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NASA Announces Space Apps Challenge
coondoggie writes with an article in Network World about a development challenge put forth by NASA. From the article: "NASA said it would host an open source-based application competition that it hopes will deliver a new generation of software that can address space, weather, and economic issues. NASA said it will coordinate with other interested space agencies around the world on an International Space Apps Challenge that will encourage scientists and concerned citizens from all seven continents — and in space — to create, build, and invent new applications that can address world-class issues."
No, NASA has never been about just "sending people to space". They accomplished their original goal of winning the space race and now their official mision statement is "pioneer the future in space exploration, scientific discovery and aeronautics research".
I'd say that this is exactly the kind of stuff NASA should be doing, they are saving time and money by not doing all this research themselves and at the same time (hopefully) promoting collaboration between scientists and space enthusiasts all over the world.
Kudos NASA
If what I just said sounded like a troll, it was probably just a failed attempt at humor.
Indeed, we should never ever venture anywhere that isn't perfectly hospitable to us. It's just too dangerous and too scary.
Economics? So now an agency that can't manage its budget is getting into the economics modeling biz? This is like the CDC deciding that they are authoritative and credible to make social policy on the Second Amendment.
Everybody gets what the majority deserves.
It isn't about being dangerous and scary(history suggests that there's always somebody, usually many somebodies, expendable if you care about a project enough...), it's about not engaging in largely pointless white-elephant projects at the expense of actual science and engineering. Because robots are better at space than humans, they tend to allow much more of the mission to be about space, rather than about coddling them until they can land again.
The only thing you'd really need humans in space for is determining what happens to humans in absence of gravity, which you can do in earth orbit, and eventually sending some out to set up shop in a new location set up by the robots for their convenience. Anything other than zero gravity can be (comparatively) cheaply simulated by putting people in assorted test chambers on earth(not that we are, for the most part, bothering to do that, which suggests how serious we are about long-term plans for humans in space) and the space-related work can be done more efficiently by robots.
They say open source, but do they mean BSD, GPLv2, GPLv3, Apache or something else entirely. Not trying to be an ass, just want to know.
I call it 'The Aristocrats'
You know what doesn't mix well? People and trans-oceanic travel. We are not sea-water consumption tolerant, solar radiation tolerant, or even high-moisture air tolerant (you wouldn't believe how many cases of hypothermia can be brought on by a cool breeze and a high humidity level!). In fact, all that extra stuff you have to take with a person just so they don't starve or dehydrate is a lot of dead weight (and if your boat is loaded up with too much dead weight, it will definitely sink!). On top of all that, there is the huge PR cost if one of these leaky wooden tubs springs a hole and sinks to the bottom of the Atlantic.
Don't try to send humans West across the ocean to do a caravan's job.
Do you think folks back in the 1300's and 1400's talked like that a lot? I'll bet they did.
Motorcycles, Robots, Space Gossip and More!
I'm sorry, but the link to NASA's page currently points to just a generic text, sprinkled with big words and phrases, that really doesn't say anything. Details please?
1. Going and getting a bucket of Helium3 from the surface of the Moon
2. Retrieve a Comet, and place it on the Moon.
3. (Optional) Rewrite Angry Birds, use likenesses of @$$hole$ that get in the way of man going into space; it's for the children.
Um, I think that they are more interested in software to help predict the weather in Farmville. So you'd better start working on a virtual Earth simulator that can be virtually photographed by a virtual satellite to make virtual predictions about the virtual weather. And don't forget to include the effects of global warming and the inevitable flooding of Farmville. And make sure that you make the virtual sun go nova sometime in 2012 so that the weather report is "Hot, very hot" as Farmville is turned into the wisp of incandescent virtual plasma that it so richly deserves to be...
rgb
Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken. --- Bertrand Russell.
Sailing West to get to the East: a risky proposition, but with a potentially huge and practically realizable commercial payoff. The discovery of a New World was the result of a lack of knowledge about what was really out that way.
Putting humans into space: a risky proposition, with no current model for commercial payoff. Sufficient knowledge of what's out there, and our ability to get further knowledge sans manned spaceflight, reduce or even eliminate the need to get people out there until some aspect of the aforementioned situation changes.
If they had robots that could be sent out for a fraction of the cost to scout for new worlds before sending people, I'm sure they would have preferred that option.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
This costs almost nothing. I'd guess they're doing a super-low-cost project *because* they're underfunded.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Much as I adore the idea of colonizing the entire Universe, putting humans on each and every planet and surrounding stars with Dyson spheres and filling them and eventually using advanced nuclear technology to transform nearly all of the mass that isn't actually in stars into human flesh in the form of exponentially more babies, it really isn't fair to compare space and the imperial colonial expansion of Europe into the New World in the sixteenth through nineteenth centuries. Look at the differences:
Not exactly comparable. Even less comparable to the westward expansion of the 1800s, where a single family could often afford the trip, and could forage or buy food when they got wherever.
Tell you what. You invent a spaceship that costs about as much as a house (that's the limit of sing
Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken. --- Bertrand Russell.
I think it needs to be said that any "space app" should not be based on a microtransaction model.
And for god's sake, it had better be open source.
You are welcome on my lawn.
What does NASA have to do with space?
I thought they officially gave up in that area, and now it's just a jobs program for contractors.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
We show geeks how to get their dream girl at EyesOfOdessa.com
Your proof of concept doesn't really work.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Your analogy fails because there is no conceivable pay off for the cost involved. We're not going to find Martians willing to trade exotic metals for the equivalent of glass beads.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Reliable, improved and more-efficient space tech and the technology created to solve those problems could go a long way in helping with our more earthly problems.
That's why I've entered my "cold fusion" app. As long as you keep your phone plugged in you get a flashlight that never runs out.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it