In this exclusive event hosted by the United States Space Force and held at Pace University in New York City, teams of hackers and PC builders face the ultimate test. On one side, there's a high-stakes hackathon where coders encounter increasingly difficult challenges under the scrutiny of the U.S. Space Force. On the other side, teams race against the clock in a fast-paced PC building competition.
00:00On October 5th, 2024, Space.com, TechRadar, and the U.S. Space Force held a competition where the future of tech is put to the ultimate test.
00:10We bring you Code and Construct.
00:13For the last 25 years, we've had pretty much one mission, which is to bring space down to Earth for everyone else to enjoy.
00:20This event in particular really is geared at practicing the systems that you would need to control space communications,
00:26satellite communications, secure communications as well, which is going to become more important.
00:30So the hackathon portion of this competition is going to be in this room.
00:34On the other side of the conference hall is the PC building competition.
00:37The judges are myself, John Loeffler from TechRadar, Sergeant Arrett, and Captain Elson Raleigh.
00:44My other two co-developers, Justin and Andrew.
00:47In events like this, you have people who, by nature, they're curious.
00:51You don't become a hacker because you follow a script.
00:56You can prod and figure out how things work, why things work, where the holes are, what can you exploit.
01:00Not necessarily to a negative end, you're just curious.
01:04Cyber doesn't exist without space, and space doesn't exist without cyber.
01:09I believe that the next war will begin and be fought primarily in cyberspace.
01:14In the hackathon, coders were tasked with developing a secure and resilient satellite communication system.
01:19The start of this, it came down to it being about what do we want to see in a hackathon that relates to the Space Force.
01:28For that, the idea of satellite data came to us.
01:31That, we figured, was going to be the easiest for students to understand the complexity of it.
01:35So, we integrated satellite data into APIs to make them interact with students in whatever way possible, whether it's them build a web app, an iPhone app, stuff like that.
01:45In the PC build race, teams of two build gaming PCs using only provided parts.
01:51We have two teams of two competitors who are going to be taking place in a PC build competition.
01:55They're going to build one of these Corsair build kit computers, complete with all components, make sure the build is nice and clean.
02:01They will be judged both on their build presentation as well as completeness.
02:04There's a GeForce RTX 4060 in an i5 Intel Core processor.
02:09Bunch of pieces to put into these builds, but after we finish the competition for how quickly and how cleanly they can build these PCs,
02:15we're going to move over to the Minecraft component where we're going to construct some houses inside the game.
02:20Both teams will have to face the judges' critique in the end to figure out who ultimately wins the PC build race competition.
02:26These are the final seconds.
02:28Every move counts.
02:30And the winner is crowned!
02:32Two teams stand above the rest as Code & Construct champions.
02:37Without events like this, students today may not know just how flexible and how tailored a future they could find in whatever industry they want.
02:47Code & Construct, where tech meets competition.
02:52Stay tuned for more from TechRadar Gaming and Space.com.
