Handing out large cash prizes to invent something

[Independent voter]

So there's this guy who put up a challenge where 3 people in a rocket would have to reach 100 kilometers or to the edge of space. But that wasn't all, the team would have to repeat the whole thing with another 3 people in a weeks time. If you could do this you'd win a $100 million dollars.

Another large cash prize can be won by someone who invents a car that will consistently get 100 miles to the gallon.

There was another cash prize for human powered flight.

If you had the money, like you were a billionaire, what challenge would you give and how much would you award for it?

I would give $100 million to the team who could create automated good voice acting, male and female, young old, with a wide range of emotion, etc. This would be used for poor animators to voice their short animation productions.

[Actarius]

I've always wanted to bury my vast fortune somewhere obscure, and do something akin to national treasure levels of ridiculousness to find it. If you can find it, all these billions are yours. First hint: "It lies with the Charlotte" or something else equally as obscure and meaningless.

More relevant, I'd like to give a huge sum of money away for someone to be able to scrub greenhouse gases out of our atmosphere, or harness alternate forms of energy like ocean currents.

[Azadina]

And then they take your invention, making tens of billions with it? How would it be a good deal....

[Independent voter]

And then they take your invention, making tens of billions with it? How would it be a good deal....

I think they don't take it. I can't think of a contest where they did.

[Azadina]

I think they don't take it. I can't think of a contest where they did.

You really think the whole point of you getting the 100 million isn't that you hand over the rights to them?

[Independent voter]

You really think the whole point of you getting the 100 million isn't that you hand over the rights to them?

No, just some rich dude or institution who wants to advance technology. The contest of human flight? The challenge was a human had to power, like with pedals, a plane over the English Channel. A team won and they got the money.

The US government did one on self driving cars, the contestants were under no obligation to work with the government after. Many of the contestants were colleges.

[Independent voter]

Wikipedia actually had a page

Ansari X PRIZE for Suborbital Spaceflight, won in 2004 by Scaled Composites SpaceShipOne
Automotive X PRIZE
Alkali Prize for a process to turn salt into soda ash, won by Nicolas Leblanc posthumously in the early 19th century
Brexit Prize[5] - prize for British exit from the European Union
NASA's Centennial Challenges
The Clay Mathematics Institute has a Millennium Prize it will award to anyone who provides a solution to one of seven important mathematics problems.
Cornell Cup USA, presented by Intel
DARPA Grand Challenge
The Foresight Institute offers a $250,000 Feynman Grand Prize for the first persons to design and build two nanotechnology devices - a nano-scale robotic arm and a computing device that demonstrates the feasibility of building a nanotechnology computer.
Global Security Challenge
Google Lunar X Prize
Intelligent Ground Vehicle Competition
Kremer prize for man-powered aircraft, won in 1977 by the MacCready Gossamer Condor.
L Prize is a US Department of Energy competition to increase efficiency of solid-state lighting.
Longitude prize won in the 18th century by John Harrison
Methuselah Mouse Prize or also known as the "M-Prize"
Montyon Prizes established in 1820, a series of prizes awarded annually by the Académie française
Orteig Prize for a non-stop flight between New York and Paris, won by Charles Lindbergh in 1927
Peugeot Concours Design
Prize4Life offers between $15,000 and $5 million in prize awards for medical discoveries that remove the largest barriers to finding a cure for ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease)
Tricorder X Prize
Virgin Earth Challenge
Wolfskehl Prize for proving Fermat's Last Theorem, won by Andrew Wiles in 1997

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inducement_prize_contest

[Kapadons]

I would issue a challenge to make solar energy 1000x more efficient. I've had a dream of making it so a 16x16 solar panel on the roof of a car was efficient enough to power all driving. Taking that same technology and applying it to homes to eliminate billions in fuel costs and energy bills. Also, eliminate nearly all carbon emissions. I also think if you could do it, you could cheaply power every human home in the word. Billions of people live without clean water and billions more don't have access to electricity. Imagine the world change if every poor nation in the world had access to cheap, reliable, renewable and clean energy. Would also eliminate the need for war over oil resources.

It could literally change the life of every single person on the entire planet, all while being sustainable and earth friendly. If I was supreme overlord of the world, I would use every countries military budget and fund the shit out of solar power research.