Competition is a great way to get anything going... especially when there is a huge prize to be won. Scientists, like all other people, work for money. When you offer a huge sum of money to an individual that you trust can do a job more efficiently and quickly than a corporation you are not only getting things done faster but you are also saving yourself mounds and mounds of money. Lets say that NASA needed more money for a new project that would involve man landing on Pluto. NASA would need 50 million dollars just to design a new spaceship for this project and will probably take a lot of time to come up with the design. Get a competition going and you'll get the same or an even better spaceship for 15 million dollars and in less time. Will this effect the studies of everyday scientists, such as the study of stars and deep ocean species? Maybe. But the risk is worth it. With the economy growing more people will be needed to work it. This means less people will be unemployed. Which situation would you rather be in, a country where 20% of the people are unemployed but you know that the Earth is round, or having a country with 1% of the people unemployed but not knowing that the Earth is round? In my opinion, knowing that there is enough food and money to go around and no child is starving in some shanty neighborhood is much more important that knowing the Earth is round.