Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., is among the first in the political world to embrace ChallengePost.com, a Web site that lets users create and join challenges to accomplish goals. The New York City based start-up launched Monday at the Personal Democracy Forum's annual Internet and politics conference. Gingrich's wishes include:
• "Create a method of learning math and science that kids like, and that enables us to leapfrog India and China."
• "Create a method for reusing nuclear waste to make Yucca Mountain, Nevada unnecessary as a repository."
• "Create the first privately financed permanent lunar base."
• "Create a reusable system that could get people into space at 10% of the current cost, thus enabling genuine space tourism and launching an age of exploration."
• "Create a cheap method for turning large quantities of seawater into fresh water."
• "Create a modestly priced, mass-manufacturable hydrogen engine for cars, which would be the biggest single contribution to reducing carbon loading of the atmosphere and reducing subsidies through high oil prices to dictatorships."
• "Create a low-cost vaccine or preventive intervention for malaria -- possibly the single biggest potential improvement in the quality of life in poor tropical countries."
ChallengePost founder Brandon Kessler got the idea after seeing 23-year-old Colin Nederkoorn's contest to run Windows XP on an Intel Mac in 2006. Donations poured in, bringing the cash award to more than $13,000. The ChallengePost community can similarly add prize money to competitions they think are worthwhile. Read more here.
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Responded on June 30, 2009 12:15 AM
Len Cross
The Open Luna Foundation aims to return mankind to the moon through private enterprise. Initial goals focus on a stepped program of robotic missions coupled with extensive public relations and outreach. Following these purely robotic missions, a short series of manned missions will construct a small, approximately 6 person settlement based on a location scouted by the robotic missions. This settlement will be open for anyone's use (private individuals to government agencies), provided they respect our ethical conduct and heritage policies.
Please visit our website/wiki for further details