Did I hear my robot say, 'Yes, I can NASA that!'?

A new type of search engine is in the making! ...not Google's, but rather NASA's, and not for humans but instead for our soon-to-evolve robots and special smart devices.
 
 
Space Apps Challenges
Space Apps Challenges
April 22, 2014 - PRLog -- When you need an address, a definition, or information about anything on earth, friends will tell you to 'Google that'; however, what if your smart device or robot needed to look something up, considering they too have become a part of the 'Internet of Things'? For them, 'Googling that' may help narrow some choices but the binary-like answers (yes or no) that futuristic devices will need to operate may have to come from another source altogether such as a 'collaborative search engine', driven and inspired by a half-a-century old institution, NASA.

What is a 'collaborative search engine'?

In short it is a search engine that by today's standards is incomplete; not because a database is missing or broken links beyond repair, but because its primary source of information does not yet exist and is essentially pending discovery. Let me explain.  While Google has become the central source for all known data, (good, bad, and even ugly), NASA is emerging with an alternative search engine concept altogether. Instead of 'crawling' throughout the web to organize existing data the way Google algorithms do, NASA is organizing groups of talented individuals all over the world through virtual 'Challenges' to help it address a daunting list of unsolved problems whose collective contributions may one day make space travel as much of a business reality as airlines are today. Their global efforts will soon be centralized into a massive collection of ideas that will be in one way or another associated with NASA's existing space data.

NASA’s Space Apps Challenges
These Space Apps Challenges (https://2014.spaceappschallenge.org), as they are called, are huge. Last year's two-day global event, for example, broke the Guinness Book of World records for the largest ever ‘Hackathon’-like gathering with over 9,000 registered participants representing 484 organizations in 83 cities across 44 countries. At this year's event, the number of attendees worldwide jumped above 10,000 and is expected to rise further as NASA continues to tap outside its walls for novel ideas, clever approaches, and outright brilliant breakthroughs all from cadres of scattered, talented, and unlikely groups of individuals.

This year one of their city events was held at AlleyNYC (http://www.alleynyc.com) near Times Square located in the heart of New York City where a packed house of eager space aficionados of all ages, all walks of life, and every professional talent imaginable converged to inspire and get inspired. In a business-like manner, NASA's Deputy CIO and CTO, Deborah Diaz (http://www.nasa.gov/offices/ocio/ittalk/05-2010_diaz.html), opened the event by presenting details of the institution’s tide-changing decision to post NASA's gargantuan vaults of space data on the web at open.nasa.gov; ...where anyone with an internet connection can access its vast contents freely. Experimental data from the International Space Station (http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/main/) (ISS), weather data on Neptune, meteorite real-time positioning, GPS-landscape image coordinates on Mars and so much more are accessible for the connecting. NASA hopes its open-data policy will inspire groups to form organically as they often do at their Hackathons and address many of the institution's pressing current and future challenges in space. On a side note, Diaz expressed her profound views that NASA's open-source efforts could one day change the future of global democracies from one of 'freedom-of-choice' to one of 'freedom-of-thought'.

NASA’s Challenges in Space
To help participants place space challenges into perspective, American test pilot mission specialist astronaut, Doug Wheelock (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_H._Wheelock), who logged 178 days on the Space Shuttle shared his views about space and space travel with participants during a press conference at the event. According to Wheelock, space is a brutally hostile environment that does not compare to anything on earth. To appreciate his perspective, imagine a place where the sun rises and sets 16 times every 24 hours, and every time the sun shines, materials such as the body of the space station or an astronaut's spacesuit is subjected to temperatures exceeding 450 degrees Fahrenheit. When the sun sets, temperatures swing the other way dropping to 300 degrees Fahrenheit below zero. Radiation levels surrounding the space station are so high that despite the station's thick walls, some of the 70+ laptops on board used to perform experiments may inadvertently 'fry'. In a humble manner, Wheelock told a packed audience that NASA cannot continue its mission to Mars without the discovery of new materials that can withstand wide frequent temperature swings and intense radiation exposures over long periods of time.

Medical issues in space are another of NASA's imperatives. Wheelock described issues with atrophy in the leg muscles, blurred vision, depression, and even loss of taste, all due to exposure to zero-gravity. Taken for granted on earth, gravity gives our legs purpose, our sight a level horizon to distinguish moving objects, our potential mood swings a sense of equilibrium, and even our mouth active taste buds. Our brains are wired to calibrate our bodily functions based on gravity levels. In a zero-gravity environment, for example, our legs become, essentially useless. In a defensive move, the brain will push blood away from the legs to the brain to allow for recalibration in a gravity-changed environment. Space station astronauts have learned to counter some of these physical anomalies by exercising their legs regularly with bungee cords, for example, but look to other sources for future discoveries and ideas on preventing potential blindness and automating cures for other unexpected and yet-to-be-encountered physical and psychological disorders and ailments.

Challenges in Space Travel
Then, there was the question about space travel; a question that just about any individual young or old would want to ask an astronaut. What is it really like lifting off from earth in the Space Shuttle, living at the International Space Station for months at a time, and taking a space walk? Here Wheelock did not disappoint.

In a candid and unreserved manner, Wheelock described the distinct noises he would hear while walking underneath the space shuttle prior to a launch.

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Contact
Tom Kadala
tom@researchpays.net
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Tags:Nasa, Wheelock, Iss, Hackathon, Search Engine
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