Casey Dreier thinks they’re a bad idea.
My comments:
I agree with much of this, though I do think that Scott has always mischaracterized SLS as a useful national capability. My biggest problem with it is phrase "space exploration." It's pretty clear that getting back to the moon has never been a national priority, and isn't today.
— SafeNotAnOption (@SafeNotAnOption) August 23, 2019
Until we decide why we're going back to the moon, we can't come up with a sensible idea of how to do it. If we do a prize, it shouldn't be to just get back, but to set up a demonstrably economically sustainable infrastructure, not for "exploration," but for lunar development.
— SafeNotAnOption (@SafeNotAnOption) August 23, 2019
That is, the prize should be for (e.g.) maintaining a base at Shackleton of at least two dozen people for five years. That's the only way to avoid another flags and footprints event (and it's something that cannot be done with anything resembling NASA's current plans).
— SafeNotAnOption (@SafeNotAnOption) August 23, 2019
So let the Shelbys of the world continue to massively waste taxpayer money as the danegeld to allow us to offer a much smaller amount, risk free, to do something useful (since clearly getting back to the moon is not and has never been nationally critical).
— SafeNotAnOption (@SafeNotAnOption) August 23, 2019
[Late-morning update]
Bridenstine: NASA is considering all options, including prizes.
Agreed. Flags and footprints we’ve done – six times. No need to incentivize that! $2 billion for seventh place! I wanna play in that league! Where do I sign up?
Prizes wouldn’t be as useful as a guaranteed purchase contract for, say, the first million metric tons of anything – including regolith and rock – launched from the Moon by means other than rockets for a variable launch cost of even 1% less than it would cost to lift a million tonnes of the same stuff from Earth on the lowest-cost vehicle.
I can think of many useful things the government could do with a million tonnes of lunar rock and dust, but the point is, the government wouldn’t have to do a damned thing with it. Anyone who could meet those conditions would already have taken care of establishing a considerable lunar industrial base. The availability of bulk materials in cis-lunar space at prices below those of equivalents hauled up from Earth would also take care of establishing a cis-lunar micro- or artificial gravity industrial base. Facilities in both free space and the lunar surface would likely be needed to fulfill the contract in any case.
At that point, the whole thing should be self-funding and self-expanding without more government funds.