Space Application Challenge

Campfire
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Hey Edgeryders, stumbled on this piece of information and thought that maybe some of you might be interested:

NASA, ESA, US Embassy and La Sapienza University launched a so-called “International Space Apps Challenge” which will take place on 20-21 April offline (71 cities and 45 countries) and online.

It aims at producing open-source solutions to global challenges relevant to both life on Earth and in space. Participants will have access to open data sets to develop innovative solutions for global challenges in software development. Over 50 challenges have been proposed. You can find them here. 

Participation is free, but registration is mandatory. You can connect online with global dispatch to find a team that needs your specific skills and expertise to help solve a challenge. To join as a Virtual Participant, register and find the list of locations you can go here. 

For more information, there is the official website, and you can read more about the story here.

I guess it’s up for you to judge :) Cheers!

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We still love NASA

Thanks for sharing, Ilaria (and for creating the first real-world content in the Agora group) :slight_smile: I looked through the challenges and found the “app for backyard poultry farmers”. Nice one, definitely useful as an open source tool.

For the more spacey challenges in the set, the open source rocketry friends from Copenhagen Suborbitals will probably have something to say. (I knew that open source rockets were out there, but it surprises myself right now how elaborate they are already; there’s a summary on Wikipedia.)

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Open NASA

I am glad to be able to contribute to Edgeryders… finally! I must say I hesitated because I am still filled with prejudices: “openness” and NASA, European Space Agency and US Embassy just somehow don’t seem to go together. Also, I was asking myself: okay, so all these people are going to work together for 48h and then what are you guys gonna do with the results?!

Thank you, Matthias, for creating the Agora. I find it quite a usefull place to post pieces of information and other remarks that are not elaborated enough to become a project but that can still come in handy to the Edgeryders network!

Pleasure, as always…

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NASA learning “open”

Open and NASA goes quite ok together already … their “Nebula” software became a major founding part of what is now OpenStack, the de-facto standard for open source “cloud software” [source]. Which means, quite a complex piece of software for managing big websites … if Edgeryders one day reaches 1 million members, we’d probably use Drupal with OpenStack as well.

However, you’re right, NASA was not always open-friendly. But I guess they’re learning quite well now :slight_smile:

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Netention : Bootstraping Lunar Industry

Hello,

Netention team participated in the hackathon. It was really cool experience.

You can find what we produced during the week-end at this link :

Netention Boostrapping Lunar Industry Presentation

We didnt really made connections with NASA people though, which was the main objective : building a use case to showcase one of netention’s potentials.

There are many amazing projects that are being worked out you can find on nasa apps challenge website, worth taking a lool.

(btw great job with new website ! :wink: )

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Interesting!

Hey Nicholas, welcome back :slight_smile:

I am writing this from a place with bad connectivity, so I cannot see your video. Just making a mental node that a rhetoric of “work with big tech org X” does not necessarily mean that you will actually be able to do any sparring with the folks working at X. Probably the Space App Challenge was spawned by NASA communication/marketing/schmarketing rather than tech and engineering. Good to know.

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The story doesn’t end yet :slight_smile:

Hey Alberto !

Thanks, hope you’re well and fine. :slight_smile:

So far, participating in the spaceappchallenge, was a good quality “first contact”.

About the NASA stuff, thing is, lots of people involved, lots of software…

In the end, “time X individuals” makes most of the equation.

Actually, Spaceappschallenge staff has been really nice and responsive. As we were a virtual team (mainly working cross-countries in our bedrooms), we asked for precisions about the challenge and got multiple persons involved, answering quickly and efficiently.

Coincidently enough, we just received a mail concerning a Kennedy Space Center contest or i don’t know what. We need to produce a 2 min video and 100 words text for monday, 20. This can be done in less than half an hour, i’ll just send an e-mail beforehand to express that our intentions are not to participate in any contest, but to show our work to profesionals.

I may start working on it this afternoon, so hopefully, you won’t have to watch a long presentation, but a fast-pased two minutes video.

I really felt that the spaceappschallenge was genuine and a great success.

Many scientists express their needs of funds, and the bootstrapping of lunar economy challenge is a real potential. The idea would be to get self-replicating machines up there that are autonomous. We can do it. I’d even say we need it.

At the pace technology actually evolves, where will we find rare minerals to ameliorate our connectivity and capacities ?

Continue mining to death mother earth with slaves ?

That’s the kind of strategy we need to figure out right now.

Politics have a ten year memory (at least in france) : 5 years forward, 5 years backward.

And its software is outdated since something like 100 years ago ?

maybe 30 ?

Maybe it has always been outdated, and we constantly update it by creating software and hardware to cover our ever-evolving needs ?

Projects like a space industry isn’t the responsibility of politics. It’s ours.

And it’s our choice to make it happen, or not.

What we have tried to show in our presentation, is that :

  • it is doable in a P2P manner involving individuals to governments and agencies

  • netention is designed to organise such interactions and also to make simulations, hence allowing to collectively design the best strategy.

  • it can be fun and intuitive

  • there are tons of ways to contribute to space exploration that can have an immediate impact on earth. Space is more inhospitable than Earth. So if we know how to survive and travel for cheap up there, we know how to thrive down there. As above, so below. Makes sense ?

  • …

Also, we had lots of fun. Seems like nothing, but being aware that thousands of individuals towards the globe are working with you to contribute to the space exploration effort is really something. :slight_smile:

Moreover, we collaborated with other projects : ClimateViewer and Cesium, which are now (almost) merged with netention, and made a visually pleasant presentation that appeared to become the basis of the other presentations you will find on the website that we have produced since.

This really inspired us, and made us work effectively in a friendly atmosphere while learning and dreaming of space travel. Since then, we have just continued on the same pace.

Dreaming is awesome, maye some kind of cheap drug, and when you work on your dreams with other dreamers, the trip has no ends but an amazing path.

I guees you know pretty well that feeling. :wink:

Finally, this lead me to find ways to express what i’ve been working on.

I learnt a whole lot of stuff this last year, and it’s starting to aggregate in forms that may be more digestible and comprehensive than what i shared a year ago.

Actually, i say exactly the same stuff than a year ago, than twelve years ago…

I’m just learning more adequate words and processes with time.

Any feedback is more than welcome, it can only help me embrace new perspectives, which is most of my “quest”.

A new blog : Nirgal’s Logs

The “themes” :

Mind Wandering - Conscious Exploration - NetAlchemy - Cyber-Shamanism - Semantic Healing

Two video channels :

NakedMindTV

Introduction to the Naked Mind Protocol which consists basically on an attempt to define a communication protocol that allows the exchange of private data and a collective processing aka a form of P2P therapy.

SemantiCure

Experimental Semantic Healing. Meaningful medications for the mind…

It’s the other side of the coin with Naked Mind. Naked Mind is about sharing and exploring, SemantiCure is about getting fast to pure meaning and knowledge. So it starts with deprogramming litterature such as the Anatomy of Slavespeak.

I realise i wrote a bit much, but i had lots to share. :slight_smile:

In the end, i can only thank NASA to make our dreams come true !

And so, we are writing an ongoing story as we talk. :slight_smile: