NASA Coding Challenge
NASA has issued a challenge with a 55 thousand dollar prize pool.
The challenge is to speed up the software NASA uses to model fluid flow, which is called FUN3D. Simulating fluid dynamics takes a huge amount of processing power and there is a limit to how much NASA can put into hardware. This led to the decision to speed up the software.
"NASA is looking for qualified people who can download the FUN3D code, analyze the performance bottlenecks, and identify possible modifications that might lead to reducing overall computational time."
I decided that since many of the early adopters on Steemit have been crypto enthusiasts and many of those are programmers, this would be a great place to share it. Also since NASA is one of the few protections we have from asteroids I think helping them out in any way possible is not a bad idea.
The competition ends June 29th and you must be a US citizen and go through an application process before they allow you to access the code.
Not a US citizen :( It'd have been fun (and hard) to dig the code, also to keep my Fortran warm (hoping it is at least F90…)
yeah NASA is sadly part of the US government and has to play by their rules
Many science-related code is open, and it makes sense because science should be a global collaborative effort. It should, but of course it isn't and in this specific case, … NASA is a strategic asset, the specific code can be used to make military things as well, and anyway it is serious business which gives a competitive advantage. So I suppose it is a matter of security and potential-money more than anything else. Scientific angles are left apart.
Sounds fun, what about people who don'y know, What is Coding? NASA should come up with competition for other useful stuff like "origami" which could be really helpful in space travel and satellite launch.