He advocated the use of prizes to spur innovation, citing the X-Prize as an example, among others. He also supported various tax breaks and incentives to promote greenness. He said something to the effect that he doesn’t want a “laissez-faire market, but incentive based market.” This statement left me confused, as I assumed that laissez-faire markets were all incentive based. I assume Gingrich meant he wants a politically incentivized market, fit to his wants and desires.

Kerry stated his support for the prizes, and said we had a “moral obligation” to meet this. He repeated you can’t believe “half the science,” I assume he meant all the catastrophic predictions that some scientists make along with the scientific ones, although I’m not sure. He kept citing the sulfur dioxide reductions as a model for CO2 cap and trade legislation. He said we’ll hit the “tipping point” if we hit 450 part per million (ppm) CO2 concentration. He said that the worst thing that will happen if he’s wrong is that more jobs will be created, more technology will be made, health will be better, and we’ll have energy independence. I’m used to politicians exaggerating or giving ridiculous promises, but having all this seems completely outlandish and nothing but vacuous political rhetoric. He seemed to have no concept whatsoever of tradeoffs (gain jobs in the wind sector, but lose jobs elsewhere) or rent seeking (he mentioned companies who already do something green lobby to coerce other companies to do the same). He felt that “We’re living outrageously as an outlaw.”

At the end of the debate I didn’t really feel good about either of them, but felt better about Gingrich. Kerry seemed pessimistic and that unless we undertook all sorts of big measures now and listened to him we are all but doomed. Gingrich seemed optimistic and had faith in the markets to create solutions, if properly incentivized by tax breaks and prizes. They both want more government, but just applied in different ways.

Save Lives and Win Fabulous Prizes

Mason's Broadside ran an article this week about Abul Hussam, a Mason chemistry professor who won a $1 million prize for creating a filtration system for South East Asia. The goal of the Grainger Challenge Prize for Sustainability was no small task. The system not only had to reliably filter arsenic, it also had to be easy to maintain, affordable, socially acceptable and environmentally sound.

This is an apt example why technological development is best pursued in a de-centralized way. Instead of creating a single committee, bureaucracy or "task force," the Prize signaled to countless people that this problem exists and is worth solving.

I doubt a government bureaucrat could replicate the job Hussam did. Not only is he a professor of chemistry (perfect for filtration), he's from Bangladesh and is intimately familar with daily life and the resources locals have access to. His system is built around the people and their world, allowing them to make their own filtration system from easily found resources. Useful technology doesn't just come from knowledge discovered in the lab. It also draws upon the vast stock of information some of us had since we were children.

NetPrizes

NetFlix is offering one million dollars to the first person that can improve their system (which matches people to movies) by 10%. The company provides the contestants with a bunch of random data and a program that measures the attempt's accuracy. The contest is less than a year old but the leader is already at 6.75% improvement.

Here's the New York Times article which mentions two advantages to prizes: paying for results, not proposal (as grants do) and anyone--not just the usual experts--can try. I can think of two other advantages: allowing people to try whatever out-of-the-box idea they wish and creating a competitive atmosphere that demands constant progress.

Hat Tip to Donald Boudreaux.

Prize Watch

Given my research interests of prizes for technological invention, I've decided to start a list of such prizes in order to keep better track of them. This is an ongoing list and if you discover any technology prizes, please let me know via comments or e-mail.

-The Grand Challenge, a DARPA prize. Robotic vehicles traversing an urban or desert course.
-The Lander Challenges, X-Prize and NASA prizes. Landing on and breaking the Moon's gravity.
-The Auto X PRIZE, an X-Prize contest. Creating a new order of magnitude of fuel efficiency.
-The Genome X PRIZE, an X-Prize challenge. Speeding up the ability to sequence the human genome.
-Centennial Challenges, NASA, et al. prizes. A plethora of space-related prizes intended to ease humanity's jounery into the final frontier.
-The M Prize, a Methuselah Foundation contest. Extending human life starting with mice.
-The NetFlix Prize, improving the accuracy of predictions of who loves which movies.

Notable for the list is the X Prize Cup, an annual exposition where some of these competitions are held.

Shafting the Space Elevator

Colleague and friend Brian Hollar commented yesterday concerning the possibility of a space elevator: a robotic machine that runs up and down a teather with one end anchored on earth and the other anchored to an object in orbit.

Brian thinks the idea is very promising, quoting Business 2.0's comparison of the idea: "The space elevator is where the PC was in the 1960s: The theory is solid, the materials exist, and people in garages are starting to tinker with the next step."

But the biggest hurdle to the space elevator is that NASA has latched on to it. The elevator is destined to be expensive (estimates start at about five billion USD) adding to the already high likelihood that it'll make a lot of headlines. This is more of a weakness than a boon. When NASA projects make headlines before they are complete, the project becomes a political pawn. The focus changes, the budget fluctuates, projects are added on and taken off, rivalries and infighting overcome the goals and, if you're lucky enough to finish what you started, it'll be a shadow of what it was supposed to be. The ISS is the first example that comes to mind.

Don't get me wrong; there are some things NASA's starting to do right. Following the X-Prize lead, it's offering annual prizes for those that solve certain technology obstacles the elevator faces. But the prize money is tiny ($50,000 for each of the two elevator-related prizes) and while one has thus far received an impressive following (19 teams this year for the tether prize), the other is proceeding lacklusterly (4 teams last year, only two so far this year).

NASA's core problem with its approach on this strategy is that it's missing the whole point of the prize system. The idea is to encourage novel solutions of achieving goals, not to simply outsource your R&D department. By stating how NASA would like to get into space (the elevator), that strategy is embodied in the rules and hampers engineers from using their own ideas. For example, the tether prize states all tethers must form a closed loop, weigh a maximum of 2 grams, have an inner circumference of 2m long, +/- 1cm, and can be no wider than 200mm.

The goal isn't to get into space with an elevator; the goal is to get into space cheaply.

NASA Wises Up...Sort Of

Twenty years after the Challenger explosion, NASA finally announced the space shuttle will be scraped and they will undertake a new generation of design.

The shuttle has never worked the way it was supposed to, and by that I mean be cheaper to operate than a rocket and capasule. Thus, NASA will design a new rocket and capsule.

It took two disasters, five space-worthy (relative term) shuttles and a good four decades of development to finally admit what was demonstrated with every launch; it's just not worth it.

But the most puzzling thing is the use of old capsule design for the new phase of NASA space exploration in an age when the Ansari X-Prize generated 26 teams, each with their own method of getting to space. The most notable example being the winner of the Prize: SpaceShipOne. Hell, the craft's hanging in the National Air and Space Museum. It's not like NASA officials have to go far to see it. Perhaps they don't just want to admit the private sector has a leading role in their domain.

A Prize No More

We libertarians love to complain. Government’s in the way over here, not enough free market over there; it’s mostly just a bundle of direct attacks and vauge answers. Mike told me the other day that he’d like to see real solutions put forth and if he was here, he’d do something about it.

(Silence.)

But he’s not here and I am. Just as well, because this is about something that’s near and dear to my heart: the Ansari X Prize.

As I mentioned in a previous post, the Ansari X Prize is a $10 million prize to the first private team that can send a manned ship into space, return him and repeat the process two weeks later.

Or should I say, was a prize.

Yesterday, SpaceShipOne completed the daunting task, winning the prize, and already we are reaping the benefits. Virgin Atlantic Airlines founder Richard Branson announced the creation of Virgin Galactic Airways which will offer suborbital flights at $200,000 a seat. The company already ordered five SpaceShipOnes to be built. Next year, the makers of 7-Up will offer one of these six-figure seats as part of a contest.

This is only the beginning. The Ansari X Prize will sponsor annual space races, pushing the technological envelope even farther. And a new contest has surfaced: $50 million for the first team to make a ship capable of going even farther into space (100 miles instead of 62) and dock with an orbital station. NASA will also be offering its own prizes.

This is an answer. Right here. Technology is humanity’s greatest friend. It raises standards, saves lives, connects people and makes dreams reality. At the cornerstone of creating a better world is creating a world that favors novelty, innovation and invention. There is no reason why we cannot stretch our arms a bit wider—prizes for the cure of cancer, for new energy sources, for improved anti-terrorism technologies. The list goes on forever.

(I’m updating a paper I wrote a few months ago about this precise subject. Hopefully, in a few weeks, I’ll publish it here on the blog. I’ll appreciate any input our readers could offer.)

How Prizes Change the World

Today marks the first time in history that a privately funded ship left the cradle of earth, joining the nations that have set foot in space. SpaceShipOne, one of over two dozens competing vessels, is well on its way to winning the X Prize, a $10 million prize to the first team that can send a three-manned (or equivalent) ship into space and repeat the achievement within two weeks.

What the X Prize captures is the freedom to try, to explore and to fail—all freedoms law and legislation tend to constrict. Without the worry of a government overseer, competitors can explore whatever theory or idea they wish and because there’s a prize, there’s focus, urgency and cohesion that jumpstarts the competition. Michael Polanyi advocated a “dynamic order” that shuns central planning and encourages in engaging “the full possibilities of research.” The X Prize is just one example of the dynamic order: a freedom-loving structure that lays the groundwork for scientific leaps. It is a formula for future research.

I’m not sure exactly what makes a prize for something as inspiring as space flight—maybe it’s the publicity that captures the imagination of the scientist, maybe it’s the guaranteed bonus that finally convinces someone it’s worth the risk and time, maybe it’s atmosphere and buzz that comes with a competitive environment. Really, it’s all of them and other reasons I can’t yet identify. We do know it’s not just a matter of the prize money. SpaceShipOne’s team—Scaled Composites, LLC—spent $20 million to get this far, more than twice the value of the prize. This isn’t unusual. During the Orteig Prize, the prize Charles Lindbergh won when he flied from New York to Paris without stopping, other competitors often spent more than the $25,000 prize.

Why do people spend more than the guaranteed return of the prize (which itself already isn’t guaranteed)? Why, when left to their own devices, do individuals exaggerate their own risk by spending so much? Perception and experience. Everyone knows that completing the prize will spawn a new era of travel and a new industry that the winners will be at the helm of. And even the losers of the prize may turn out to be economic winners. Every team has access to a unique body of knowledge that may prove useful outside the context of the prize. Armadillo Aerospace, for example, created a new rocket fuel, one that’s more powerful and cheaper than the fuel NASA uses. Just as the completion of the Orteig Prize spawned the development of the multi-billion dollar aerospace industry, there’s no reason to think that the X Prize won’t do the same.

Today we saw private interests at work, jumpstarted by other private interests. And behind all the activity that led up to the space flight is an enormous body of knowledge that didn’t cost taxpayers a dime. Yet this knowledge will no doubt prove pivotal as travels to space become more affordable and, decades from now, available to the average person.