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Expectations for the X Prize

By Craig E. Ward

The competition for the X Prize is heating up. One or another team may just win. While that would be a good thing, the celebration of victory could suck the energy from many space supporters when unrealistic expections are not met.

A fundamental pillar of the X Prize is the analogy with the prizes awarded for aeronautical achievment in the early 20^th Century. In many ways, the X Prize is similar to others, such as the prize awarded Charles Lindbergh for his epic flight to Paris. It is, however, the differences that hold a problem for the X Prize advocates.

What made Lindbergh's flight unique and important was in the way he did it. He flew solo across the Atlantic Ocean. His journey was not unique in either its beginning or destination. Millions of people had made the same fundamental journey that Lindbergh made. Travel across the Atlantic was, while not without its dangers, actually rather routine. Lindbergh's flight pointed to a new way of doing an old thing.

This is a point that seems lost when people discuss the X Prize. Space travel isn't routine, not for people, not for machines. A successful X Prize team will not be showing an alternate method of doing something people already accept as routine. It will demonstrate that routine space travel just might be possible, but will not prove it.

Prizes have also been used to encourage solutions to real and vexing problems. The best example is the prize offered by the British government to anyone who could solve the longitude problem. The British were losing whole fleets of warships and merchant vessels because of this problem. (Back then, Lindbergh's actual journey was not all that routine.) A similar problem does not (yet) exist for space travel, which helps to show why governments have not funded prizes along the lines of the X Prize.

All this does not mean that the X Prize is not a worthwhile effort. It manifestly is. It does mean, however, that the expectations of what will follow the X Prize need to be realistic. The journey to space development will be a long one. The X Prize will get us closer, but we will still have a long way to go.