h a l f b a k e r yLike gliding backwards through porridge.
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At present there are several:
1. NASA’s Astronaut glove challenge
2. DARPA’s Wearable power supply challenge
3. NASA’s Regolith Excavation Challenge
4. NASA’s Tether Robot climber competition
There are also several more that I believe fall outside of the backyard mechanic range:
1. X-Prize
Moon Lander Competition (even though they just made it a little “easier” as they allowed you to by a $9M ride to outer space).
2. NASA’s Tether construction contest (Can you make nano fibers at home?)
3. NASA’s Personal Air Vehicle (I think the winner will need access to a autoclave to bake a carbon fiber airframe)
I’m presently planning on entering the first three. Are there any other competitions out there that could be entered by a backyard mechanic?
Centenial Challenges
http://centennialchallenges.nasa.gov/
[MisterQED, Nov 09 2007]
Glove Challenge Winner
http://www.space.co...ACE.com%2FT.+Malik.
[MisterQED, Nov 09 2007]
Crunch numbers while your glue dries...
http://www.rsa.com/...bs/node.asp?id=2093
[4whom, Nov 10 2007]
Virgin Earth Challenge - $25M
Virgin_20Earth_20Challenge_20-_20$25M
In halfbakery : idea contest [baconbrain, Nov 12 2007]
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There's a genomics X-prize - $10M for
rapid and cheap DNA sequencing. I'll race
you. |
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But I'm not sure this qualifies as an
"invention". |
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I think the Glove challenge has already been won by a guy from Maine. The contest was held in May of this year. |
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This is an invention on the grounds that very few people do this for a living. And those that do are basically gamblers (wins are very difficult. If you don't find them difficult, then you should start patenting.) A great job would be halfbaking for a living. Like those guys that come up with ideas for big corporations. Although, I still have a feeling that those people come up with some of their "100% original" ideas while searching for them at the HB. |
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The glove challenge was one won last year by a guy from Maine for $200K, but they will continue the challenge this year and up the prize to $450K. Only three groups entered last year. The prize was originally $250K, but the MIT people asked that it be split into two prizes $200K and $50K, where the $50K would be for a working mechanical counter pressure glove. No one entered the second competition. |
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The idea here is what was partially baked by the X-prize. I want lots of companies to offer prizes for solutions to their major issues and I want them to be solved by regular Half-Bakers like us instead of design firms because the design firms come up with crappy solutions. Did anyone see that article about future automobiles? It was all about car whose tires could turn 360° so they could drive in any direction while the passengers rode in a fishbowl and BS like laser tires which supported the car by reflection or something. It was horrible and not out of the ordinary as I have seen many contests like it. |
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The idea is related to others I have seen here, a depository of needed solutions, etc. but with a free market driven reward structure. |
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A free market driven reward structure is setting up a little business that sells astronaut gloves. |
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I'm not sure I'm too pleased with how people are expected to contribute at cost to techonology today. Little to none of the prize money actually covers the cost of development. You want to slap together a $220 million home-built moon rover to win the $25 million google moon rover contest, go ahead. |
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//Little to none of the prize money actually covers the cost of development.\\ |
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That was true in the X-Prize but certainly not in the Glove challenge. I don't know what Mr. Homer's investment was, but I doubt an unemployed bus driver would risk anywhere near $200K in the challenge. What I think he invested most was time. |
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That is what I think the X-Prize and certainly the Moon Challenge got wrong, and the Glove Challenge got right, they need to break the pieces up into chewable bits, the problem is with smaller prizes come less advertising. |
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There are the Clay Prizes, and RSA Factoring challenge. If you are wondering what to do while your carbon fibre bakes in the autoclave. |
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I would be SO on board with something like this. |
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May I suggest that you move it to more appropriate category, like
Halfbakery: vs. the real world |
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Halfbaking is to inventing as conceiving a
child is to raising the child. |
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The Nobel Prize pays off handsomely.. |
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There's the Virgin Earth Challenge. I posted the info about it over in Halfbakery:Idea Contest. If you moved this over there you could avoid people asking where the invention is, maybe. |
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//Halfbaking is to inventing as conceiving a child is to raising the child.// |
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[bungston], that is bloody brilliant! The best tagline ever, too. |
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[marked-for-expiry] Not an invention or an idea contest itself, just a request for pointers. |
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//Halfbaking is to inventing as conceiving a child is to raising the child.// [marked-for-tagline] |
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//I’m presently planning on entering the first three. // [QED] Did you enter them? How far did you get? |
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1. Given that all astronaut movements are planned years in advance, gloves aren't optimal except for emergencies. A thin pair of skintight gloves (layered: wick, plastic/rubber, chainmail) worn inside a self-pressurized airtight globoid containing Waldo control devices for manual or programmed operation; Waldos clamp magnetically to the outside. Can also be clamped to other places.
2. A belt
3. a lunar shovel
4. 2 pulleys which squeeze the rope.
1. Tangential landing (of course you do have to pave the moon first)
2. Is that even theoretically possible without getting all compressed-mattery ?
3. Hullaballoon. |
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Ask me again in a month or so. The astronaut glove challenge is in two weeks, but I don't think I'll be there. I am always short on free time and what little I have I spent on finishing my patent around the idea I came up with to win the Glove Competition. I'll be filing that world-wide in the next week or two. After that I see about licensing the patent out. I already know what my next patent will be, I just have to find the time, but in any case the dream is still alive, just not going at the pace I'd like. |
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