The Importance of Government Spending

>>True, the X prize itself was private, but the model of "offering a reward for a successful invention of X" has produced several good results with minimal costs. Both for private funding and public.<<

I agree. Offering a prize is a terrific way to boost development. It doesn't matter much whether the prize is privately or publicly funded.

One of the colonies in my main SF universe uses this approach regularly. Somebody picks a topic and sets a goal, then collects prize contributions; that can be either government or private, sometimes a mix of both. Often the winning person or team will get several years of access to a well-stocked lab to pursue their own research. Basically the idea is to get the best scientists to solve important challenges, then turn them loose to create exciting new discoveries of their own. It works.

>>Yeah, the military has produced some good results, but the prices were *high*, look at the costs and the outputs of the Strategic Defense Initiative, and I think that it's pretty clear that, yes, they can do the research, but the price will be much larger than leaving it to private development.<<

The government and military are often best used as icebreakers. They're good at making use of obscure bits of technology that are absurdly expensive at first -- which private industry won't touch unless there's an obvious short-term payoff -- and that can lead to breakthroughs that make something cheap and practical. Frex, microchips, which are now crucial to our modern way of life. We need that icebreaker effect because it does things that business just won't.

>>I find it rather shocking that we are still using 30 year old technology in our space program and that the *russian* soyuz capsul has a better safety record than our own.<<

*nodNODnod* We should have a friggin' colony on the Moon by now. It's a disgrace, the state of our space program. Yes, I love the discoveries made by the robotic probes, but that's not enough. We need to get some eggs out of this little blue basket already.