Slashdot Mirror
NASA Seeks Geniuses and Visionaries
Dotnaught writes "The NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts has put out a call for 'revolutionary ideas to advance the Vision for Space Exploration.' Would-be visionaries are invited to submit their ideas by February 13, 2006, as explained in this Call for Proposals. Phase 1 grants range from $50K to $75K. Phase 2 grants go up to $400K. Sample grand visions include how to create a 'self-sustaining, human presence throughout the solar system' and 'truly autonomous robotic operations for exploration and habitation.'" If any Slash users end up with the grants, we call dibs on interviews.
What about, cleaning space trash?
-- When did Ignorance Become a Point of View?
I thought Isaac Asimov had some great visions of possibilities for space exploration, and robotics usage....
How do you find out if someone is a genius or visionary in the course of an interview? I think a true genius or visionary would come off as a nut, or at least someone who is unable to work in a team, in an interview. It seems to me that the interview process is designed to filter out geniuses and visionaries.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
...propose something that could also be modified by the military to be used as a weapon or to spy on "terrorists"
(or fellow Americans, judging by Bushs latest statements...)
No.
This is not a PR stunt.
Agencies do this all of the time, they just don't normally get FP'd on Slashdot. The people who usually respond to these things are university labs.
For instance, I am a research assistant, and worked under a similar proposal for the development of Artificial Intelligence. My advisor being the contractor under which the work was done.
The work is in multiple phases, with updates to the funding agency (DARPA) every year or so, and the money amounts are synonymous (though, DARPA has a lot more cash).
If you're looking for PR stunts, look at the DARPA Grand Challenge. No money up-front, and $2 million to the winning team out of a field of over 200 teams, with no cash going out the first year.
For DARPA research, those are bargain basement prizes. That said, I took part, and it was a wonderful experience. Perhaps PR stunts aren't so bad.
If they want to have a team of professionals looking at certain ideas, trying to develop something new, they have to pay for a lab, offices, expensive buys that the scientifics will ask for their lab, the rather high salaries they would have to pay to the scientists, plus the salaries of their assistans, AND, when someone has a great idea, and it's put into practice, they will have to give him a grant WAY, WAY, BIGER than the one they are offering now.
/.ers are crazy for space exploration, but most people out there, after all the circus arround the suposed moon trip, and the government constantly telling them that the only important thing they should be spending money in is in paying the fucking army to "protect" them from "terrorists", people just don't trust the NASA, they think that the NASA is a waste of tax dollars, and are not really exited about space exploration at all.
This way, they don't spend a cent, and have thousands of people working for free, and each of those persons are paying their own infrastructure. If someone has a good idea, they will just give him a small payment (the payment is small considering what they usually spend in research done in more conventional ways).
Also, there is the press and public image. The NASA needs more money. And they current public image is not really very good. In order to get more money from the government, they need to improve their public image, and they need to get people interested in space exploration.
This is also a way to try to change that, and get people willing to open their wallets again like they did in the 60s.
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
Probably because most jobs that interview don't require geniuses or visionaries. They need people that work.
Ever been to a meeting with someone who thinks their job is to think outside the box? Half of it is sheer undoable mental masturbation. The parts that can be done are generally thought to be the work of someone else. Geniuses and visionaries are a dime a dozen; great ideas are a given. Give me someone that can actually implement their great idea or vision (or can even be bothered to concieve of a process to make the idea tangible) and then we have something to talk about.
You seem to subscribe to the idea that geniuses and visionaries are unable to handle other people, working in a team, or maybe even a workplace environment. While this may be true of people with Aspareger's (sp?) syndrome, it certainly does not need to be the case. And also, what good are geniuses and visionaries if they cannot communicate well enough to get their ideas across and implemented? I'd take someone who can get things done over someone who has good ideas but can't ever make them work.
I submitted this story last night, and it didn't get posted.
Here's a revolutionary idea: Throw more money at NASA than at the DOD.
With spending like this, exactly what are "conservatives" conserving?
He promoted a theory not a fact. So what if he promoted it, maybe it's true. I mean, this theory was never his to begin but that of NASA. I guess if he promotes a plausible theory, everything else he talks about is wrong? Please, your so filled with bitterness about this guy. Talk about you taking an unobjective point of view....
Life is not for the lazy.
Of course they can have fun poisoning meetings by coming up with the correct solutions in the first five minutes and presenting them in such an irritating and condescending fashion that the rest of the group will reject them and then leave the meeting forcing the rest to struggle through a bunch of incorrect solutions until such time as they are forced to accept (quitely and with out acknowledgement) what they know to be the correct solutions (preferable over a period of many weeks and many more meetings, all hopefully without your attendance ;-)). There is no time when a sence of humour is not appropriate.
Besides it is all about focus, focus your resources in the correct direction and your goals will be achieved. Obviously the whole thing about exploring space is really only stuck upon one issue, gravity and overcoming that particular stumbling block should really be the current focus of activity, after all, understand gravity and the resources of this solar system will become available to you.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
It's pretty sad when a syndicated talk show gets facts wrong more often than a single person armed with Google.
Opposed to what?....Air America? *laughing*
And this is an excuse for making massive blunders day after day? The difference between Rush Limbaugh and Slashdot is that Slashdot is self-correcting and often has good information. Rush Limbaugh isn't self correcting and almost never has good information.
Unless you can prove it, STFU. Otherwise, your statements are slanderous.
Life is not for the lazy.
I'm not going to chime in on Rush, since it's been years since I've heard one of his shows (so, I haven't a clue), however, more often than not, totally misinformed posts get modded up.
I've read several stories on areas that I actively research. Generally the best modded posts are ones that were obviously written by someone with no knowledge of the topic. I recall reading one story on natural language processing, where a top-modded post indicated that he would be impressed when systems could properly parse out a sentence gramatically.
We do that, they're called graph parsers and they work quite well. There are a number of natural language tasks that we don't do so well yet, but that's not one of them. That's one of the ones were researchers generally trust the output of the system.
I'm an overly pretentious Phd. in Mathematics.
You do know that mathematics is the foundation of what makes everything work - including physics?
How dare they not hire me!
You're not wrong.
I work as a research scientist. I get ideas all the time, every day. Other people I work with mention mind blowing ideas, every day. We all have ideas, ideas are a good thing, but ideas are cheap.
Six months later, one year later, three years later and I read about "my idea" being done by someone.
I used to think I was deluding myself, but I'm forced to keep log books at work, and (cunning as a fox I decided to check a couple of episodes out and) lo and behold; I am not deluding myself.
Here's the kick. Every time I have an episode like this I think "if you were worth the money you are paid, you would have *actually got of your fat pampered arse* and done it."
The prizes and the plaudits go to the do'ers. Doing is hard. Doing is good. Protect your doers. Point at them and tell the ideas men "look : gooooood".
Mind you... easy to say....
The other thing is that I have seen a few true visionaries who have plugged away for years, garnering contempt and approbrium from all (sadly me too) before being proved fundamentally correct and suddenly becoming flavour of the month. The trick is to grow a culture of "do, make, prove, give" and yet make sure that you have a bit of a space for people to go deep and dig out the real gold.
--------------------------------------------- "In the end, we're all just water and old stars."