The X-Prize: One Small Step for Man... In the Right Direction

Today, Bert Rhutan and his Scaled Composites team, backed by billionaires Paul Allen and Richard Branson won the $10 Million Ansari X-Prize for developing a privately constructed rocket that can take passengers back and forth into space.

That's a good start.

But it's just a start.

The next step should be a $10 Million dollar or more prize for the uber-geek who successfully develops an alternate means of propulsion. Rockets are too unstable, and too wasteful of energy to be of any practical use in long term exploration of space.

We need to find another way.

I've been doing a little digging and I've seen some promising research in the field of Anti-Gravity Lifters. These are devices that use magnetic fields and electrical currents to apparently defy gravity. The demonstrations are pretty convincing, but so far the intrepid amateur researchers have only been able to lift simple balsa wood and foil contraptions, and are sadly ghettoized by mainstream scientists as 'fringe nutcases' and not real scientists.

Well, I'd like to see some real research done on this. If it's real then find out how it works, if it's a fraud, then prove it and bury it once and for all. It's time to dump the dogma that is holding science back, so we can claim our destiny and our dream to reach beyond the stars.