open_innovation

a directory of ways to participate in space exploration. The site launched in November 2008, partially influenced by the NASA Authorization Act of 2008, Sec. 408 Participatory Exploration that called to “facilitate participation by the public, the private sector, nongovernmental organizations, and international partners”.

The total cost of the Mars Curiosity project that today safely touched down on Mars and transmitted images back to Earth was $2.5 billion, which breaks down to about $7 per American

Another recent challenge, issued by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa), was aimed at identifying new methods to assemble shredded documents — or potential vulnerabilities in the military’s current document shredding practices. It was structured as a race to win $50,000 and it drew 9,000 registered teams. The winner — the ‘All Your Shreds Are Belong to U.S.’ team — pieced together five documents that were shredded into more than 10,000 pieces in 33 days using a combination of computer algorithms and human assembly.

I checked out Ryan Price who spoke to me about Open Innovation. Netflix offered a one million dollar prize to anyone who could improve the types of movie suggestions offered by 10%. Coders from around the world collaborated to solve the problem. In the end Netflix got more than it bargained for. The results were raised by more than 10%. Ryan is helping organize a Drupal Camp where participants hack for a cause. Hack is another way of saying modifying code. Not all hacking is evil.