NYT: NASA Will Offer Cash Prizes for Technological Innovations

[DeepModem Mom]

NASA Will Offer Cash Prizes for Technological Innovations
By WARREN E. LEARY

Published: March 27, 2005


WASHINGTON, March 26 - In an effort to stimulate fresh thinking, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration has announced that it will offer cash prizes for innovative technology that can be applied to space exploration.

The competitions, open to large and small companies, colleges, technology groups and individuals, are seen as ways to promote innovation by letting contestants pose any solution that works to solve a problem, an agency official said Friday.

The prizes are a new approach for NASA in its effort to find new space technology....

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The program, part of President Bush's new vision of exploration for the space agency, was inspired in part by last year's Ansari X Prize of $10 million for the first private piloted suborbital flights, and in part by the incentive programs that have long been sponsored by the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

The first two competitions will focus on the development of strong lightweight materials for making ropelike tethers and on ways to transmit power wirelessly from one point to another....


http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/27/politics/27prize.html

[soothsayer]

1. That space elevator sounds so bizarre. Can it really be done?

This is definitely a good way to inspire innovation, tho! Science for fun and profit.