The X-prize
Posted: Wed May 12, 2004 8:20 pm
For those of you who aren't familiar with it, the X-Prize, it's essentially a reward to the first private group to design a reusable space vehicle.How do you think this will affect the human future in space? Do you think that taking the matter away from the government is necessarily a beneficial thing? Do you think private groups will be the first to other planets, or will projects on that scale require the limitless funds of a government regardless of the cost of spaceflight?I personally envision something like the human genome project, where a government and private group collaborate in a competitive manner to reach Mars or other planetary bodies. I think if our eggs aren't in one basket, we've got a better chance of achieving our goals than if we let a bureaucracy try and pull off another moonshot.