Newt Gingrich Says Cash, Prizes Will Spur Space Technology - East Idaho News
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Newt Gingrich Says Cash, Prizes Will Spur Space Technology

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Getty 120911 NewtGingrich?  SQUARESPACE CACHEVERSION=1328197432625Richard Ellis/Getty Images(WASHINGTON) — Moon colonies aside, Newt Gingrich has some seemingly unorthodox ideas about spurring innovation.

Forget federal grant programs or loan guarantees, Gingrich wants to win the 21st century space race with prizes, contests and challenges.  With multimillion-dollar prize purses and the prospect of nationwide bragging rights on the line, Gingrich claims such challenges will spur development for a fraction of the cost.

Gingrich proposes devoting 10 percent of NASA’s budget to prizes.  And with an $18.7 billion budget, Gingrich’s plan would set aside nearly $2 billion to NASA-sponsored contests each year.

“You put up a bunch of interesting prizes, you are going to have so many people showing up who want to fly, it’s going to be unbelievable,” Gingrich said last week in Florida.

But Gingrich’s contest call is old news to NASA and the dozens of other federal departments who have been running such innovation challenge programs for years.  At least 38 federal agencies have offered 151 contests and awarded more than $33 million in prizes, according to Challenge.gov, the administration’s catch-all website for federal challenges.

Eighteen contests are currently open with prizes ranging from $200 for creating a communication campaign to raise awareness about mental health issues, to $7.5 million for developing an ultra-efficient replacement for the common light bulb.

“Generally speaking, we’re trying to make it possible for a citizen inventor to exploit their innate creativity,” NASA’s deputy chief technologist, Joseph Parrish, said of the space program’s Centennial Challenges. “We think it’s been fantastically successful.”

NASA has awarded $6 million in prizes over the nine-year life of its Centennial Challenge competitions to innovators of space gloves, energy-efficient planes and other revamped technologies.

Parrish said that multimillion-dollar price tag has “paid off many times over.”

And while Parrish claims the challenge programs have been “incredibly successful” in helping NASA solve complex problems, government-issued challenges have also been a “blessing” to the contestants participating, said Manuel Cebrian, a research scientist at the University of California, San Diego, who has participated in two such contests.

Cebrian, who won a Defense Department challenge in 2009, said that without government-sponsored challenges, social scientists like himself would not have the resources to conduct such specific research.

Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio

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