Quote Originally Posted by Illusions View Post
...if they used a portion of their budgets as funds for a "prize" in a specific area of research, engineering, and/or production that they otherwise would not be able to afford due to budget constraints.

My thoughts concerning this come from the recent trend of exploiting designers by, instead of directly hiring them, offering a prize to only the winner of a competition, or only paying for the best design out of a submitted pool of designs. Essentially the companies engaging in this practice get far more than their money's worth than if they actually paid for all the work involved themselves. I have a vague idea this might have been done before (I'm not thinking of the Ansari X-Prize, but something in regards to space suit design and production). Just wondering what everyone's thoughts regarding this are, its been in my head for a bit.

There are, or at least were, a bunch of prizes from NASA related to various technologies required for a sustainable moon base. I remember specifically there being something about a type of lander, and something like habitat building using in situ materials.