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

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.