I actually have done quite a lot of contract work for NASA, and count many of them as friends. Good enough friends to tease them about what NASA really means..(Nothing Accomplished Since Apollo) ;-).
NASA has several venues to engage America's college students, mainly those in engineering. I have mentored several of them through the years at the annual USLI (University Student Launch Initiative) in Rocket City, aka, Huntsville, Alabama.

www.nasa.gov/offices/education/progra...

Last year both my teams did really well, with one of them from Texas winning a $15000 prize for their out of the box thinking re purposing farm equipment to construct an autonomous GSE (Ground Support Equipment) to remotely launch their high power rocket with payload. (It was a hay bale tractor fork. Country kids rock). The other team, from Arkansas (Razorbacks) took first place in altitude prediction, recorded by onboard telemetry (altimeter).

These venues present enormous opportunities for college students to get hands on experience, outside of a classroom, and also presents the ones that apply themselves to prospective employers. As for me, as an old retired rocket scientist, Texas redneck, and Gulcher, convinced that the vast majority of Americans are completely eat up with the dumb a$$, I get a huge amount of satisfaction helping these kids, and realizing there are still a few bright ones left to leave this messed up country too. That, and I also get to throw a monkey wrench into Academia's effort to PC our youth by exposing them to me.

This is what happens when you give too much money to an agency with no mission for too long: "GS-puke-u-titis", a condition where highly paid government service workers seek philanthropic technology handouts from young people to address the gross gap demonstrated between industry competitors and agency progress.

I think this is a hoot, but outside of any expertise I have. With respect to something that I have considered: There are now numerous programs that allow amateurs to participate in archaeological digs. Not only do you not get paid, but often you are charged for transportation, room, and board. This has proven to be a huge benefit to archaeology, and the low level excavators at many digs are now retired office managers and dental assistants.

These programs allow people such as me, who have a long term interest in archaeology to participate in it 'once in a while' and provide the pros with very skilled helpers.

It seems to me that this NASA program is drawing on these resources in a positive way. Like the archaeological excavations, it is a win-win situation. I would consider that this was a fair exchange of my work for my invitation to participate.

Jan
PS. To whomever I was discussing the meaning of Sobek with the other week, I actually found a real inscription with the name Sobek-sa't (daughter of Sobek) on it. The hieroglyphs are 'a mummified crocodile' 'a duck' 'a hemispherical loaf of bread'. (middle of bottom line)

http://www.metmuseum.org/collection/t...

NASA and its "insider" favored contractors have been doing this for years.In the late '60s I was a graduate student, and participated in at least two such studies. The second was concepts for a Venus lander system, and one of our solutions involved the use of the communications antenna as a land mapping radar. One of the judges was Martin Marietta, and their later (successful) Venus probe incorporated the radar mapping scheme, for which we were neither acknowledged nor paid.

There is a "sky car" company near where I live. They have been getting engineers to work for free for them. I got out of the aerospace business (engineer) a long time ago, only because it was too hard to get paid.

However, this sounds interesting. As I read it I automatically started formulating a design in my head...haha....

Several students I have taught are working on this challenge. Granted, they are not getting paid for it. The experience, however, is valuable. The "prize" is an internship at Langley to go to work for "the dark side".