X Prize II

Hello everybody,
I have been watching the story of spaceshipone and the x-prize very closely in the next few weeks and as a graduate student in philosophy of technology I find this to be very exiting times for space exploration.

More to the point I didn't read all the dissuasions in this forum so my idea might have come up before but I believe it is a simple and elegant one and it has the potential to push the commercial aspect of space "exploration" even further.

My idea is to try and help set an X-prize II that will center on the idea of orbital flight within the next 5 years or so.

This is obviously a much more problematic task but it is worth the risk since we already have the momentum now and if some unfortunate catastrophe will happen (and it will) financial backing might be lost and the whole momentum might be lost as well.

I would be happy to hear what you think of my suggestion and if I see that people agree with me maybe we can send this idea to the board of the X-prize.

Sincerely,
Iddo

Well I did not get any replies but Furious Broccoli's post is actually the best answer I can get.

http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsArticle.jhtml?type=scienceNews&storyID=5475549&section=news

if NASA is actually going to get into the business of awarding prizes to the private sector for space achievements - it might really be a new area in space exploration.

Basically I would think NASA can easily allocate 1/2 Billion $ in the next 5 years for prizes relevant to space exploration. I can think of a few sub-prizes:
1. Reaching orbit (what I already suggested).
2. Building a reusable method for launching payloads into space in a fraction of today's cost.
3. Building robots that could work in space (building a hotel in space as well as the spaceship for mars won't be done by humans).
4. Scientific research - sending a probe to collect material from a comet / asteroid. sending a probe to collect material from mars.

Here too, your comments will be appreciated.

Iddo

hey i am just curious, how much prize money do they offer for the top few spots in the different NPC competitions especially? If anyone knows any info would be appreciated, thanks
by the way,