Project restructuring, and collaboration with Mach30

After a relatively long period of silence, CSTART is pleased to be able to announce some changes to the structure of our project set and also a new front for close collaboration with the Mach30 Foundation, one of the Friends of CSTART.  These new ideas and directions will hopefully help us to work better toward our goals.

The two current projects, OHKLA and CLLARE, are now schedule to be replaced by a set of 4 new projects.  Although some aspects of the two older projects will still be recognizable in the new projects, there will also be some new elements.  Rather than focusing on specific goals, such as breaking the Karman line or putting people on the moon, these 4 new projects will have a “technological foundations” focus.  Once complete, the 4 foundational projects will result in CSTART having all the necessary technical “building blocks” and frameworks that will be needed for future projects to tackle specific goals.  The 4 foundational projects will also be divided into “stages” of increasing complexity, allowing us to begin by tackling the simplest possible problems within each project’s scope.  Although replacing 2 projects with 4 may actually seem like creating more work for ourselves, we hope that because the 4 projects are more focused on specific technologies than on particular goals, and because the staging system will allow us to start work on comparatively simple systems, the new 4 project system will actually enable us to get more work done, sooner.

The particular details and stage structure of the 4 new projects will be announced on this blog in the near future.  At this point, we will be using our presence on Reddit to hold competitions to name each of the projects and to design logos for each.  These competitions will function in much the same way as our motto selection competition did.  Stay tuned!

In addition to establishing a set of newer, more practical projects, CSTART is also excited to announce that it will be collaborating with the Mach30 Foundation, and other interested parties on the development of a web application designed to support the design of hardware in an open and collaborative manner – somewhat similar to the applications used by projects like SourceForge and Google Code to support the open development of software.  We hope that this new application will allow us to work in a much more organized and transparent manner than our current ad hoc combination of the forums and wiki.  We hope to begin work on building this application in the near future.

Although the new projects will be announced and named soon, we anticipate that actual design and construction work for those new projects will not begin until the web application is ready to support this work.  Some of the new 4 projects are definitely simpler than others.  We hope to bring each of the projects “on line” as soon as the web application is considered ready to support that particular project.  This means that the simplest project could come on quite soon, whereas the most complex project may not see work begin for some time as we gradually expand and test (on simpler projects) the web application.  This approach may hold us back in the short term, but it increases the chances that our projects will work out in the long run.  More announcements about the web application will be made as work takes place.  Those who are especially interested can read the discussion between CSTART and Mach30 about this application in our forums, and can make posts to offer their advice or assistance.

CSTART thanks all of its supporters for their continued interest in and assistance with our work.  We know that at times it seems like the organization is constantly changing its mind or temporarily losing momentum.  The truth of the matter is that open source style design and construction of complicated hardware is a relatively new phenomenon, without much in the way of software or accepted best practice to guide new projects.  There are lots of pitfalls and unexpected complications, and it is taking us time to find our feet.  The fact that our goals are as ambitious as they are does not make things easier!  Please bear with us as we continue to find ways to make things easier.  We hope that with the continued interest, support and work of our community and our fellow open source space teams, we will eventually hit upon a combination of projects, procedures and tools which will let us begin bringing our goals to fruition.