I don't know if you guys watched 60 minutes last night about the X-prize winner Burt Rutan but it was very inspiring. As you probably know, the nonprofit X Prize Foundation was sponsoring the contest to promote the development of a low-cost, efficient craft for space tourism in the same way prize competitions stimulated commercial aviation in the early 20th century. This field, once viewed as the playground of big government programs only, is opening up to private business (http://www.scaled.com/).
Personnaly, I find the X prize not very useful for the humanity and it is basically aiming at offering a new kind of bungee jumbing for bored multi-millionnaires. However, I was wondering why not create a E-prize for the developpement of a new energy source! There are a lot of smart people out there that could be put together in order to offer to humanity something useful. If at first unsurmountable technical challenges can be overcomed for the X prize why not for a new efficient and afordable energy source!
First, we have to define what are the basics requirements for this new energy source (see http://www.xprize.org/about/what_is_the_xprize.php for the X prize requirements). Then, we have to put together a foundation that will gather the money for the winner (let's say 20 millions) and monitor the competition progress.
I'am expecting to get blast for this post because of its naivete but I find that there are too much negativity, finger pointing and doomsday sayers in this forum. We need also to adopt a more positive and constructive attitude!
Any ideas or comments are welcomed.
Khebab