Google offers $10M for ideas to better the world

Post by **JoeStrout** » Fri Sep 26, 2008 1:53 pm

Google's new Project 10^100 is an idea contest (not unlike the X PRIZE Foundation's "Crazy Green Ideas") offering up to $10M to fund ideas that will better the world.

Ideas are submitted in text form (with an optional 30-second video) by October 20th. Public voting will narrow the submissions down to 100, and then an advisory board will choose five final ideas.

Here's a news story on the project.

Polywell research would be well-suited to both of these contests, I should think. (I wonder if it would help that Bussard himself presented the polywell at Google?)

Best,
- Joe

P.S. If we could stop the whining about the silence from New Mexico, that'd be great. They'll tell us something when they can tell us something.

JohnSmith · Post by **JohnSmith** » Fri Sep 26, 2008 5:23 pm

It's times like these I like google. They've done more interesting work without reasonable expectation of return than any other for-profit company I know of.

jormungandr · Post by **jormungandr** » Sat Oct 04, 2008 8:54 am

JohnSmith wrote:It's times like these I like google. They've done more interesting work without reasonable expectation of return than any other for-profit company I know of.

Didn't Dr. Bussard already pitch to them?

MSimon · Post by **MSimon** » Sat Oct 04, 2008 10:34 am

jormungandr wrote:
JohnSmith wrote:It's times like these I like google. They've done more interesting work without reasonable expectation of return than any other for-profit company I know of.
Didn't Dr. Bussard already pitch to them?

No. But some BFR enthusiasts did. Nothing came of it. $10 million is not enough realistically. The next step - continuous operation of a WB-7 size unit for minutes is a $15 to $25 million project due to the cost of the power supplies. If that works out the supplies could be re-used in a WB-100 sized unit.