Wednesday, June 25, 2008

More on Doctor Bussard

I wanted to highlight a link in one of the comments to my post about Dr. Bussard's fusion project. This is the text of Bussard's legislative proposal for X Prizes. X Projects and X Prizes are complimentary. An X Project shows us the limits of our current technology. Nearly every aviation X Project resulted in the aircraft being severely damaged or augured in. X Prizes provide economic incentive for private companies to do the possible in the face of large market and/or technological risks. The best part about X Prizes is that they cost the taxpayers, or the private individual or organization putting up the prize money, nothing unless the company or companies doing the work succeed.

Personally, I don't think the BFR is ready for an X Prize just yet. If WB-7 works as advertised, it certainly will be, but WB-7 has to confirm the results from the WB-6 destructive testing. In fact, looking at Emc2's web site, what they identify as Phase 1 is an X-Project, and Phase 2 is an X-Prize.

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