Those who have TimesSelect subscriptions may want to read John Tierney’s column in Tuesday’s issue. (Or, if you’re cheap like me, buy the dead tree edition for a buck and turn to page A31.) Tierney starts off with a discussion of Virgin Galactic and space tourism, and then segues into a discussion of prizes as part of NASA’s exploration plan. He’s not thinking of Centennial Challenges (I did not even notice a reference to that program in his essay) but larger prizes. To start: “a prize, to be awarded by the National Academy of Engineering or the National Research Council, for the best plan on paper for a manned mission to Mars.” (Some might argue we have plenty of plans on paper for Mars missions; would a prize really stimulate any genuinely new thinking on the topic?) Tierney said that Richard Branson told him he would enter such a contest for a prize of $10 million, which seems a bit steep for a paper study.
Tierney goes on to back an old Robert Zubrin idea of offering a series of prizes for steps leading to a manned Mars expedition, culminating with a $30-billion Mars Prize for the first such mission. Tierney doesn’t mention that this idea isn’t new, and that none other than then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich endorsed the idea back in the mid-90s, but did little (visibly, at least) to push it forward. Prizes, Tierney adds, would save money, at least in the near term: politicians “would get the immediately glory of inaugurating an interplanetary quest, and someone else would get the bill.”
For those who have followed the subject, there’s not much new here, other than the fact that a columnist for the New York Times has endorsed the idea.
Yeah, Tierney is quite a supporter of private space groups’ Mars efforts. He joined us at the Mars Society’s FMARS on Devon Island this summer for three days. We had some really interesting discussions, and when he left he wrote two columns endorsing the Mars Society and Zubrin’s Mars Direct plan. Though Tierney is not yet one of the most influential columnists there, it is certainly a boon to have a friendly voice in the Op-Ed page.
A few years ago, at another web site, I proposed that a prize fund be established for the first child conceived and born alive on Mars. Actually the money would be paid to the birth mother provided certain health and medical safety regulations were followed (to prevent an unethical attempt to win with a stillborn or badly deformed infant.)
Set no time limit, obtain tax deductibility for donations to the “First Steps” prize fund, and allow the fund to grow tax free at compound interest like Ben Franklin’s 200 year gift to the Philadelphia library. Seek gifts to be funded from donor’s estates, for example, in exchange for tax deductions. Publicize the names of top donors, if they wish.
If the aerospace companies donated money, they might very well get it back by selling equipment to potential parents.
Eventually the fund will become large enough to encourage someone to try. At 8% interest the principal will double every 9 years. After 54 years, $1 billion would grow to $64 billion without additional contributions.
63 years? $128 billion. And so on.
= = =
The infrastructure needed for safe conception and live birth on Mars will be substantial.
Fast forward 500 years. What are the odds that schoolchildren across the solar system would be taught the name of the first human ever born on Mars?
“A few years ago, at another web site, I proposed that a prize fund be established for the first child conceived and born alive on Mars.”
So you were proposing paying people to have sex?
So you were proposing paying people to have sex?
Married couples only? Being a faithful husband myself, that is fine by me.
One thing I forgot to add:
A $10M prize for the best Mars mission plan? That doesn’t seem that outlandish: how much did NASA spend on CE&R contracts for lunar exploration last year? There were something like nine contracts awarded, at a few million each. $10M sounds like a bargain in comparison.
The challenge, though, is defining the “best” Mars plan. Lowest cost? Lowest risk? Most scientific return? (And how do you define scientific return?) Best propsects for commercialization and/or colonization? Hey, I bet NASA could issue some study contracts to determine the prize criteria…
It seems to me the goal should be for the first child to reach adulthood, and possibly to have their own child, for that is the real goal!
— Donald
Donald writes:
It seems to me the goal should be for the first child to reach adulthood, and possibly to have their own child, for that is the real goal!
In some ways, I agree. But one possible downside is the potential for airlock “accidents” involving a younger sibling – – perhaps named Cain?
Go West, Young Astronaut
By JOHN TIERNEY
NASA still doesn’t have the money to go back to the Moon, much less head to Mars, but there is good news for space explorers. Someone else is on the job.
Richard Branson, who’s selling rides into space for $200,000 (cash up front), is close to sealing a deal to take off from a new spaceport in the New Mexico desert. The first flights are scheduled in three years, and his company, Virgin Galactic, has already collected more than $10 million from future passengers.
The list of paid-up customers includes the architect Philippe Starck, the actress Victoria Principal and the ”Superman Returns” director, Bryan Singer. There’s a waiting list of thousands, ranging from the actor William Shatner to the cosmologist Stephen Hawking.
Branson expects this venture to more than pay for itself, enabling him to start lowering ticket prices and expanding the business. ”We’re going to plow all the money back into space,” he told me. ”We’d love one day to have a hotel up there and keep pushing the boundaries.”
[CUT]
That’s the beauty of offering prizes: a little money buys a lot more R.&D. than you would ever get by giving the funds to NASA. Prizes spurred Charles Lindbergh and others to quickly turn aviation from a stunt into an industry. Competition inspires innovations that would never be approved by bureaucrats — like modeling a spaceship on a badminton shuttlecock.
[CUT]
Now that Rutan and Branson and other entrepreneurs are entering space, there’s no need for NASA to poke around in Earth orbit with the space shuttle and the space station. Nor does it need to return to the Moon. Rutan figures that private spaceships will be going there before long, so he’d rather see NASA concentrate on ways to reach Mars.
So would I, but not all by itself. Instead of just financing NASA’s plans for Mars, Congress and the White House should make it compete against engineers like Rutan. It could offer a prize, to be awarded by the National Academy of Engineering or the National Research Council, for the best plan on paper for a manned mission to Mars.
Branson told me he’d be willing to enter that competition for a prize of $10 million — a pittance next to NASA’s $16 billion annual budget. Robert Zubrin, the president of the Mars Society, said he’d enter it, too.
An even better idea would be to offer prizes for making actual progress on a Mars mission, not just drawing up plans. Zubrin suggests that the federal government get entrepreneurs started by offering a $5 billion prize for the first flight of a vehicle that can lift 120 tons into orbit.
There could also be a grand $30 billion Mars Prize for getting a human to Mars and planting the American flag. That would be a bargain compared with the current plans of NASA, which wants to get to Mars by first spending $100 billion just to reach the Moon.
I realize that Congress and the White House are reluctant to upset NASA’s monopoly because they don’t want to offend government workers and the contractors defending the status quo. But these engineers could be eligible for the prize, too. The teams competing might well subcontract parts of the mission — like tracking the spacecraft — to divisions of NASA, and those government workers could share in the cash.
A Mars Prize would have one wonderful political advantage over doling out money to NASA. Today’s politicians could announce the prize without scrimping to pay for it in any budget anytime soon. They would get the immediate glory of inaugurating an interplanetary quest, and someone else would get the bill.
“Prizes spurred Charles Lindbergh and others to quickly turn aviation from a stunt into an industry.”
Really, Mr. Tierney?
This, of course, explains why we all fly Ryan-built jetliners across the Atlantic and Pacific today…Lindbergh’s flight was the definition of a stunt; there was nothing “industrial” about it.
Earth to Tierney: It took two world wars and more than fifty years of painstaking effort by scientists, engineers, aviators, and yes, government-funded administrators and scientists doing research at government-funded labs in at least a half-dozen countries around the world, plus innumerable examples of trial and error, and numerous deaths along the way, to get from Orville and Wilbur Wright at Kitty Hawk to routine commercial airline traffic at transcontinental and transoceanic distances.
Anyone who thinks alt-space is going to get humanity into Low Earth Orbit on a routine basis, much less to the Moon, is delusional.
They’re the same type of people who believed private investment could build the Panama Canal, as opposed to the US government and the Army Corps of Engineers.
That does not mean that such individuals are not born every minute, of course; today’s various equivalents of Barnum Space Enterprises, Inc. and/or Lessep’s Transisthmian Canal, Ltd., can always find investors and advocates.
The just never seem to be able to deliver a payload, however.
Astronautics, like all engineering, is a difficult discipline, which also happens to take place in the most demanding environment the human race can currently reach; to accomplish something in space requires something more than business plans, engineering by powerpoint, vaporware, handwavium, and unobtanium…or the rhetoric of modern-day Lesseps and Barnums.
Sam, I believe you need both. We get nowhere without the dreamers, but somebody (usually the government) has to turn the dreams into reality and somebody else (coporate America) markets them to thee and me.
While Lindburgh may have been a stunt man, and the company that built his aircraft may no longer exist, look far enough into the history of every major aerospace company and you’ll find a dreamer or three.
Who were all these Lockheeds and Martins and Rockwells, anyway?
— Donald
Zubrin should go ask his former boss Lyndon LaRouche to promote the concept.