Georgy Bailey: What is it you want, Mary? What do you want? You want the Moon? Just say the word and I’ll throw a lasso around it and pull it down. Hey. That’s a pretty good idea. I’ll give you the Moon, Mary.

Mary: I’ll take it. Then what?

Mary’s last question has been NASA’s problem for the last 39 years. What do they do now? A manned mission to the Moon was such a big endeavor that topping it has proven impossible for… well… my entire life. The next obvious goal – Mars – is a much bigger step. It seems obvious that going to Mars means going back to the Moon.

In his last post, “Not Everyone Keen on Return to Moon,” Phil suggested that a push prize might be the best and most cost effective way of returning to the Moon.

I’m a big believer in push prizes. The Ansari X Prize was only $10,000,000, but it resulted in a man being put in space… twice. It also launched a private space tourism industry that looks almost ready to go. Who would have thought that any space program could be started for $10,000,000?

That said, I’m not sure that a push prize for putting a man on the Moon would work. My “Push Prize Rules for Success” are:

1. Have a realistic goal that is within the grasp of foreseeable science,

2. Offer a sum that’s sufficient to inspire serious efforts to achieve that goal, AND
3. Be someone (or a foundation or whatever) that potential competitors will trust to actually pay the prize when its won.

A push prize to the Moon wouldn’t really break any of these rules. People have already been to the Moon, so it’s obviously possible. NASA could, theoretically, offer a BIG prize. And the US Government is probably trustworthy to actually pay the prize.

But maybe I should add a fourth rule:

4. The contemplated goal must be within the organizational capability of the pool of potential competitors.

Unfortunately, a manned Moon mission will be outside of the organizational capability of pretty much any corporation or academic institution. Maybe a big corporation like Boeing could do it, but its stockholders wouldn’t allow it.

Push prizes could still be instrumental. NASA, for example, isn’t offering a prize to create a space elevator, but they are holding annual contests for ever-better crawlers and tethers. Perhaps a similar incremental approach – or prizes for necessary subsystems – could allow competitors to contribute.

Incidentally, we may be seeing the limit of the big-bite-approach to push prizes with the Google Lunar X-Prize. Last year Google announced a $20,000,000 prize for sending a small rover to the Moon. Apparently they now have a single competitor signed up for this contest.

I guess I’ll go out on a limb and be a naysayer. I doubt that anyone will win the Google Lunar X-Prize.

Some apparently think there are better ways of getting back into serious space exploration, and on to Mars:

NASA’s current plan for manned space exploration focuses on establishing a base on the moon, as a vital stepping stone for a visit to Mars. The initiative has been trumpeted by the Bush administration, which wants the first mission to launch by 2020. But trouble is brewing as a growing group of former mission managers, planetary scientists and astronauts argues against any manned moon mission at all. One alternative, they say: Send astronauts to an asteroid as a better preparation for a Martian landing.

The dissenters plan to gather in mid-February at a meeting of the Planetary Society at Stanford University. “We want to get a positive recommendation to the new administration,” says Planetary Society executive director Louis D. Friedman. He supports an eventual mission to Mars, but argues that the current moon scheme was selected with inadequate debate after a speech by President Bush in January 2004. “If you said ‘humans’ and ‘Mars’ [to NASA officials] in the same sentence, you would receive a figurative slap on the face, and then four months later [the moon-to-Mars plan] was the main point on a viewgraph at the highest levels.”

The real shame here is that everything is viewed in such either/or terms. Rather than having NASA spend bazillions on what will almost certainly be a big compromise mission to who-knows-where 12, 15, or 20 or more years from now, why not take that money and start some serious push prizes. How about a $2 billion push prize for a permanent private space station in earth orbit? Maybe a $5 billion prize for a permanent settlement on the moon? A $10 billion prize for a manned mission to Mars?

Perhaps my prize figures are far too low, but you could multiply them each by ten and we would still see:

1. Faster progress than NASA is likely to make

2. At a lower net cost

This model of having government committees endlessly debate this stuff while some guy at the top named “the administrator” calls the shots is beyond tired. And I don’t mean any disrespect to him or any of the fine folks at NASA who are making heroic efforts to get something going. It just seems like it’s time for a new model, and we already have substantial evidence as to what kind of model will work.