Power & energy
Clean generation, storage, and grid that holds when the weather does not.
Hydro, hydrogen, solar, geothermal, nuclear, storage chemistry, microgrids.
All access · all fair game
The Stark Challenge Biggest. Baddest. Bring everything you have and know.
All access. All fair game. Build off — and create more than any one of us can reach alone.
This is not one contest about one machine. It is an open, all-domains build-off: energy, engines, water, medicine, materials, chips, space, food, shelter, care, robotics, and anything else that makes a family safer tomorrow than it was today. Bring everything you have and everything you know. Every arena is open, every discipline is fair game, and every proven result ships to the people who need it — not into a vault.
“Tony Stark built a suit in a cave. I have spent a lifetime watching low-grade engines struggle in field after field — construction, trucking, agriculture, marine, emergency response — and I know we can do better. Tony, hope you are ready to be challenged. Sounds like fun, buddy. Let us talk about it all and have some fun. I bet your backyard might be more interesting than mine.”
— Jacob Raab, Northern Star 🌟 of love for all
Every arena is open
Fuel engines were a ten-second thought on an edger. This is the whole board. Pick an arena, or bring one we have not named yet.
Engines & heavy machines
Electric first where it works, and far better fuel engines for the work that still needs them.
Cold starts, fuel flexibility, part-load efficiency, honest emissions, predictive wear.
Water & air
Safe tap water and breathable air as a floor, not a premium.
Filtration, sensing, remediation, cheap home-scale testing.
Medicine & recovery
Treatment that reaches people who have been written off.
Drug design, diagnostics, trauma and addiction care, assisted-therapy science.
Materials & manufacturing
Stronger, cheaper, repairable, and made close to home.
Alloys, composites, recycling loops, autonomous labs, additive manufacturing.
Chips, AI & comms
Intelligence at the edge, connectivity everywhere, no surveillance of families.
Low-power chips, edge inference, cognitive radio, semantic compression.
Space & orbit
Orbital tools that pay back down here first.
Edge AI in orbit, earth sensing, launch economics, debris cleanup.
Shelter, food & mobility
Housing, farming, and getting to work without losing a paycheck.
Rapid build systems, heritage and organic farming, transit, accessible vehicles.
Care, learning & dogs
The human infrastructure — classrooms, caregivers, companions.
Assistive tech, teaching tools, service-dog training and matching.
Wildcard
If it helps people and you can prove it, it belongs here.
Anything not listed. Name the family it serves and bring your evidence.
How the build-off works
- All access: every arena is open to anyone — student, shop hand, backyard builder, national lab.
- All fair game: any discipline, any toolset, any combination of them.
- Bring everything you have and know — partial results, failed attempts, and field notes count.
- Build off each other. Copying forward with credit is encouraged, not policed.
- Together we create more than any one of us has access to alone.
What to bring
- Name the problem and the family, crew, or community it hurts.
- Show what you tried, what worked, and what failed.
- Say what you need — bench time, parts, funding, a partner, or a signature.
- Keep it plain enough that a 12-year-old understands the point.
Arena spotlight: why fuel engines still matter
Electric power is the right answer for a huge share of light-duty work. But heavy-duty applications still need engines that burn fuel. The goal is not to stall the electric transition — it is to make the remaining engines safer, cleaner, cheaper to run, and more useful to the people who depend on them.
Long-haul trucking
Weight, range, and refueling time still favor fuel on many routes.
A more efficient, flexible engine cuts fuel cost and downtime while long-haul batteries mature.
Agriculture
Harvest windows are narrow. A tractor cannot wait for a charge.
Engines that start fast, run on farm-produced or local renewable fuel, and report maintenance before the critical day.
Construction & mining
Remote sites, dust, temperature swings, and extreme loads.
Rugged power units that adapt to altitude and fuel quality, with failure prediction so crews finish the job.
Marine & rail
Big loads over long distances, with long equipment lifetimes.
Retrofit-ready engines and aftertreatment that reduce emissions without throwing away a vessel or locomotive.
Emergency response
Pumps, generators, and rescue vehicles must start instantly after sitting idle.
Self-testing, self-diagnosing engines that are ready when disaster strikes.
Military & remote logistics
Fuel variety, extreme environments, and limited maintenance access.
Multi-fuel tolerant engines with modular repair and transparent condition reporting.
Active engine tracks
Each track is one open question with a real-world target. Stage is honest — most of this is still on the bench, and that is the point of having a bench.
Reliable cold starts, every time
On the benchWhy do heavy engines still struggle to start in cold weather, high altitude, or after sitting in a remote yard?
A fuel engine that starts on the first try from -30°F to 120°F, no ether, no glow-plug guessing, no tow truck.
Fuel flexibility without re-tuning
PrototypeCan one engine run cleanly on the fuel that is actually available — diesel, biodiesel, renewable diesel, kerosene, or approved synthetic blends — without a mechanic visit?
Operators in remote areas use whatever clean fuel is local. The engine adapts, protects itself, and reports what changed.
Efficiency where engines actually live
On the benchMost heavy engines spend most of their life at partial load, not rated peak. Why are they tuned for the peak they rarely see?
Real-world efficiency gains of 20–40% in the part-load band where trucks, pumps, and generators spend most of their hours.
Predictable wear, not surprise failure
PrototypeCan a machine tell the operator which part is degrading before it fails in the field?
Onboard acoustic and vibration sensing that flags injector, bearing, ring, and pump issues with a repair timeline and a parts list.
Emissions that hold up in the real world
PilotingLab test cycles look nothing like a loaded dump truck climbing a hill. How do we make clean emissions real under load?
Aftertreatment and combustion strategies calibrated to real duty cycles, not idealized loops, with tamper-proof telemetry.
Right-size the engine to the job
On the benchWhy does a delivery van carry a 5-liter engine and a pickup haul a 7-liter engine when the load rarely needs it?
Modular powertrain sizing so the same platform uses the smallest engine that can handle the predicted duty, with reserve power available on demand.
An operator interface that teaches
PrototypeWhy does a $150,000 machine still flash a cryptic code that sends a driver to YouTube?
Plain-language dashboard and voice guidance that tells the operator what is happening, what to do, and what will happen if they ignore it.
Open questions
These are the problems we want the best minds and backyard builders to take seriously. Answer any one of them and you move the whole sector.
- Can a compression-ignition engine be made as quiet and smooth as the best passenger-car gasoline engine without losing durability?
- What is the simplest onboard reformer or pre-treatment that lets a diesel engine run cleanly on low-grade local fuel?
- How small can a heavy-duty engine be before reliability falls off a cliff?
- Can we standardize a “hot-swap” power unit so a truck or tractor gets a new engine in hours instead of days?
- What would it take for a fuel engine to report its own real-world emissions honestly, every second, with no shop intervention?
- Is there a way to capture and use waste heat from heavy engines that is cheap enough for a small fleet?
The Stark charter
Friendly competition only works if the rules are clear. This is how we keep the work honest and useful.
- Electric first where it works. Fuel-engine work is for the jobs batteries still cannot do well.
- No greenwashing. We publish real-world fuel consumption, emissions, and maintenance data.
- Every design must name the operator, family, or community it serves before it names a patent.
- Open playbooks. Proven improvements ship to the public domain or free core first.
- Safety before performance. A more powerful engine that hurts someone is a failure.
- Modular and repairable. Owners should be able to maintain, upgrade, and understand their own machines.
- No lobbying for weaker standards. We meet or beat the strictest real-world rules on the books.
Where this fits
This is not a side project against electrification. It is a parallel lane for the jobs where batteries are not yet ready, and a bridge that keeps existing equipment useful while the transition happens.
Electric first
For routes, loads, and climates where batteries already win, we put electric first.
Fuel, done right
For the rest, we improve the engines we have instead of pretending they do not exist.
No stranded assets
Retrofit and upgrade paths keep existing machines working while cleaner options scale.
Bring an idea or a backyard.
The best fixes come from people who have watched a machine fail in the field. If you have a question, a prototype, or a stubborn engine that should run better, we want to hear it.