zlacker

You may not be able to crowd-source a rocket, but you sure as hell can crowd-source a moon crawler robot. The size and skill level of the robot building community is amazing, and these people can only find themselves now because of the intenet. And only now is there so much information available for the new ones.

One guy writes the motion detectors, another writes the pan-tilt, everyone reviews everyone elses code and suggests improvements. If this were effective today, we could have giant leaps forward. Soon it willl happen.

>>markes+(OP)
You're talking about making a conventional device in an unconventional way. I'm talking about making something completely new.

Historically, groundbreaking scientific work has been done by one or a few extraordinary individuals (Einstein, Watson and Crick), and groundbreaking engineering work has been done by carefully selected groups led by an extraordinary individual (Oppenheimer, von Braun). I don't see how the Internet changes that.