Space Prize Politics

Posted by Jeff March 11, 2005 at Space Politics
The Space Frontier Foundation issued a press release Thursday about Centennial Challenges, NASA’s prize program. The Foundation would like to see NASA and Congress increase the program’s FY06 funding from the current proposal of $34 million to $200 million, although they don’t specify what types of prizes they would like to see the additional funding spent on. The group also wants to see Centennial Challenges managed by an outside organization. Interestingly, the Foundation doesn’t call on Congress to authorize NASA to award prizes larger than $250,000, the current limit: without that, increasing the overall size of the program is not very useful.