http://wired.com/news/space/0,2697,67583,00.html
"The first team of scientists to invent a way to extract breathable oxygen from lunar soil will be awarded $250,000, NASA announced on Thursday."

"The teams have until June 1, 2008, to come up with the technology, or the $250,000 prize is off the table,"

seems silly to have the prize expire, but i guess it does encourage people to get working on it soon.

haha - you know what's happening in 2008? :)
And who is behind the "let's go to the Moon"?

Bush is trying so hard to cater to the scientific public, but he fails miserably because they won't take his nonsense seriously, considering that he's a hard-line fundamentalist evangelical Christian. "Going to the moon" is the only thing that he could use as a scientific goal which has no strong religious implications, since we've already been there and the arguments are long settled.

Let's make oxygen from lunar soil, but let's not worry about feeding, housing, clothing, and curing all the people who are busy dying on this planet.

His policies on science don't bother me that much because they're mostly irrelevant. Even his buddy Ahnold is ignoring his bullshit mandate against stem cell research, and the world continues to plow along in research despite his vast cuts to the NSF, the NIH, etc. To make up for this he pretends to pour some money into NASA, but they're busy blowing money away on his stupid moon mission crap instead of trying to save all the existing moribund research satellite programs.

How can NASA be expected to race to the moon against the Islamic terrorist opposition? Are they busy making rockets to build a mosque on the moon? I think Bush needs a new Soviet Union.

lol

I practically breathe the stuff...

Bang, zoom! To the moon!