Recalling some long ago discussions of prizes here on this blog, here is more from last night's GOP debate:
MODERATOR
Speaker Gingrich, would you put more tax dollars into the space race and commit to putting an American on Mars, instead of relying on the private sector?
NEWT GINGRICHWell, the two are not incompatible. For example, most of the great breakthroughs in aviation in the '20s and '30s were as a result of prizes. Lindbergh flew to Paris for a $25,000 prize. I would like to see vastly more of the money spent encouraging the private sector into very aggressive experimentation. And I'd like a leaner NASA.
I don't think building a bigger bureaucracy and having a greater number of people sit in rooms and talk gets you there. But if we had a series of goals that we were prepared to offer prizes for, there's every reason to believe you have a lot of folks in this country and around the world who would put up an amazing amount of money and would make the space coast literally hum with activity because they'd be drawn to achieve these prizes.
