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NASA Wants Your Ambitious High-Tech Contest Ideas

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the none-of-us-are-as-dumb-as-all-of-us dept.

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."

6 of 128 comments (clear)

  1. Contest contest by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    So NASA is holding a contest to see who can come up with the best contest?

    the recursion is hurting my brain...

    1. Re:Contest contest by CraftyJack · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Don't get me wrong here. I am not saying I am encouraging this or that i am proud that NASA is doing this, but at least it will bring more attention to our space program than the average American has been giving it in recent years. It's sad, people used to crowd around the TV to watch when a shuttle launched, now they just catch a glimpse on the news when they are flipping channels from tool academy and Hasselhoff on America's got talent.

      This could (and is) said of every half-baked NASA effort, including the whole "name-node-3" thing. To my mind, asking the general public to come up with ideas for Centennial Challenges means that:
      (a) NASA can't come up with a clear picture of what technologies are high priority and could benefit from a Centennial Challenge.
      (b) NASA sees the Centennial Challenges as public outreach with no real engineering payoff - so it doesn't matter what the topics are.
      (c) both (a) and (b).

  2. Yo dawg... by AdmiralXyz · · Score: 4, Funny

    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.
    1. Re:Yo dawg... by JeanBaptiste · · Score: 5, Funny

      Yo dawg, Imma let you finish, but Apollo had the best mission of all time.

  3. Baby steps by eln · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.

  4. Design a Space Broom by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Clean up all the debris that is already up there and you'll lower the difficulty of future challenges.