Re: Join the NASA design challenge: win 15,000 dollars

On 24/09/2024 7:25 am, john larkin wrote:

On Mon, 23 Sep 2024 13:18:11 GMT, Jan Panteltje <alien@comet.invalid>
wrote:
 

Find Me on the Moon: NASA Lunar Navigation Challenge:
https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/stmd/prizes-challenges-crowdsourcing-program/center-of-excellence-for-collaborative-innovation-coeci/find-me-on-the-moon-nasa-lunar-navigation-challenge/
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For Challenge 1, NASA is seeking an orienteering aid that will help the astronauts navigate on traverses away from the lunar lander and return back.
While there were similar devices available to the Apollo astronauts, NASA is looking for new and unique solutions.
If your solution is one of the best, you could be eligible for a share of the $15,000 prize purse.
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For Challenge 2, NASA is looking for assistance in getting to and mapping the bottom of Shackleton Crater.
The design must work in the extreme conditions of the lunar south pole and Shackleton Crater, map the crater,
characterize and quantify what is in the crater, and send the data back to be used for future missions.
If you can solve this challenge by describing your design concept in detail, you could be eligible for a share of the $30,000 prize purse.
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....
seems to be a good chance to get your product named in the media John L?
anybody else?
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You got to November 25 2024

  "could be eligible for a share of the $15,000 prize purse"  is really
tacky. NASA is really in the entertainment business, at great expense
in dollars and lives.

All academic research is entertainment business - citation rates are just audience numbers.
What John Larkin doesn't appreciate is that the research is worth doing, and an unpredictable part of it has practical applications - some of them very profitable.
NASA is very much blue skies research, but it they ever divert an asteroid before it makes us extinct, it will have paid off, big-time.
The dinosaurs didn't bother, and John Larkin wouldn't either.
--
Bill Sloman, Sydney