More Politics and Centennial Challenges

There have been more blog discussions about the Senate Appropriations committee eliminating Centennial Challenge prize funding for new NASA prize competitions planned for 2007. The Senate and House will have to reconcile their differences on this issue, and apparently a lot of people interested in space want to make sure the new prizes are funded. Rick from the Space Frontier Foundation is asking constituents to convince their Senators (especially if they are on the Appropriations Committee) to fund the NASA space prizes. The SFF tends to only support the most productive fraction of government spending, which is an indication that the prizes are being run efficiently and deserve to be continued. Here are some ideas from a poster at HobbySpace on making your voice heard.

This is for U.S. voters, but it would be interesting to see other government space programs try prizes. Many of the classic technology prizes were offered by European sponsors. Is anyone from ESA listening?

Stay tuned because I think there will be more to come ...