Submitted by rthomas on Fri, 12/22/2017 - 14:08
Why? Because prizes are effective. Under the right circumstances, they can be more effective than traditional investments in research and development.
Lowery says: “After falling out of favor for decades, such high-publicity, fat-reward contest came into vogue again in the aughts in the wake of the 1996 Ansari X Prize for advances in commercial spaceflight” which Burt Rutan’s SpaceShipOne won in 2004.