Slashdot Mirror
NASA Wants Your Ambitious High-Tech Contest Ideas
In an effort to create future Centennial Challenges, NASA is asking the general public to come up with (and submit) ambitious contest ideas. For the next six weeks, the Innovative Partnerships Program will be accepting ideas for new contests, with all submissions becoming public domain information. "According to NASA, any idea can be proposed for a prize competition that addresses challenges related to the mission of NASA in aeronautics, exploration, science, or space operations. Crosscutting topics or those that also address related national or global needs are especially valuable. The challenges must require basic and applied research, technology development or prototype demonstrations."
So NASA is holding a contest to see who can come up with the best contest?
the recursion is hurting my brain...
Come on guys, let's get some ideas. This isn't rocket science......oh, maybe it is.
I heard you like contests, so I made a contest for your contest, so you can design the future while you design the future. Thanks, NASA.
Dislike the Electoral College? Lobby your state to join the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact.
The problem is NASA is trying to accomplish too much too fast. They should go for multi-stage contests, where individual teams can compete for each stage of a larger goal. For example, the first stage contest could be for the first group to successfully land a man on the moon. Ten years later, the second stage contest could be for the first group to successfully retrieve a human, or his remains, from the moon. The third stage could be a contest to see who could send a man outside of the Earth-Moon system. Several years after that, the fourth stage contest could be for someone to actually send a man on a trajectory to hit Mars. Fifth stage could be an economical way to retrieve small bits of spacecraft and human body parts from the surface of Mars. Eventually, around the 15th or 20th stage, we'll have a colony on Mars, from which we could attempt to contact the guy we shot off into deep space in the third stage. Simple, really.
I agree that Nasa can't afford what it has now. That said, NASA may be better off spending its money on contests.
But this is an opportunity for any teams of graduate researchers who *want* to take their research into the market.
All they have to do is:
1. Design a contest that they are likely to win.
2. Submit contest (or have a friend submit the contest, to avoid the apparant conflict of interest).
3. Wait for similar contest to come out
4. Enter similar contest and publicize heavily.
5. Encourage donations
6. Win, or come close
7. Sell product under heavy publication
8. Profit!
Whether you win or not determines the initial profitability -- but not the long term profitability.
The free publicity of being on the news helps determine long-term profitability.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
How about a contest to design a modern versions of the cameras used on the Apollo project? By that, I mean a lightweight solution to taking photographs and video on the lunar surface, usable by an astronaut in full gear, with enough battery life and capacity to take a few thousand pictures and or X many hours of video.
Bonus points will be awarded if your solution also includes extra equipment, such as monopods/tripods, high gain antenna, solar recharge kit, is capable of surviving other hostile environments, such as the surface of mars, is capable of using different filters for uv/IR/etc, remote control options, etc.
Clean up all the debris that is already up there and you'll lower the difficulty of future challenges.
Care to explain? The system would certainly take energy, a significant amount of it in fact. But that energy could be produced on the ground as opposed to having to take it with you as is done in rocket launches. Put your moving pieces inside of an evacuated tube and fire/turn the projectiles using magnets there will be very little energy lost to friction. The current estimates for the power requirements of a launch loop are a 500 Mw power plant for 35 launches per day and can be scaled up to 80 launches per hour with sufficient power (17 Gw).
MIT is working on a Mechanical Counterpressure Spacesuit, its called the Biosuit. The materials its made out of are not as advanced as they need to be, but some of the mechanical structures, and the concepts used to design the suits are ready.
http://mvl.mit.edu/EVA/biosuit/index.html
Basically by being a skin tight suit the wearer is better equipped to handle long hours in a space suit, right now something like 80% of an astronaut's exertions are fighting the suit, with 20% left for actually working on the Space Station or Hubble or something.
In 'the future' we're going to spend a lot more time outside doing things, on orbit, on the moon, on mars and it'd be a lot better off if we didn't have to fight the suit to do the work.
Dear NASA,
Here's a contest for you: The Find A Proper Administrator Contest.
O'Keefe and Griffin really did a number on NASA. We've known for a while that the shuttles needed replacing, yet here we are, limping them along with no replacement* in sight. We'll have at least a five year gap in manned space flight capabilities due in part to the shortsightedness of these men, not to mention a space station that is not even complete, yet is shortly due for decommission.
*I hear some of you saying "What about Ares?". Are you talking about the Ares that is going to lift our astronauts into an orbit with a negative perigee? Are you talking about the Ares that cannot lift the Orion module unless they strip out the airbags, toilets, land landing equipment, and a third of the astronauts? Are you talking about the Ares that is going to put the astronauts through the roughest launch environment (thrust oscillation, max-Q, G-forces, acoustics) that manned space flight has ever seen? That Ares?
Or are you talking about the Ares that can't be built in existing factories because it is too big around? Are you talking about the Ares that needs a specially re-inforced launch pad, with thicker concrete driveways, and a new, stronger crawler because it is so heavy the current infrastructure is unable to handle the weight? Are you talking about the Ares that won't be ready to fly until at least 2020? That Ares?
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
You should study history. Humankind doesn't want better quality of life. They've had thousands of years to work at that goal, but choose to wage war, rape, plunder, pillage and kill instead. Now, get off your liberal arse, and help to develop a better bomb.
I know that some bumper-sticker-thinker will probably mod you insightful, but I thought I'd point out that you're pretty much 100% wrong. Quality of life (and the average life span) has risen with minor fluctuations throughout recorded history, while the amount of "war, rape, plunder, pillage and kill[ing]" per capita has steadily declined. In other words, not only do we live longer and better than we ever have before, but we hurt each other less, too.
Also, I'm fairly sure you're misusing the word "Liberal".
Other than that, you're completely right!