X PRIZE competitors would like to see some of that return on investment sooner rather than later. That’s because in the current economic environment no one is immune to feeling a little pinch. For example, earlier this year the group said its NASA/X PRIZE Lunar Lander Challenge is making competitors host their own competition at a facility of their choice.

The Lunar Lander Challenge, which is a competition designed to accelerate technology reusable rocket-powered space vehicles, is administered for NASA by the X PRIZE Foundation at no charge to the space agency. The prizes which amount to $1.65 million this year are funded by NASA.

X PRIZE said on its Web site, the concept of conducting a large common event at which all teams fly their vehicles is likely not financially sustainable for the Foundation going forward. Additionally, the conduct of such an event imposes non-negligible expenses on our teams, who must not only transport themselves and their vehicles to the venue for the competition, but who also must complete their design process, their regulatory paperwork, and their procurement of insurance with not only their own "home facility" but also the competition venue in mind.

While finances loom large over any space projects, technology development is also proving to be a bugaboo.

For example, even as NASA's commercial partners such as SpaceX and Orbital have made steady progress in developing space cargo transportation technology, they have recently fallen behind their development schedules. Combine that with the fact that the most critical steps lie ahead, including successfully launching new vehicles and completing integration with the space station and you have a hole that will be tough to climb out of. Those were the two main conclusions of a on the status of the commercial space world last month.