Collaboration Is Out Of This World...

Interesting two articles on collaboration, community-building and use of Second Life. I recommend you view the entire story on each web site for additional graphics, slide tours, etc.  The NASA CoLab site is here.

Young Scientists Design Open-Source Program at NASA

NASA scientists plan to announce a new open-source project this month called CosmosCode -- it's aimed at recruiting volunteers to write code for live space missions, Wired News has learned.

.......

The program was launched quietly last year under NASA's CoLab entrepreneur outreach program, created by Robert Schingler, 28, and Jessy Cowan-Sharp, 25, of NASA's Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California. Members of the CosmosCode group have been meeting in Second Life and will open the program to the public in the coming weeks, organizers said.

"CosmosCode is ... allowing NASA scientists to begin a software project in the public domain, leveraging the true value of open-source software by creating an active community of volunteers," said Cowan-Sharp, a NASA contractor.

CosmosCode is indicative of a larger shift at NASA toward openness and transparency -- things for which complex and bureaucratic government labs are not known. The software project is part of CoLab, an effort to invite the public to help NASA scientists with various engineering problems. The space agency is also digging into its files from previous missions and releasing code that until now remained behind closed doors. Together, these projects are creating a sort of SourceForge for space.

Source: Young Scientists Design Open-Source Program at NASA

NASA collaborates with rocket enthusiasts on real-world applications

Second Life / Linden Lab

A virtual space shuttle and international space station have been built to scale for Second Life avatars to explore in "low Earth orbit."

.......

Snelson and other space activists have set up virtual shop on (and above) Space CoLab Island, adjacent to the International Spaceflight Museum. The island, which serves as Second Life's nexus for NASA and allied space groups, boasts a high-tech headquarters building, a mountaintop meeting room and amphitheater, and three levels of "skypods" floating directly above the mountain.

.......

NASA is serious about using Second Life as a frontier for collaboration and technology, said Jessy Cowan-Sharp (a.k.a. DragonFire Kelly) of Ames Research Center. "If you look at the functionality of Second Life, it's really just a set of tools that you can do whatever you want with," she told MSNBC.com. "There's so much more going on with Second Life than games."

Source: Virtual-space gurus build final frontier - Space News - MSNBC.com