Mars on the Cheap
With the fabulous results of the X-Prize, I now suggest how we can get to Mars cheaply.
What the President, whomever he will be in the next term, should do is announce a series of X-Prize-like contests; graduated hurdles to get private consortia vying for intermediate prizes. This will give us necessary technology to bump us over technical challenges of getting to Mars. And as anadded bonus, the government will not be in charge of space and it will save the tax-payers from footing the entire bill:
For example how about:
It's not like government challenges/contests haven't worked in the past on other large technical hurdles, see this.
What the President, whomever he will be in the next term, should do is announce a series of X-Prize-like contests; graduated hurdles to get private consortia vying for intermediate prizes. This will give us necessary technology to bump us over technical challenges of getting to Mars. And as anadded bonus, the government will not be in charge of space and it will save the tax-payers from footing the entire bill:
For example how about:
- XP-2 - Orbit once.
- XP-3 - Spacewalk
- XP-4 - dock
- and so on
- finally XP-N -> walk on Mars.
It's not like government challenges/contests haven't worked in the past on other large technical hurdles, see this.
posted by Mark at 10/22/2004 01:00:00 PM
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