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NASA Needs Prize Contest Ideas
Michael Huang writes "If you like the idea of tech contests--think ANSARI X PRIZE and DARPA Grand Challenge--and you also like space, then NASA wants you. It needs ideas (and rules) for the Centennial Challenges, prize contests with $20 million funding in 2005. Current ideas (download Excel spreadsheet) include: Mars and asteroid microspacecraft missions, lunar robotic landing, robotic triathalon, rover survivor, Antarctic rover traverse and extreme environment computer. Wikipedia has good coverage."
Dear Sir/Madam:
I am Mr. Darl McBride currently serving as the president and chief executive officer of the SCO Group, formerly known as Caldera Systems International, in Lindon, Utah, United States of America. I know this letter might surprise you because we have had no previous communications or business dealings before now.
My associates have recently made claim to computer softwares worth an estimated $1 billion U.S. dollars. I am writing to you in confidence because we urgently require your assistance to obtain these funds.
In the early 1970s the American Telephone and Telegraph corporation developed at great expense the computer operating system software known as UNIX. Unfortunately the laws of my country prohibited them from selling these softwares and so their valuable source codes remained privately held. Under a special arrangement some programmers from the California University of Berkeley did add more codes to this operating system, increasing its value, but not in any way to dilute or disparage our full and rightful ownership of these codes, despite any agreement between American Telephone and Telegraph and the California University of Berkeley, which agreement we deny and disavow.
In the year 1984 a change of regime in my country allowed the American Telephone and Telegraph corporation to make profits from these softwares. In the year 1990 ownership of these softwares was transferred to the corporation UNIX System Laboratories. In the year 1993 this corporation was sold to the corporation Novell. In the year 1994 some employees of Novell formed the corporation Caldera Systems International, which began to distribute an upstart operating system known as Linux. In the year 1995 Novell sold the UNIX software codes to SCO. In the year 2001 occurred a separation of SCO, and the SCO brand name and UNIX codes were acquired by the Caldera Systems International, and in the following year the Caldera Systems International was renamed SCO Group, of which i currently serve as chief executive officer.
My associates and I of the SCO Group are therefore the full and rightful owners of the operating system softwares known as UNIX. Our engineers have discovered that no fewer than seventy (70) lines of our valuable and proprietary source codes have appeared in the upstart operating system Linux. As you can plainly see, this gives us a claim on the millions of lines of valuable software codes which comprise this Linux and which has been sold at great profit to very many business enterprises. Our legal experts have advised us that our contribution to these codes is worth an estimated one (1) billion U.S. dollars.
Unfortunately we are having difficulty extracting our funds from these computer softwares. To this effect i have been given the mandate by my colleagues to contact you and ask for your assistance. We are prepared to sell you a share in this enterprise, which will soon be very profitable, that will grant you the rights to use these valuable softwares in your business enterprise. Unfortunately we are not able at this time to set a price on these rights. Therefore it is our respectful suggestion, that you may be immediately a party to this enterprise, before others accept these lucrative terms, that you send us the number of a banking account where we can withdraw funds of a suitable amount to guarantee your participation in this enterprise. As an alternative you may send us the number and expiration date of your major credit card, or you may send to us a signed check from your banking account payable to "SCO Group" and with the amount left blank for us to conveniently supply.
Kindly treat this request as very important and strictly confidential. I honestly assure you that this transaction is 100% legal and risk-free.
Signed, GNAA president
PS. If you have mod points and would like to support GNAA, please moderate this post up.
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do i get first prize?
And since it doesn't have one, NASA is willing to pay big $$$ to get one.
How much tax money goes NASA?
"Dutch surrealist who? No, now you wait a minute sir. I gave you a chance to talk, I- (Questioner attempts to clarify the line of inquiry). Shut up, cut his mic. Can somebody cut his mic?! Okay, now listen to me. You come on my show- (Questioner attempts to explain that they are not currently on the set of O'Reilly's show). Shut up! You had your chance! I gave you time to talk now you let me finish. I swear, if you interrupt me again we are going to have it out right here on the air. You come on my show pushing your fringe European liberal elitist agenda. Do you know how many people care about Dutchland? Do you know what the Dutch have done in the last twenty years? Nada! Zip! We here in America have been promoting the arts, film, technology, leading in science and learning, we have brought peace and democracy to the better part of the free world, and you have the- No sir, I will not calm down. I was calm, perfectly calm, when you came here but I will not tolerate insults and slander in the No Spin Zone. I will not tolerate this sort of intellectually dishonest bullying you are trying to push with your appearance. I will not give a platform to people like you. This interview is over. No, we're done."
All patriots are hereby ordered to register for the United States DRAFT
Just kidding folks. Now just settle down.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
Stark Draper Open Source Rocketry Award
I hereby, and until notice to the contrary, endow the Stark Draper Open Source Rocketry Award. This prize will consist of 3 ounces of gold or the monetary equivalent going to the next amateur team launching a vehicle to a height in excess of 200 kilometers, which in my opinion qualifies as an open source entry. These funds will be disbursed at my sole discretion.
For a an entry to qualify as "Open Source", for purposes of this prize, the team launching a rocket must make available sufficient information in machine readable form via the web to create and launch a rocket the same as the entry which travelled to 200 kilometers. The entry description should also include a description of safety procedures used to launch the rocket in question. The entry description considered must be public domain or available under a license that qualifies as Open Source according to the Open Source Consortium. The manufacture of the rocketry entry should be accomplished by tools and materials that are readily available to the general public from multiple sources or are themselves Open Source.
My primary intent here is to create an award that encourages free distribution of detailed rocketry designs that can be refined by a number of individuals similar to the way Linux kernel development has harness the energies of a large team throughout the world. It is not my intent to encourage entrants to relinquish their rights to patent protection by publishing their inventions (though the act of publishing may have legal ramifications). Candidates for the Stark Draper Open Source Rocketry Award may be relinquishing substantial rights to maintain intellectual property via trade secrets (and may be relinquishing foreign patent rights if they haven't filed by the date they publish on the web). Entry descriptions may be "dual licensed" (i.e. the entry description may be available on the web via the GPL, but the entrant might still charge corporations for whom the GPL is not an acceptable license a fee to get this same material under some other license which might not be an Open Source license). I will be loose in my interpretation of what "Open Source" means for purposes of this prize (though I may endow a future prize with a tighter definition).
There are real difficulties in applying the Open Source model to amateur rocketry. I would expect that entries to this contest might be using rather different sets of tools and materials--many of which will have proprietary components. It is my hope here to provide some basic designs that will be ready when techniques like those described in Marshall Burns's "Automated Fabrication" or Eric Drexler's "Nanosystems", make creation of small runs of complex machines relatively inexpensive. Still, gcc didn't need the linux kernel and BSD kernels to be ready and useful. Nor did linux need availability of an Open Source design for a microprocesser to be manufactured in quantity to be useful. I expect that over time, we'll see standards emerge for Open Source rocketry designs. I intend to revise this award description to reflect these standards as they emerge (for example, I can imagine that we might eventually want to specify that some specific Open Source tool describe the design and assembly of a rocket when we can assume that the lion's share of rocketry amateurs have access to tools compliant with specific standards). I will give folks advance warning of any such changes so that this minimally affects work that is in progress.
Background
My real goal in supporting space development is recreating the pos
Seastead this.