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IDEASPHERE

Our Mission

Ideasphere is the web solution that utilizes crowdsourcing and 3D printing to improve the experience of space travel. This concept provides a solution for the unpredictable issues that may arise during space exploration focusing on collaboration and improved communication between the astronauts and the mission control and the army of enthusiasts, engineers, students from all over the world that just want to be a part of the space experience.

3D printing, nowadays, provides a way to efficiently replace a broken or outdated parts on active space missions. IDEASPHERE is initially conceived as a platform for sharing solutions that can be used along with 3D printing, but now posting a solution does not have a limit on its nature.

The greatest value of IDEASPHERE is its openness and collaborative aspect. Once the mission control posts a problem, it will get pinned on the web site's home page and it is open for taking proposals from everyone. Each proposal can contain an 3D model and a render of it, but not necessarily. Once the proposals start coming in, people can upvote / downvote on them, and also flag them for inappropriate content, so as a result we get a community moderated solutions. Also, mission control and the community can communicate via commenting on the proposals.

This project need not only be applied to technical problems - the Ideasphere website could be used in schools to inspire children and reignite the passion humanity once had for space travel: even schools could design something for an astronaut; connecting the children to the space.

How do we intend to make it better?

Taking some advises from the great success of Stackoverflow, we imagine the future versions of IDEASPHERE to contain a system of badges, e.g. NASA, student, engineer, 3d-modeler etc. Problems can also be tagged – a problem tagged with nano-tech can be more easily found by a person with that specific expertise, naturally we implemented a search option with tagged key words so we can maneuver better.

How do we intend to improve it in the future?

We wanted the page to be more interactive, not only one way flow information, so we can provide option when registering - people to leave information such as e-mail, telephone number...etc so the astronaut wont feel excluded from the information flow, and If he has something to ask about the solution to contact the modeler instead of forming new teams, making new solution upgrading the existing one. We can also add the world's largest libraries (plus the social networks), the student project-college libraries, and the libraries of the professional Software Companies (mostly those who do 3D printing models) so the astronaut can have variety of solutions. We can make a horizontal timeline that shows solved missions and unique solutions that will guide people easily through the page.

The complementary mobile app is also going to need a greater integration with the web site. Also – we can open up an API and allow other developers make their own apps on top of our service. The app has a snapshot and a sketch-tool for all the necessary emergency problems, as well as notifications for the 'Red Alert' missions.

Currently users can log-in with their existing google or facebook accounts, but we intend to make it usable with providing plain email registration. Even though the user profiles are public, in a community moderated web apps such as these there is always a possibility for malicious use, so we intend to make it possible for banning users based on their past behavior. Also, social integration, sharing solutions and similar is always a nice idea.

And at last, maybe when it gets too crowded, a red-alert pining mechanism for problems with higher urgency may be implemented, and a push-based mechanism for a mobile and email alerts for new problems to users that previously subscribed for some problem tag.

Our 3D model solutions and prototype:

As a proof-of-concept, we upgraded the Curiosity Wheel Solution, improving it by adding cylinders in the holes of the wheel and a a weight in the middle - this is posted as one solution on our website. When the wheels start drifting or get stuck in the sand the sensors detect that and they let the weight on the cylinders and the weight pressures the cylinders and they lift the wheel, making the rover overcoming the obstacles and being capable again to continue the mission. We also made our 3D solution for the ExoMars rover dull drill, and we have a prototype printed in 3D.

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