The shame of it is, such innovation used to come looking for NASA
NASA May Offer Million-Dollar Private Space Prizes
Mon Jun 21, 2004 04:40 PM ET
By Deborah Zabarenko
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Within hours of the first private flight to outer space on Monday, a NASA official said the agency might offer millions of dollars in prizes to encourage commercial missions to orbit the Earth or land on the moon.
Michael Lembeck of NASA's office of exploration systems said such prizes would go to private explorers for such landmarks as "the first soft landing on the moon, or for returning a piece of an asteroid to Earth."
"What we're looking for is innovation like what Burt Rutan brought to the table today," Lembeck said, referring to the legendary aerospace pioneer who designed the rocket plane SpaceShipOne that entered outer space 62 miles above the Mojave Desert in California.
Lembeck said NASA would consider offering $10 million to $30 million in prizes to encourage private investors to develop space vehicles. There was even discussion of offering "a couple hundred million dollars for the first private orbital flight," he said in a telephone interview.
Such prizes appear compatible with the vision for space exploration released last week by a White House commission that studied President Bush's plan to send Americans back to the moon and possibly to Mars.
