NASA has released a web and mobile game app that explains how space communications work.
"NetworKing" enables the player to build increasingly complex network communications that coordinate client satellites conducting scientific missions.
The goal for the player is to build a system similar to NASA's Deep Space Network to support spacecraft missions, upgrade the infrastructure to increase its capacity and support more complex clients, including the International Space Station and NASA's Hubble and Kepler space telescopes.
There are also several unlockable missions that visualize how the networks work.
NASA is offering NetworKing as app downloads for the iPhone and iPad from the Apple App Store as well as a browser-based game for Mac and PC. To run the game in a browser windows, players need to install the Unity browser engine.
I recall a story about a game where teams were competing to optimally fold a protein structure and the gamers solved the structure waaaaayyyyyy before any of the scientists could. So if this is done correctly and made fun enough it may be a useful tool.
That being said... shame on both the Democrats AND the Republicans for eviscerating NASA.
Obama is not 'allowing' spaceX and Virgin Galactic to do their part, they were doing fine before, and they are doing fine now. Obama merely stripped NASA because it did not fit with his platform, and he is too short sighted to see that it is one of the few gov't programs that actually does a ton of good for promoting innovation, and inspiring future generations towards loftier goals than having better healthcare so that we can all live longer. I am all for living longer, but I want to live longer in a world that has a brighter outlook on life, not one that is constantly looking at flat or negative growth as I grow old (I know, I know... not all Obama's fault, it has much more to do with the congress and house and emerging nations that are better equipped for growth, it is just easier to pin problems on an icon than a mass of morons).
But still, I cannot help but think that the space program was gimped for a single reason: No government today wants to get involved with the idea of colonization because the people interested in it would leave, and they would simply never come back. And there would go a ton of smart people, and a ton of resources, who would create a competing and compelling foreign market that no earth based gov't would even begin to be able to control or compete with. That is any gov't worst nightmare; kinda like the brittish and the Americas... it just does not end well for the sponsoring country.