NASA's Spirit & Odyssey, including launch & related [sometimes redundant] costs, amounted to well over 800 million bucks. Pillinger didn't succeed with a $50 million lander. And yet ESA shouldn't offer competitive prizes so that he can have more chances to succeed?

What if John Elway had been barred from quarterbacking in another Super Bowl after losing in a few of them? He had valuable and unique experience to bring to the table though, as does Professor Pillinger. NASA got lots of tries before finally succeeding, and arguably they have done nothing but fail when it comes to bringing down the cost of launching humans into space (which NASA can't even do now).

NASA's budget's bigger than all the rest of the world's civilian space agencies COMBINED. Some who leech off of it and the taxpayers involuntarily subsidizing it want to stifle potential competitors from overseas. Follow the money, though, and one can understand people's motives.