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So many trash comments on the site about how NASA should be "offering more money" or how this is a way for them to "save money" and it is all a scam. Seriously

by jtchang 14y ago

So many trash comments on the site about how NASA should be "offering more money" or how this is a way for them to "save money" and it is all a scam. Seriously? Any decent hacker attempting this is probably doing it for props. The money is great and provides a good monetary incentive but when it comes down to it I'd wager people would do this for free. Hell a personal tour of NASA and maybe their name in the code might but just as good.

OGinparadise 14y ago
+100. NASA can easily write you a $1 million check and then some for a lot of things, but imagine the satisfaction each time the Space Station is mentioned...that sucker is (partly) running on my code. And then there's the resume thing and your name mentioned all over the interwebs if you win
3327 14y ago
Agree, most hackers with interest in space, science, etc would dedicate a considerable amount of time and do it for free. 10k is 10k and its really not a game changer amount. Its the fun, the problems significance and bragging rights!
- ra 14y ago
  Indeed! Ultimate feather in your bow!
millerc 14y ago
I'd like to propose a different perspective into this. In a respectable aerospace organization, a typical effort into such an optimization project would be in the order of 3 mid-to-senior staff, for a duration of 6 months. Consider a loaded rate of $200k/year (remember, overhead makes it much more expensive), and you'll be looking at about $300k for a single tentative. Let's suppose they probably tried no more than 3 to 5 approaches already, that's $1.5M of taxpayer's money they already put on that. And they still can't figure out a way to keep a good configuration of shadows on the longerons when they push it for a little more power. If I came up with an optimal solution to this problem, I'd be miffed to be let go with $10k (or $30k as they seem to have updated) and a nicely worded letter. I would hope my carreer to be guaranteed✝ for a few years, instead of being thrown back on my own into the void. -- ✝ No, the letter is not a guarantee of employment elsewhere. If anything, it might very well scare off "normal" employers from hiring a prospect.
- paulgb 14y ago
  > If I came up with an optimal solution to this problem, I'd be miffed to be let go with $10k (or $30k as they seem to have updated) and a nicely worded letter. You would have known in advance that that's the prize. If you would be miffed to get the prize, you shouldn't enter this particular contest.
  - millerc 14y ago
    Stating an opinion, not looking to debate logistics. Feel free to share the opinion or not.
- icegreentea 14y ago
  More or less true, but remember that even submitting the winning submission does not carry the same weight of responsibility or liability that it would normally carry at an engineering firm. Your submission doesn't even have to come close to providing an optimal, or even safe solution, and that won't hurt you (beyond not winning) one bit. Validation and testing will no doubt be done by actual fully paid NASA (or whatever space agency) employees, at their usual rates.
  - sliverstorm 14y ago
    "Crowdsourcing is not a panacea" - sliverstorm
- bjxrn 14y ago
  That 30k is the total prize package. The 1st place prize is still 10k. More on the prizes here: http://community.topcoder.com/tc?module=MatchDetails&rd=15520 http://community.topcoder.com/tc?module=MatchDetails&rd=...
bmuon 14y ago
It also sounds like something you could publish as a paper.
pingou 14y ago
The problem is that these 10.000 $ look cheap regarding the amount of work it requires. I can't find a link but there's several studies showing that people are willing to do a lot of things for free if they like it, but they see it like work if it's paid and they enjoy it less, especially if for a ridiculous sum of money. I'm pretty sure Wikipedia would have a lot less content if they paid their contributors 1 cent by article. I think the Nasa should either increase the bounty or make it 0 $.
- ProblemFactory 14y ago
  > I can't find a link but there's several studies showing that people are willing to do a lot of things for free if they like it, but they see it like work if it's paid and they enjoy it less, especially if for a ridiculous sum of money. This seems to be the unfortunate result every time a bounty or a prize is offered for a public competition with some meaningful task. * If the task is obviously unuseful (for example other TopCoder competitions, sports competitions), prizes seem to make it more desirable. * If the task is useful and there is no prize, people jump on the chance of doing something cool. * If the task is useful and there is a prize, it is seen as work, and judged based on the typical (Western world) hourly rates. Plenty of open-source bounty boards have had a similar backlash, even though hundreds of thousands of coders work on fixing open-source bugs just because they like it. It would be great to come up with a solution that stops people being upset at being offered more than nothing, for work they would gladly do for free anyway. But at the moment I don't have any solutions to propose. For this particular hackathon, NASA would do better to say up front if this is a space publicity competition (and the results are not useful to them), or if they will use the winner's code on the ISS (in which case bragging rights are worth way more than $10k).

by jtchang 14y ago

OGinparadise 14y ago

+100. NASA can easily write you a $1 million check and then some for a lot of things, but imagine the satisfaction each time the Space Station is mentioned...that sucker is (partly) running on my code. And then there's the resume thing and your name mentioned all over the interwebs if you win

3327 14y ago

Agree, most hackers with interest in space, science, etc would dedicate a considerable amount of time and do it for free. 10k is 10k and its really not a game changer amount. Its the fun, the problems significance and bragging rights!

ra 14y ago
Indeed! Ultimate feather in your bow!

millerc 14y ago

I'd like to propose a different perspective into this. In a respectable aerospace organization, a typical effort into such an optimization project would be in the order of 3 mid-to-senior staff, for a duration of 6 months. Consider a loaded rate of $200k/year (remember, overhead makes it much more expensive), and you'll be looking at about $300k for a single tentative. Let's suppose they probably tried no more than 3 to 5 approaches already, that's $1.5M of taxpayer's money they already put on that. And they still can't figure out a way to keep a good configuration of shadows on the longerons when they push it for a little more power. If I came up with an optimal solution to this problem, I'd be miffed to be let go with $10k (or $30k as they seem to have updated) and a nicely worded letter. I would hope my carreer to be guaranteed✝ for a few years, instead of being thrown back on my own into the void. -- ✝ No, the letter is not a guarantee of employment elsewhere. If anything, it might very well scare off "normal" employers from hiring a prospect.

paulgb 14y ago
> If I came up with an optimal solution to this problem, I'd be miffed to be let go with $10k (or $30k as they seem to have updated) and a nicely worded letter. You would have known in advance that that's the prize. If you would be miffed to get the prize, you shouldn't enter this particular contest.
- millerc 14y ago
  Stating an opinion, not looking to debate logistics. Feel free to share the opinion or not.
icegreentea 14y ago
More or less true, but remember that even submitting the winning submission does not carry the same weight of responsibility or liability that it would normally carry at an engineering firm. Your submission doesn't even have to come close to providing an optimal, or even safe solution, and that won't hurt you (beyond not winning) one bit. Validation and testing will no doubt be done by actual fully paid NASA (or whatever space agency) employees, at their usual rates.
- sliverstorm 14y ago
  "Crowdsourcing is not a panacea" - sliverstorm
bjxrn 14y ago
That 30k is the total prize package. The 1st place prize is still 10k. More on the prizes here: http://community.topcoder.com/tc?module=MatchDetails&rd=15520 http://community.topcoder.com/tc?module=MatchDetails&rd=...

bmuon 14y ago

It also sounds like something you could publish as a paper.

pingou 14y ago

The problem is that these 10.000 $ look cheap regarding the amount of work it requires. I can't find a link but there's several studies showing that people are willing to do a lot of things for free if they like it, but they see it like work if it's paid and they enjoy it less, especially if for a ridiculous sum of money. I'm pretty sure Wikipedia would have a lot less content if they paid their contributors 1 cent by article. I think the Nasa should either increase the bounty or make it 0 $.

ProblemFactory 14y ago
> I can't find a link but there's several studies showing that people are willing to do a lot of things for free if they like it, but they see it like work if it's paid and they enjoy it less, especially if for a ridiculous sum of money. This seems to be the unfortunate result every time a bounty or a prize is offered for a public competition with some meaningful task. * If the task is obviously unuseful (for example other TopCoder competitions, sports competitions), prizes seem to make it more desirable. * If the task is useful and there is no prize, people jump on the chance of doing something cool. * If the task is useful and there is a prize, it is seen as work, and judged based on the typical (Western world) hourly rates. Plenty of open-source bounty boards have had a similar backlash, even though hundreds of thousands of coders work on fixing open-source bugs just because they like it. It would be great to come up with a solution that stops people being upset at being offered more than nothing, for work they would gladly do for free anyway. But at the moment I don't have any solutions to propose. For this particular hackathon, NASA would do better to say up front if this is a space publicity competition (and the results are not useful to them), or if they will use the winner's code on the ISS (in which case bragging rights are worth way more than $10k).