Neither DARPA's nor the FBI's grand prizes funnel pork to politically significant districts. Nevertheless, they get funded. Why? Because they're good ideas which address some important societal priorities. Even pork-luvin' Marshall has a competitive advantage regarding the pursuit of prizes, one would think. If it's a choice between a Mars prize or no Mars mission, which do you think Congressman Cramer and such would prefer? Meanwhile, as for:

>>>As for Tom's point, again, *I* think that $49bn profit would be fine if someone pulled it off, but it would be easy to turn it into a political loser. For example, opponents would claim that the admin knew all along it would only cost $1bn but set such a high prize level due to the fact that the Vice-Prez' brother-in-law is on the board of the winning company.<<<

The beauty of prizes, instead of sole-sourcing benefiting the likes of Halliburton, is that if there's so much profit to be derived, faster fish can win the prizes too (and they likely will, as long as the bureaucrats and other pork-lovers can't tilt the playing field too much).

In the new era of campaign finance reform:

http://www.spaceprojects.com/campaign-finance-reforms

it will be tougher for companies to tilt the playing field in their favor. Meritocracies will seemingly emerge. But as Ben Franklin said: the people have the government that they deserve.