That is indeed what I am talking about

From Boingboing, a post about the founders of the Ansari X Prize, won Monday by Bert Rutan's SpaceShipOne, and their plans to launch the WTN X Prizes, a "a series of technology prizes seeking to meet the greatest challenges facing humanity in the 21st century."

I absolutely love this idea. Scaled Composites got the near-earth space travel job done faster and for much less than NASA would have done in similar circumstances, and private enterprise is better at just about everything than government.

Money quote:

"Intended to spur innovation in a variety of critical scientific and technological arenas and in response to great technological, social, and environmental challenges, areas of focus might cover goals in fields such as energy, medicine, information and communications technology, and nanotechnology. These "holy grail" goals might include cures for major diseases, teleportation, molecular assemblers, cold fusion and a wide variety of others with truly major societal implications."

I was just asking myself yesterday, where the crap is my flying car? Well, here it comes.