Prize hearing wrapup

The House Science Committee has issued a press release about the hearing it held yesterday on NASA prizes. Overall the hearing seemed quite positive (I wasn’t present but watched the webcast). The hearing did reveal that issue that prize proponents will have to deal with, beyond issues of how to structure prizes and run competitions, is to prove that prizes will not somehow shut out minority businesses, universities, and other groups that might not be well-equipped to fund efforts to compete for prizes. Both Reps. Johnson and Jackson-Lee made comments along these lines, and even Rep. Lampson seemed a bit lukewarm on the prize concept, concerned that prizes might draw money away from conventional R&D efforts. These concerns may not be well founded—Diamandis noted that nearly all the X Prize competitors are small entrepreneurial efforts—but NASA prize proponents will have to be prepared to address them.

In a related note, NASA has also issued a report on the workshop it held last month on the Centennial Challenges prize program. The report is primarily a summary of the various conference sessions that either brainstormed ideas for prizes or discussed how to structure specific prize concepts.