Admittedly, I admire the long life of MER. Ironically, I have enduringly criticized their refusing to give the battery-provider for the Pathfinder a chance to provide a batter for MER, at http://www.spaceprojects.com/prizes . But I'm not sure that your admittedly thoughtful comparison of MER's price with that of Pathfinder withstands a "marginal diminishing returns" scrutiny. For example, like me you probably liked Star Wars. You probably even enjoyed it the first few times, as did I. But after a while, there's overkill. The fact is, taxpayers paid a bundle more for MER than for Pathfinder. How do we know we couldn't have gotten far more for considerably less? On what is the comparison based?

Folks are ranting and raving at how in 2009, for a hefty sum, NASA will give us video of Mars (unless more 1999-like fiascos happen, of course). Well, 2004 cellphones offer video transmission for a tiny fraction of the cost and I'm not convinced that this analogy of NASA waste doesn't fit at least somewhat. You saw some of the wild contraptions in DARPA's Grand Challenge? Some of those rigs actually made it for several miles autonomously, and I'm not aware that any cost that much more than a million (even as the prize was only a million).

Why are there no Mars prizes yet? An abrasive type like yourself has reason to pause before slinging more insults. Prizes attract 40 times the amount of the prize in terms of private sector investment pursuing the prize. Ask Rutan. That means potentially multiples more job opportunities emerge for engineers and scientists directly involved with the prize-pursuit. They also emerge for folks who weren't wealthy or nerdy enough to spend their prime reproductive years with their noses buried in books. The longitude prize was won by a nobody like that, as you might have heard.

Prize pursuits also translate into numerous competing approaches which mean spinoff technology is more likely to be developed, and success is more likely to be attained. I admire the MER team, but it's a crime that their main participants aren't millionaires by now. Dangle prizes, let private markets pursue them and keep the technology that they develop, and geniuses like Squyres and (I think) Zubrin will become wealthy and we'll be Mars-bound sooner rather than later. I'm going to be 40 in a few years and I don't like the thought of having to wait at least another 20 before ANYBODY goes to Mars. No wonder the most desirable females still tend to think that space stuff is for geeks. Have we demonstrated that Mars is that relevant to them? It's time for prizes.