Men's Journal

Wherever you are this Saturday — on a trek through Missoula, the slopes at Salt Lake, a campsite in Appalachia, a cook-off in Baton Rouge — if you find an eight-foot-wide, fire-engine-red weather balloon, you could be on your way to $40,000.

By John Cookson

DARPA, the research and development arm of the U.S. Department of Defense, has organized a contest to locate 10 balloons, like the ones pictured, to be moored at points across the continental United States from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday, December 5. The first group to report the exact latitude and longitude for each balloon gets a $40,000 prize.

DARPA’S Network Challenge is billed as a model in how people share information across the internet by showing how participants collect and bargain for balloon coordinates and, in some cases, for shares of the prize money. The contest also marks the 40th anniversary since DARPA’s precursor agency linked up a constellation of research universities across miles of wires to share data electronically, therein giving birth to the internet.

“In the 40 years since this breakthrough, the internet has become an integral part of society and the global economy,” said DARPA Director Dr. Regina E. Dugan, adding, “The DARPA Network Challenge explores the unprecedented ability of the internet to bring people together to solve tough problems.”

Teams have already set to work on a host of original and social media websites, such as Twitter and Facebook. There’s even an iPhone app.

“Our website is the main point of contact,” said Ethan Trewhitt, an engineer at the Georgia Tech Research Institute and member of the I Spy A Red Balloon team, adding, “but we’ve also been happy with the performance of our Facebook group, which currently has 243 members.”

Some teams, like Trewhitt’s, are promising all or part of any winnings to charity in a bid to lure volunteers, while other teams are offering portions of prize money for finding a balloon, confirming its coordinates, or referring a spotter to a specific website.

Covering the more than 3 million square miles of the contiguous U.S. for 10 balloons is no small feat, which is why the contest depends on crowdsourcing — legions of people out on their usual weekend activities will relay the locations of each balloon to an eager online audience. With some luck, a phone with GPS, and internet access, your weekend out exploring could lead to a share of the prize for you or a charity.

DARPA has hosted similar off-the-wall contests before. In 2007, its Urban Challenge tasked participants to build a vehicle capable of driving in traffic and negotiating intersections by itself.

Further details for this newest contest can be found at the Network Challenge website and at Twitter.com/DARPA_News; a partial list of teams can be found here.