Heroic Expectations: How Prize Competitions Boost Industry Outsiders in Space Exploration

Keywords: Commercial space, narratives, heroic invention, industry outsiders
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Tuesday
Session Start / End Time: 3/1/2022 11:20 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 3/1/2022 12:40 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 37

Abstract

Stories about prize competitions carry a heroic tone and raise expectations of breakthroughs. This study seeks to understand why these narratives consistently favor industry outsiders, focusing on the Google Lunar X Prize to land a robot on the moon. To begin, I review the “heroic inventor” discourse, where status and stories are the product of competing interests. In studies on prize competitions and accounts of famous winners, expectations appear positive and politically motivated. I investigate these expectations by applying theoretical work on how skilled strategic actors use cultural framing to gain position and power in industries. This provides an analytic lens for my case study of a Google-sponsored competition for the first team without government funding to land a robotic probe on the Moon. Drawing on interviews with competition administrators and leaders of outsider and industry-affiliated teams, I find team prospects to win the prize depend far more on technical and financial capacity than cultural identity or motivation. Nevertheless, administrators “boost” entrepreneurial outsiders challenging traditional space industry culture. I argue that “heroic expectations” for outsiders may succeed for commercial space exploration by winning favor within the space industry establishment. To conclude, I outline practical implications of how we might make sense of heroic expectations in social studies of space exploration.