tapping into market power

The other day I came across this fantastic bit of news: (as an aside, the comments for Information Week reports are a cesspool of idiocy — it’s almost unbelievable)

Google and the X Prize Foundation have announced that 10 teams will compete to put a privately funded robotic spacecraft on the moon.
The Google Lunar X Prize, announced six months ago, offers $30 million worth of prizes for the first teams to create a machine that can travel at least 500 meters on the lunar surface and send video and other images and data back to Earth.

Dr. Peter H. Diamandis, chairman and CEO of the X Prize Foundation, said the two organizations received more than 560 letters or inquiries of interest from more than 53 countries.

“By comparison, at the six-month point of the Ansari X Prize, we had only two teams registered,” he said in this week’s announcement. “I think we’re going to see an exciting and very competitive race to the moon, highlighted by some very creative designs unlike anything we’ve seen come out of the government space programs. Many of these teams represent some of the most creative and entrepreneurial minds in space exploration today.”

This is great. I was a big fan of the Ansari X Prize (the competition to create a craft capable of suborbital flight) and this will hopefully be as successful. These pots of gold help to create and stimulate new markets, and provide much needed incentive for R&D in those areas. It is market stimulus in a similar way that a tax refund is economic stimulus — give back some tax money, and people will spend it; put forth a $20 million prize, and people will compete for it.

These market stimulus prizes put forth by private ventures are precisely what we need, and are 180 degrees from the government standard of no-bid contracts. The Google X Prize will help bring about practical and efficient methods of space travel and exploration of the moon. I have no doubt that the hundreds of billions poured into NASA will be looked at in stark contrast of what private ventures can do for < $20 million.