The Apollo 11 moon landing, whose 40th anniversary is celebrated this week, is still unsurpassed as a symbol of technological achievement. Visitors to Washington DC’s National Air and Space Museum can see the command module up close, and visitors to the Science Museum in London can see the very similar Apollo 10 version. Being this near to the spaceship defies belief: it looks more like a contraption from the steam age than the space age. Did this thing really go around the moon and come home again?

Forty years on, we have our own technological challenges, from finding vaccines for malaria and HIV to producing cheap, effective ways to generate energy without pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. If we can put a man on the moon, why can’t we achieve those goals?

More to the point: Neil Armstrong walked on the moon thanks to government management, government money and one of the most famous of all government ambitions. That was President Kennedy’s 1961 declaration that, “I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to earth. No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important in the long-range exploration of space.”

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I’m presenting Radio 4’s Analysis this week, and asking: “Given that so many people think the government should encourage low-carbon technologies, what should the government actually do?” We talk to Professor Sir David King, Suzanne Scotchmer, Eric Beinhocker, James Cameron, Mark Williamson, David Rooney and Cameron Hepburn. Also, there are Spitfires and John Harrison’s clock. I learned a few things…

The program is tonight on BBC Radio 4 at 8.30pm BST, repeated on Sunday evening, and should also be downloadable here for a week.

Earlier this year, I wrote about the sudden rediscovery of the idea that prizes might be a good alternative to grants or patents as a way of promoting innovation:

In an ideal world, prizes could replace patents. Instead of offering a patent for an innovation, the government could offer a prize. The inventor would pocket the prize but would not be allowed to exploit any monopoly power, so the innovation would be freely available to use in products for poor consumers – cheap drugs for Africa, for instance – and, importantly, in further innovations. But to explain that idea is to see its limitations. How could the government know enough about the costs and benefits – and even the very possibility – of an innovation to put a price tag on it and write the terms of reference for a prize competition? For this reason it is hard to see prizes replacing patents in most cases. But it is not impossible.

The modern heir to 18th-century prizes for canning, water turbines and finding longitude at sea is the advanced market commitment for vaccines for the poor: the goal is clear, the costs and benefits can be guessed at, and the quasi-prize nudges the patent system to one side with a prize contract that respects the patent but, in exchange for a large subsidy, radically constricts the holder’s right to exploit it.

At the time I wrote the piece, I wish I had seen this gorgeous list of historical prizes:

Napoleon Sugar Beet Prize (1810)
In 1810, facing blockade of its ports, Napoleon offered a large prizefor the best method of extracting sugar from beets. The prize was part of a large set of national incentives and mandates to stimulate the production of sugar from beets.

Art of Piercing or Boring Artesian Wells (1818)
Similar in purpose to the 1797 book on Elkington’s methods of drainage, in 1818, the Society for the Encouragement of National Industry in France offered a reward of 3,000 francs for “the best manual, or practical and elementary instructions upon the art of piercing or boring Artesian wells with the miner’s or fountaineer’s augur, from 25 metres (82 feet), to 100 metres (328 feet) depth, and deeper if possible.” The award was given by the Society in 1821 to Mr. Gamier, for an important and useful discussion of the use of Artesian wells employed for the discharge of foul and infected water.

Wisconsin Prize for Mechanical Substitute for Horses and Other Animals (1875)
In 1875, the Wisconsin legislature passed an act authorizing the payment of a $10,000 bounty to “any citizen of Wisconsin, who shall invent, and after five years continued trial and use, shall produce a machine propelled by steam or other motive agent, which shall be a cheap and practical substitute for the use of horses, and other animals on the highway and farm.” The law was amended twice in the next two years, with the final 1877 version eliminating the requirement for “five years continued trial and use,” while adding specific requirements for winning the prize. Contestants with machines that could operate in both forward and reverse were required to complete a 200-mile route at “not less than five miles per hour working time,” and to perform certain functions, such as plowing and pulling loaded wagons. Trials were conducted in 1878 and ended in controversy when one of the judges refused to grant the full prize money to a contestant many observers thought had satisfied the contest rules. Subsequently, two crews split part of the prize money.

Then there’s:

Highland and Agricultural Society of Edinburgh Reaper Prize (1826)

Apple and Pear Prize (1826)

Substitute for Guano (1852)

Napoleon III Margarine Prize (1869)

French Prize Competition in Irrigation Practice (1874)

Italian Prize Competition in Irrigation Practice (1879)

Soviet Committee for Invention Authorship Certificates (1931)

Australian Film Bounty (1933)

Soviet Rewards for Aircraft Design (1946,7)

Burkina Faso Innovation Prizes (1994)

Don’t tell me you’re not curious. Here is the source; Alex Tabarrok pointed me to it some time ago.

I’m reading Stefan Klein’s excellent “The Secret Pulse of Time“. Recommended - Klein’s style is charming, if rather German, and his grasp of the science is strong. He covers the biology, psychology and physics of time and yes, it really is all relative. One observation that struck home was that we do not remember time as a continuum but as a series of events; that is why a fortnight recuperating in bed seems like an eternity (because we have no events to observe) but almost vanishes from the memory (because there are no events to remember). That is also why a wonderful day’s sightseeing can fly by, yet when looking back over an evening drink, that morning’s coffee can seem impossibly distant. Much to enjoy.

As I enter the porter’s lodge at St Hugh’s College, Oxford, I fleetingly reflect that I may be about to receive an intimidating tutorial from the college principal, Andrew Dilnot. It is not that the economist has a stern reputation, but today’s circumstances are unusual. He recently stepped down from presenting More or Less, a BBC Radio 4 series about numbers in the news. I have been recruited as the new presenter, and am ready to be patronised – or worse.

I needn’t have worried: as he strides into the lodge in a pale brown linen suit and blue tie, Dilnot’s smile is genuine enough, and as we walk together through north Oxford’s leafy residential streets, he is more eager to identify shared acquaintances in the world of economics than to lecture me on the art of radio presenting…

Read the whole piece here or in the FT on Saturday. My previous lunches have been with Gary Becker, Steven Levitt and Thomas Schelling.

Daniel Kahneman is perhaps the world’s greatest psychologist, and the only one to hold a Nobel prize in economics. I saw him speak a few months ago in London at the IPPR and was deeply impressed. Now Pablo links to a video and transcript of the man in action.