Competitive Prizes Regarding Space as a Waste-Reducing Means of NASA Procurement

     One can derive an explanation of what competitive prizes are from the following quote from a former NASA prizes director:

  _{"Instead of soliciting proposals for a grant or contract award, NASA will state its technical goals without prescriptions for achieving them. In each challenge, multiple (competing) teams will integrate, test and fly various approaches to a certain goal. As multiple teams succeed or fail in going after a challenge, the competitive process will distinguish between those technologies that can be imagined and those that can be practically developed..."                
                                                                                  Brant Sponberg, former program manager of NASA's Centennial Challenges}

See: http://www.Challenge.gov & http://www.Challenge.gov/NASA

Why aren't more, and bigger prizes available there though? NASA's annual budget is around $20 billion. Nevertheless, its space prizes still amount to merely a few million, right?

Previously....

For an interesting analysis at FoxNews.com, feel free to click here.   Meanwhile, isn't it puzzling how tax-subsidized and supposedly innovative NASA still only aspires to allocate about 1/1000 of its (frequently-growing) budget to competitive prize offerings?    After years of government contracting-related failures, DARPA subsequently offered a $2 million dollar competitive prize which has already achieved the desired results.   In contrast, NASA still offers relatively small prizes despite having a much larger overall budget than DARPA's.   NASA's Centennial Challenges remain inadequate even as NASA now has the Congressional authorization to make them worth millions of dollars or more.   Why do we let this happen in our democracy?   Shouldn't NASA be eager to adequately fund prizes, considering how section 102 of NASA's charter requires that NASA "seek and encourage, to the maximum extent possible, the fullest commercial use of space"?  To comment on this to your elected officials, please click here.

VentureBeat article: With still existing  NASA prizes already won, $4 million are allocated for NASA prizes in 2010 (out of NASA's annual $18 billion dollar budget).  Will Congress nix that funding allocation again, though?

 
    Previously:  NASA's 2008 budget request (.pdf, page 460): requested prizes funding declines drastically during future years...  In contrast, the Department of Energy is poised to offer relatively larger competitive prizes.  Are your elected officials supporting this healthy paradigm shift?
       Since the White House's budget proposal for NASA's Centennial Challenges  competitive prizes program is so meager, it would seem that additional funds will apparently have to come from other NASA programs.  Might you have any in mind that you'd like to democratically recommend for cuts?

NASA's prizes program has its share of problems, as one can see here and especially here (where it says what follows):

     "The Committee does not provide any funding in fiscal year 2007 for the Centennial Challenges program. Funding provided in previous fiscal years for this program is sufficient for NASA to run a prize based competition, as well as to verify that NASA will see tangential benefits from running such a program. Providing additional funds to a program based on prizes only creates a pot of unused funds while other aspects of NASA's mission are being cut or delayed due to a lack of funds."

Previously... 

The White House requested $20 million for NASA prizes for FY 2005. Congress consequently directly appropriated $9.7 million. Undaunted, the White House admirably requested $34 million for FY 2006.  

http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/107488main_FY06_low.pdf (pages 153-154 of 389, or SAE 7-16, 7-17).

Apparently Congress allocated nothing though, perhaps because much of the tax dollars that NASA previously allocated for competitive prizes still had not been committed to any actual prizes.  Now under new leadership, NASA has requested far less for FY 2007.   Should the space entrepreneurial community be pleased?  Here's an interesting quote:

                                                                                                                                                                                      Rick Tumlinson
                                                                                                                                                                     Space Frontier Foundation co-founder

"A true competition, like the British Royalty Prize (see the book "Longitude"), the Orteig and Kramer prizes is something that absolutely will work. These approaches just define the goal. They do not try to define how to reach the goal, but merely put up the money and stand aside.  Then, and only then can true competition come to life and produce results.  This approach has often attracted prize-pursuing investment by competing teams that collectively amounts to as much as 40 TIMES the cost of the prize, itself.   Why won't NASA put up a billion dollars as a competitive prize for attaining a difficult goal, sort of like the X-Prize Cup is doing with far less money?  Then the taxpayer could get as much as  a 40:1 leverage on his or her tax dollars.   Additionally, at least most of it would be spent efficiently, not thrown away like it is now in the traditional government contracts setting."
                                                                                     World record-breaking Ansari X-Prize winner & Scaled Composites´ CEO Burt Rutan

     In the absence of such NASA-funded competitive prizes, is it surprising that innovators have not been able to significantly lower the cost of accessing space?   After all, the government procurement process can be flagrantly corrupt, as this Washington Post article helps document.   Unsurprisingly, though, the sponsorship-seeking, NASA newsleak-coveting space media outlets typically do not provide any particularly significant coverage of subversive actions which potentially serve to thwart the long overdue potential creation of far more adequate space prizes.  

It would be nice if we could get NASA to offer more significant competitive prizes, but there's still a lot of procurement reforming left to do there.  Why is it worth pushing in favor of this paradigm change though?   This article lists various reasons.     

                                                                                      _{Dr. Robert Zubrin, founder of the Mars Society and CEO of Pioneer Astronautics}

        If Congress ultimately keeps from fortifying the competitive prizes part of NASA's proposed budget, then it's most likely due to unpatriotic pork barreling, and enduring gratitude for recently criminalized corporate campaign contributions.  Do our elected officials (and their political parties) not deserve to be held politically accountable though?  Of course, purported "justifications" for insisting upon sticking with the typically inefficient (yet lucrative for contractors) government contracting status quo predictably abound.   They usually do when taxpayers are being taken advantage of.   Do we really have the government that we deserve though (to paraphrase Ben Franklin)?  

      Fairly recently enacted campaign finance reforms should change the status quo as time progresses.   We will be enduringly publishing any information we come across regarding precisely who the specific culprits are for any potential sabotaging of this new NASA-funded prizes endeavor.   Unfortunately, we remain unpersuaded that any other space media outlets (which paradoxically seek support from aerospace government contractors even as they're supposed to scrutinize them...) will adequately cover this nevertheless highly important story regarding how a long overdue reform at NASA is potentially getting sabotaged.   The internet 's prevalence erodes the influence of corrupted media outlets, though...   Please feel free to contact us with any relevant information that you want us to have.  As this page is maintained by a licensed attorney volunteer in Washington D.C., confidentiality will be vigorously guarded if requested.  

      Meanwhile, for an additional analysis regarding why larger prize-offerings could help numerous competing entrepreneurs finally bring about cheap access to space even as governments have repeatedly failed, please read the following excerpt from an article by Newt Gingrich:

Meanwhile, here is an interesting excerpt from an interview maintained at Newt.org: "I am for a dramatic increase in our efforts to reach out into space, but I am for doing virtually all of it outside of NASA through prizes and tax incentives. NASA is an aging, unimaginative bureaucracy committed to over-engineering and risk-avoidance which is actually diverting resources from the achievements we need and stifling the entrepreneurial and risk-taking spirit necessary to lead in space exploration."

[Incidentally, some space entrepreneurs have started congregating online, in this forum, to discuss Newt's potential significance to humanity's finally opening the space frontier.]

       Far below in this article is a list of the known space-related prizes available thus far.   To our knowledge, none receive any government funding and many U.S. government agencies don't offer competitive prizes (yet).   This is predictable, though.   After all, prizes do not subsidize lots of bureaucratic red tape and possibilities for opportunistic behavior which often keep government employees and members of their pet contractors relatively luxuriously employed.  Instead, adequate prizes potentially empower smaller yet more innovative companies to come up with technological breakthroughs that could help fix the USA's presently troubled launch industry.   Offering a prize rewards the most efficient companies, instead of the ones that are merely the most effective at lobbying Congress to preserve bloated and wasteful government programs that compete against a budding private industry.   Did you know that a prize is what financially empowered Charles Lindberg to privately and profitably make the first trans-Atlantic flight nearly a century ago?

^{"The history of aviation advances is marked by competitions, such as the 1909  $2,500 London Daily Mail Prize for the first powered flight across the English Channel, the Guggenheim prizes in the late 1920s to promote air safety, and the $25,000 Orteig Prize that Charles Lindbergh won in 1927 for flying the "Spirit of St. Louis" from New York to Paris, the first nonstop solo transatlantic flight."    
                                                                                                                -Source:  Washington Post, Dec. 5th, 2001.}

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       The resistance to NASA's offering adequate prizes goes back to well before the current Administration.   For example, while Lori Garver headed NASA Headquarters´ now discontinued Office of Policy & Plans during the late 1990's, her inspired efforts led NASA to make an apparently pioneering, playing field-leveling request of Congress to fund prizes with which to inspire & empower privately owned breakthroughs regarding space.   However, Congress did not authorize prizes for NASA that year, and it is not clear how much institutional backing Ms. Garver received from the Clinton Administration.   Apparently the space activism groups were not notified in time to lobby Congress, either.   Lori has since returned to the private sector (Avascent Group).   Fortunately NASA sort of repeated her prizes request.  

      Have you noticed how NASA has space shuttle and space station programs that compete against previously existing and / or potentially existing private ventures such as MirCorp or thwarted launch ventures?  

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    ^{Editor's note: we have absolutely NO formal relationship, whatsoever, with any prize-offering foundations and we certainly have never accepted any funds from any.   Simply put, we are persuaded by the concept,  and by the data that's already available.}  

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      As mentioned above, according to Ansari X-Prize winner Scaled Composites´ CEO Burt Rutan, an adequate prize (or "guaranteed market") generally leverages a collective investment made by the private sector pursuing it that is 40 times greater than the actual amount of the prize.   Admittedly, perhaps the larger the prize is, the lower that  40:1 multiple becomes.   Nevertheless, anything better than a 1:1 ratio like what we presently get from NASA's self-perpetuating and tired government contracting policies is still an improvement, is it not?

 _{"The defense agency spent $13 million on the race. It estimates competitors laid out four to five times that amount developing their entries, which rely on global positioning satellites as well as a variety of sensors, lasers, radar and cameras to orient themselves and detect and avoid obstacles."                                                                                          WashingtonTimes.com article}

 Here's an additional quote that is worth considering:

     _{"When money is delivered in expectation of results, rather than for the results themselves, the decision makers have an obligation to put the money where they think it will likely accomplish something. This almost guarantees that nothing too far outside the norm will be funded, because it could make the decision-makers look very foolish. There would certainly be backlash if the government gave $50 million to a crackpot anti-gravity research company.   However, if they offered a $50 million prize, and it was somehow actually won by a crackpot anti-gravity research company..."
                                                                                                                                              John Carmack
                                                                                                                                               CEO, Armadillo Aerospace}

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        Maybe if NASA offered the $10 billion or so dollars presently designated for the highly criticized Crew Exploration Vehicle program  as an adequate prize instead, then perhaps as much as $200 billion might be collectively invested by all the companies that pursue it.    Contrast that with the CEV program, itself, which is plagued with meddlesome centralized planners and which resembles the failed $1.3 billion dollar X-33 program, as well as the bureaucratic former Soviet Union.  CEV, like the wasteful and discontinued X-33 program, heavily funds huge companies pretending to innovate but which actually have little incentive to bring down the cost of launching because the quantity of government-sponsored launches would likely not increase, regardless.   As  NASA's "cost-plus" means of compensating corporate contractors involves giving them a percentage of their overall expenditures as some sort of "profit", there are presently still astonishing incentives for contractors and their bureaucrat allies to make things as expensive as the political process will tolerate.   With our record high $8 trillion dollar national debt though, can we continue to let this happen in our democracy?  

"The $26 billion that [U.S.] marketers will spend in 2010 in online display ads, email, search, and classified ads will represent [merely] 8% of all advertising spending - rivaling spending on cable/satellite TV and radio."

                                                                                                                                                         Forrester Research report

Why won't the NASA clique more greatly embrace this approach using more of its $17 billion dollar annual budget?  

      Some might claim that prize-offerings could somehow result in discrimination against those potential entrepreneurs who supposedly couldn't get investment despite the existence of an adequate prize.   However, if the way that NASA treats minority-owned small businesses, let alone small businesses, is supposedly so appealing to them then why hasn't space succeeded at attracting the investment of capital and talent by the aeronautically-inclined U.S. Airways board member and former owner of Black Entertainment Television, Robert Johnson?  Is that pioneer not a billionaire, and also an aeronautics enthusiast who made a bid for the potential D.C. Airways venture?   Nevertheless, has anybody noticed his deafening silence in terms of expressing any tangible entrepreneurial interest in space?   Why would this be, if NASA is genuinely good for small and minority-owned businesses?   The same can be said regarding Donald Watkins, a billionaire Alabama-based attorney who owns two planes, part of a third, is buying a Boeing 737, and says "I actually care more about my airplanes than my cars."   Can anyone blame Donald for aspiring to become the first black baseball club owner instead of a pioneer in space who would have to try and co-exist with a potentially very jealous NASA?   Indeed, Mr. Watkins views with disdain "government handouts" such as those which NASA uses to purchase potential critics' silence.  Isn't it remarkable how NASA pretends to offer certain ethnic minorities a racial spoils system in exchange for their political support, while actually keeping them down & dependent on the "NASA plantation"?   What if NASA started funding adequate competitive prizes though?  

    NASA could, for example, offer prizes for Mars sample returns, rather than spend the money on job-creating paper studies and meetings upon meetings which often just delay matters while probably missing the fossils.   Can´t the safety issues be resolved in ways that still allow for the massive involvement of all sorts of companies and competing approaches? Are we really that comfortable with NASA´s playing the king-maker role after bloated contractor Lockheed Martin's 1999´s Mars failures helped lead to the commercial failures of various potentially helpful and certainly expensive Mars movies from Hollywood?   Already the 2001 Mars Odyssey's radiation measuring instrument has failed, and the 2001 lander was scrapped altogether.   2004 successes have come at enormous cost, too.   Our current procurement system seems broken.  Why don't we democratically try to fix it?

Max Solis, CEO of BST Systems

_{Editor's note:   BST Systems provided the battery for NASA's 1997 Mars Pathfinder Mission, which impressively lasted 3 times as long as NASA had contracted for it to last.  Surprisingly though, BST's batteries have not been included in any subsequent Mars endeavors.   And yet NASA simultaneously brags about being a friend to ethnic minorities such as that Puerto Rican American?   Some quietly say that NASA's self-perpetuating bureaucrats hold  the prospect of  future sub-contracts out for minorities in order to try and encourage them NOT to let anyone whom they can influence speak out against the status quo.   But as Benjamin Franklin once said, "the people have the government that they deserve."}  

Here are some discussion threads devoted to this subject:
FreeRepublic.com; UniverseToday.com; TransterrestrialMusings;
 Space.com; HabitableZone & Slashdot.

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To comment on any of this to your elected officials, please click here.