Depot Prize

Propellant Depot Policy Thoughts - Selenian Boondocks - One of Jon's policy suggestions:

Fund the “Fuel Depot Demonstration” Centennial Challenges (early proposed rules can be found here), or something similar to it. The Centennial Challenges program hasn’t been given a cent other than in its first year. It’s used that money very carefully, and preserved most of the money for actual prizes. But they had several other interesting prizes that they wanted to roll out that they haven’t been able to due to lack of funding. This prize, for $5M nominally (though I think $10M might make it more interesting) was for a system that could store at least a certain amount of LOX and LH2 for at least 120 days. While one can argue with the details of the rules, the idea of offering small prizes for technology demonstrations is important.