You've got to think there are plenty of scientists at NASA who would jump at an offer like "you have two weeks to put an experiment together for this launch, it

You've got to think there are plenty of scientists at NASA who would jump at an offer like "you have two weeks to put an experiment together for this launch, it can't cost more than $50k and you have to be ok with losing it". Just because NASA normally optimizes for expensive projects with years of design time doesn't mean those are the only possible space projects with scientific value. If NASA declined the spot, it's a failure of bureaucracy, not of scientific imagination. Launching a car is still great though. Scientific data isn't the only possible benefit from a space mission.