perfidy

The Instapundit has a good article up at TCS, looking at the reasons why the X-Prize is getting results.

The money quote is from X-Prize founder Peter Diamandis:

The results of this competition have been miraculous. For the promise of $10 million, over $50 million has been spent in research, development and testing. And where we might normally have expected one or two paper designs resulting from a typical government procurement, we're seeing dozens of real vehicles being built and tested. This is Darwinian evolution applied to spaceships. Rather than paper competition with selection boards, the winner will be determined by ignition of engines and the flight of humans into space. Best of all, we don't pay a single dollar till the result is achieved.

Faster, please.

[wik] The title of this post has been changed. I completely forgot, and did not notice until just now, that I had never changed the boring auto-generated title to one of my trademark half clever personalized titles. It will never happen again.