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12:37 am
June 9, 2010
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Luke Maurits
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Post edited 12:39 am – June 9, 2010 by Luke Maurits
Here are some ideas I've had lately on changes we could make to CSTART that might help us out in various ways. These are all fairly new ideas in my head and as of yet I don't really have hard-and-fast stances on any of them: I could be persuaded one way or the other. I'd really like to know what the other people around here think:
- Our Mission Statement is, currently, extremely vague: "to organize and finance the efforts of space enthusiasts around the world who are interested in using collaborative design, volunteer labor, innovative, low-cost technology and open data sharing to further the cause of manned and unmanned space exploration and research". My problem is the very last part: "space exploration and research". That covers a huge range of things and without some kind of larger sense of prioritisation, (i) we won't know where to direct our efforts (let's say we build a CubeSat and it works fantastic, so we decide to put an Earth-escape engine on the next one and beef up the comms to make it a planetary probe: which planet do we want to send it to?) and (ii) we won't be able to capture people's imagination and get support. We need a short list of high priorities that can give us focus and show people we are interesting. Some ideas for priorities which could direct our work:
- The establishment of permanent human presence on celestial bodies off the Earth. I think is something we've all implicitly assumed CSTART would head toward eventually: why not make it explicit? It will certainly get people interested. CLLARE could be re-spun as a first step on this path – it would give us a much better sense of exactly what we want to do on the moon and where.
- Searching for evidence of extraterrestrial life in our solar system. For me, one of the most exciting possible discoveries which space exploration could make is the discovery of life in our solar system. There are definite "hot spots" on this front, mainly Titan and Europa. These worlds are more likely than anywhere else in our solar system to have (admittedly simple) life on them now, and are relatively unexplored. We should definitely be checking them out.
- Learning more about the origins of the solar system. Admittedly I don't know much about this and in particular don't know just how much of a clear focus this is. There are probably scores of things on scores of planets or other bodies which would help us learn more about this. But as far as priorities which are (i) purely scientific and (ii) less uncertain than extraterrestrial life, this seems like a fairly worthy candidate.
- Space-based astronomy. Everyone is familiar with the benefits of doing astronomy outside of the Earth's atmosphere. I'm not just talking about space telescopes like Hubble here, but things like observatories on the dark side of the moon. This would be an exciting and challenging project which would have tremendous scientific merit.
Basically, I think we should pick a list of things like this and ammend the mission statement so it ends with "further the cause of manned and unmanned space exploration and research, in pursuit of the following goals:", and then that list.
- With respect to large projects like CLLARE, perhaps shift our ambitions away from actually doing these things and become more of an "ideas house", producing high-quality, well-researched, innovative and low-cost mission plans which are intended to be "consumed" by the likes of NASA/ESA/JAXA/ISRO/etc. There are other organisations which have worked along these lines, e.g. the Mars Society which has done lots of work on the Mars Direct plan. I'm not saying we should give up on doing stuff ourselves entirely, but at
least while we are just getting started, it might make sense to focus
most of our efforts on stuff we can accomplish with a much lower total cost (in terms of both dollars and credibility). Most of the work that a "space ideas house" like this would do would be CAD work and writing software, which are effectively things we can do over the internet for free . This kind of shift in focus would, I think, let us get more work done quickly. We wouldn't need to "waste time" learning how to do stuff ourselves in LEO that the big players can already do – we would just have to educate ourselves on the technology and ideas that are out there and come up with realistic ways of combining them. Thus we could kind of skip things like CubeSats which are only of value to us if we plan on doing everything ourselves one day (one day in the very distant future, I might emphasise).
- If we can overcome our aversion to lots of projects, I think we could do really well by focusing on small, standalone projects which are Earth based. E.g. there's been a recent ressurgence of interest in the concept of tumbleweed rovers for exploring Mars, with a lot of people building and testing different prototype designs on Earth. We could totally do that. A project like that would be completely clear of ITAR and would have a total price tag in the hundreds or perhaps thousands of dollars (c.f. tens of millions for CLLARE). A similar idea is the use of dirigibles for exploring bodies with thick enough atmosphere (including Mars and Titan). This is something else we could do on Earth, relatively cheaply. Yet another similar idea is using underwater autonomous vehicles to explore the oceans of Europa. Yet again, Earth-based, ITAR-free and cheap. CSTART may not be elligible to compete in NASA's luanr robotic mining competition, but we could still build a robot that meets the criteria. If we did projects along these lines very well, there is no reason that work couldn't be picked up by NASA/ESA/JAXA/ISRO/etc, who would handle the expensive part of getting the vehicle to where it needs to be. Once again, I don't think we should entirely give up on doing this kind of stuff ourselves, but at the very beginning of our lives perhaps we should occupy ourselves with more tractable things. This would necessitate a significant change to how we operate, though – less "a few big projects", more "lots of small projects". Kind of like the "Sourceforge of Space" idea that has come up before.
- We really need better PR. We had a few videography folks floating around a while ago, doing interesting work on stuff like animated video headers, etc. I think we've lost them now due to inactivity, although it may be possible to get them back. The more good-quality PR noise we can make, the more attention we will get and hence the more contributors/supporters. A bonus of the move from a few big monolithic projects to many smaller ones is that we can sooner start producing videos etc. of our work. Small projects can be explained in a few minutes in good detail by one person, and we'll be at the stage where we can video stuff working sooner. If we really had to, we could probably get a video of someone with a simple prototype tumbleweed rover mucking around in a Martian-looking desert in about a month or two. Even before then, there would probably be good PR value in churning out little 5 minute or less YouTube videos of just the talking heads of directors or active people like antinode, talking about what CSTART means to them or something like that. Anything to give us more of a clear presence.
What do people think of these ideas? They are all independent of one another so we can pick and choose as we see fit, but all of them are geared toward at least one of the following:
- Giving us clearer direction.
- Getting more people interested in and supporting CSTART.
- Lowering our immediate financial costs.
- Avoiding legal troubles re: ITAR
which I think are some of our biggest problems. If we could get all or even most of those problems taken care of, we should be able to move a lot faster.
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Main CLLARE workgroups: Mission Planning, Navigation and Guidance. I do maths, physics, C, Python and Java.
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11:34 pm
June 9, 2010
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rpulkrabek
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You wrote quite much, so I apologize if I don't give sufficient answers.
I think we should be careful when explaining about the establishment of permanent human presence on celestial bodies off the earth. This would be a great feat and something that if we can do, we should do. I just think it might be intimidating to hobbyists.
Searching for extraterrestrial life is good. I agree. But we should again be careful with the wording, as to not get others to assume we are specifically looking for intelligent life, but any form of life.
The other two points are also good. They are just things for a large user base. These things are not out of the question for us, but we should stay focused on where we are at.
I feel that CSTART is a great platform. It's one central location to meet up and submit ideas and research. A lot of groundwork has been laid out to allow global collaboration. We just need some real world results to share so that more people will come. The more people that participate, the more capabilities we will have. So, my question is, how do we get to that point? How do we start getting results?
Sorry if I was not as thorough as you would have wanted.
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9:37 pm
June 10, 2010
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antinode
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The scope of the organization should not be set higher at this point. It's already way too high with CLLARE. Lofty goals when we haven't proven ourself whatsoever are more of a turn off than an attractor. Be realistic. Start from the bottom. Weather balloons, CubeSats, and small rockets are plenty interesting to draw attention. Direction is needed but this path needs to start at the bottom. This allows projects to be feasibly funded by donations and grants. Successful completion of smaller projects brings respect and trust. Respect and trust brings funding for slightly larger projects.
In regards to only producing ideas, I certainly wouldn't consider that a waste of time but find it highly unlikely existing old-space organizations would consider adopting our plans. At least not at this point in time. Possibly with a few projects under our belt but even then there's a lot of red tape. For the time being we should focus on small and cheap projects that we can realistically complete and fund on our own.
We're barely having much work done with only two projects. Adding more projects won't foster advancement.
PR is important and needed but we have nothing to promote right now. It should be held off on until we steady ourselves and have significant work underway on a project.
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11:33 pm
June 10, 2010
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Luke Maurits
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Post edited 11:34 pm – June 10, 2010 by Luke Maurits
antinode said:
The scope of the organization should not be set higher at this point.
The thing is, nothing I suggested above actually is an expansion of the organisation's scope – it's a contraction! CSTART's current scope is "manned and unmanned space exploration and research". This includes the 4 priorities I suggested above and everything else space related as well. It's tremendously broad and undirected and I can see this being a problem long term. Picking some focuses and limiting ourselves to them, at least temporarily, decreases our scope and so facilitates some kind of long term planning.
antinode said:
Be realistic. Start from the bottom…direction is needed but this path needs to start at the bottom. This allows projects to be feasibly funded by donations and grants…For the time being we should focus on small and cheap projects that we can realistically complete and fund on our own.
This is just what I had in mind! The three projects I proposed above as examples were supposed to be simpler, or at least faster, and cheaper than most proposed so far. A CubeSat itself might be cheap, but launching it certainly isn't. OHKLA could end up being pretty cheap, but it will take a lot of time, require complicated machining, is somewhat risky, requires specialist knowledge, etc. I'll grant you the weather balloon projects are pretty close to the bottom (although also the least interesting – they've somewhat been done to death in the geeksphere lately). I think that the tumbleweed rover project is actually the cheapest idea so far. Beyond an electronic core (cameras, GPS, basic comms, etc – stuff that is also required in the other three projects) all it needs is some kind of frame of wood, plastic or thin metal, and some fabric or plastic surface or sails. It's very cheap, could be built in one day in a common backyard workshop, and requires no knowledge of rocketry, aeordynamics, etc. The robotic dirigible and diver ideas are a step up, but I would contend they are both still cheaper than launching a CubeSat, potentially cheaper and certainly more accessible than OHKLA.
antinode said:
We're barely having much work done with only two projects. Adding more projects won't foster advancement.
I'm not so sure about that. Adding more projects of equal or greater cost/size/complexity certainly would not foster advancement. Adding projects which are cheaper/smaller/easier I think could. The more projects there are, the greater the probability that a random newcomer looking at the project list will find something interesting, and the larger a community we will be able to support before individual projects become overcrowded. The simpler the projects are, the less people will need to know or learn to contribute, and the less time they will have to commit to hanging around for in order to see their ideas come to fruition. The cheaper the projects are, the easier it will be to fund them. I think many small, simple, cheap projects actually could foster advancement, compared to a few large and expensive projects.
antinode said:
PR is important and needed but we have nothing to promote right now. It should be held off on until we steady ourselves and have significant work underway on a project.
Yeah, this is probably correct.
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Main CLLARE workgroups: Mission Planning, Navigation and Guidance. I do maths, physics, C, Python and Java.
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8:56 am
June 11, 2010
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Luke Maurits
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rpulkrabek said:
I feel that CSTART is a great platform. It's one central location to meet up and submit ideas and research.
Is it really? It seems to me currently like it's a central location to meet up and submit ideas and research relevant to either one of only two projects, without a well-developed or web-implemented system for aggregating and acting on said ideas and research. It's a step in the right direction but there's still much more to be done.
rpulkrabek said:
We just need some real world results to share so that more people will come. The more people that participate, the more capabilities we will have. So, my question is, how do we get to that point? How do we start getting results?
I don't know the answer to this with confidence, but I acknoweldge it is probably our biggest problem. To me, it makes sense to try to lower the barriers to entry as much as possible, and adding more easy and low-cost projects strikes me as one good way to do this.
rpulkrabek said:
Sorry if I was not as thorough as you would have wanted.
You've said more than any of the other directors so far! :p
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Main CLLARE workgroups: Mission Planning, Navigation and Guidance. I do maths, physics, C, Python and Java.
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7:23 pm
June 11, 2010
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antinode
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The Mission Statement is fine. Broad is good, as it gives the organization room to grow in the future. Priorities need to be set but like I've been saying this needs to begin at the bottom. You are thinking too long term.
Building a rover is not really any cheaper than building a CubeSat, and a CubeSat could realistically be launched into orbit, while a rover could not realistically be placed onto a foreign body. I am in favor of breaking components needed for missions into smaller modular projects, but as you've said before we don't have the people to spread ourselves too thin.
Luke Maurits said:
You've said more than any of the other directors so far! :p
That makes me wonder why they're still considered directors. Being "busy" is not a valid excuse. People will always have other things going on in their lives. It seems to me none of the directors are doing what is necessary to be a director, besides yourself – but even you don't seem to realize what is necessary. I began work on customizing a new site and project management system but I've realized that that alone won't get people active. People lost interest for the same reason I have. No leader, and no clear goals.
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1:23 am
June 12, 2010
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Luke Maurits
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Post edited 1:31 am – June 12, 2010 by Luke Maurits
antinode said:
The Mission Statement is fine. Broad is good, as it gives the organization room to grow in the future. Priorities need to be set but like I've been saying this needs to begin at the bottom. You are thinking too long term.
I have to admit, I was surprised to hear this from you! In the past you have been quite vocal about the need for there to be more long term thinking in CSTART! Fair enough if the things I've proposed here are too long term for you, but seeing as you have previously considered things not long term enough, you logically must have some kind of middle-ground in mind, right? Let's hear it!
antinode said:
I am in favor of breaking components needed for missions into smaller modular projects, but as you've said before we don't have the people to spread ourselves too thin.
I've never really said that and believed it – that's what people say to me! :p I see no problem with breaking large missions into smaller projects. What should our large missions be, then? more long term thinking in CSTART! Fair enough if the things I've proposed here are too long term for you, but seeing as you have previously considered things not long term enough, you logically must have some kind of middle-ground in mind, right? Let's hear it!
antinode said:
That makes me wonder why they're still considered directors.
Well, the only way to change that would be either get them all to resign or to stage some kind of a coup. I'm very reluctant to do the former. If I ever come to thinking that it is strictly necessary for the survival of CSTART (and admittedly it's starting to feel that way) then I'll do it, but considering that in the past the directors have all done really great work to advance the cause of CSTART, I am very reluctant to kick them out over anything but the most extreme failure to perform – especially given that lately the entire project and everyone in it is in some kind of a coma-phase
As a practical point, Rizwan owns the cstart.org domain and the current hosting account, so he will be a director until such a time as he voluntarily transfers at least the domain to someone else.
antinode said:
Being "busy" is not a valid excuse.
I think that's probably a little too harsh of a stance to take. Obviously even valid excuses can only be stretched too far, but the fact is that everyone does have stuff going on in their real lives, sometimes stuff they genuinely have to prioritise over CSTART. Rocket is in the USAF, he sometimes has to go on flights and things that can take him away from home for long times. During this time he's both extremely busy and has limited internet access. There's not much that can be done about that. Some people are students who are going to need to take time off around exam time – it's unfair to expect someone to jeapordise their entire degree for something like CSTART, especially something like CSTART in it's current scope/size/whatever. It's true that people are probably being less active than they could be (I really don't know what is going on with brmj – he's still posting on Reddit regularly. I might flick him an email after this). But we can't expect 100% or even 90% availability from anyone. My opinion is that if the organisation is made in such a way that this kind of commitment from a large group of people is necessary for things to work, then we're doing it wrong. This is the internet, for crying out loud! We should be powered largely by informal, self-organising, emergent working groups and power structures, all that 2.0 pixie dust stuff. I speak of it here in a kind of tongue-in-cheek deprecating way, but it actually is a real phenomenon.
antinode said:
It seems to me none of the directors are doing what is necessary to be a director, besides yourself – but even you don't seem to realize what is necessary.
Well, heck, I'm doing the best I can! I'm not a leader or a businessman or anything like that. I'm just a geek. I've stepped up to the plate to act as such for CSTART to a considerable extent because I believe it's a good cause it seemed that somebody needed to do it, but I've definitely never claimed to have all the answers. If you have clear ideas on what we should be doing differently, voice them and I'll do what I can to make it happen, to the extent that I agree it's likely to work. I don't really know what I can do beyond that.
antinode said:
I began work on customizing a new site and project management system but I've realized that that alone won't get people active. People lost interest for the same reason I have. No leader, and no clear goals.
I don't think a leader is necessary so much as clear goals. But what sort of goals do you want? We have clear goals in the form of two projects, more if we add the weather balloon project. The biggest thing we lack, as far as I can see, and I thought you agreed with this, is that we needed better infrastructure for getting work done on those projects. If you've lost interest/confidence in that as an approach to get things started, what do you now think we need?
In honesty, I am finding myself increasingly in favour of taking a strongly hands-off approach. If we set some overall goals for CSTART, and gave people the web infrastructure to develop projects in aid of those goals, in line with our Social Contract etc., then we wouldn't need all this high-availabilty director, top-down, process-heavy stuff. People would come and start projects. Some would work well, others would fail. The best ones would rise to the top and we could do more with those – like allocate funding, or pay to contract external aerospace professionals to look over things and give us advice, etc. We could decide which projects get these services based on voting or something. Basically a huge Space Sourceforget approach. This is perhaps less neat than planning everything top-down, but it's also a lot easier and a lot more likely to work. All we need for this is a good web infrastructure.
If this isn't what people want, then I don't know <i>where</i> to go next. Either we remain as a group which is unable to form a consensus on anything and remain stagnant until we fall apart, or somebody either stages a coup and takes over the organisation and pushes it in the direction they think will work best, or somebody starts a "competing" group. Staging a coup would be very difficult due to one person having control over the domain and web serer, and starting another group would be a waste of effort – it would make more sense to just join Mach 30 or OSM.
EDIT1: Sorry for bad formatting on this post. The forum is randomly ignoring my HTML as always, and I don't care enough anymore to waste 15 minutes of my life trying to get it to just do basic text formatting.
EDIT2: I've emailed Rocket, Brmj and Rizwan on their cstart.org addresses linking to this thread and the "State of the Team" thread. Hopefully this will bring some commentary from them soon.
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Main CLLARE workgroups: Mission Planning, Navigation and Guidance. I do maths, physics, C, Python and Java.
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6:12 am
June 13, 2010
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rpulkrabek
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Luke Maurits said:
rpulkrabek said:
I feel that CSTART is a great platform. It's one central location to meet up and submit ideas and research.
Is it really? It seems to me currently like it's a central location to meet up and submit ideas and research relevant to either one of only two projects, without a well-developed or web-implemented system for aggregating and acting on said ideas and research. It's a step in the right direction but there's still much more to be done.
Yes, I think it is. It's not perfect, but it is a great place. It's also good to know that we realize it could be better and are willing to make it better. We have a forum to discuss ideas, a wiki to put concrete ideas into place and a repository to share files. Like I said, it's not yet perfect, but it's a great foundation.
I often find myself day dreaming about making rockets, collecting data and exploring in general. It's difficult to find people with similar aspirations. CSTART is a place where I can find people that think alike and are willing to do things most people will find too difficult and not even try. For example, how else would someone from the southern hemisphere collaborate with someone from the northern hemisphere on trying to reach space? You and I haven't even met in real life, yet already we have learned a lot together, in my opinion.
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8:25 pm
June 13, 2010
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KellyJ
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Hi guys, will add my 2 cents worth here as a relative newcomer as to why CSTART doesnt seem like it is progressing. You can take this as a perspective of someone who is interested and would like to contribute in some small but meaningful way. The biggest issues for me are:
1) Lack of focus. By this I mean that there is a lot of discussion about different projects but no actual results or even information about what the current status is. For example, on the CLLARE mission, I cant even find a basic summary of the mission architecture anywhere to get my head around how its going to work and what I can add. If I am looking to do some technical design work, I need to have a clear outline with all the current information. The more detailed the better! For example to do the structural design of the different modules you need to know what the mass and size budgets are. Without this data its not even worth starting. It seems to me that all the directors need to be putting their effort into creating these high level design summaries, to then enable others to come in and do work.
2) Start small and get results. If the focus is on CLLARE, then we need to start getting in to the detailed design and making some small models. One thing I have been reading about is Armadillo Aerospace and how they design and build their landers. We would need to have something like this on a small scale for the Lander, so we can fly it, test it, develop the software and controls etc. If the focus is on OHKLA then we need to get some rocket motors built and test fired. But once again, in order for this to happen some big picture details need to be decided on dimensions, weights, designs.
3) Not working to the strengths of open source collaboration. It seems like there are not very many people here with engineering or aerospace knowledge which is always going to make it difficult to make progress quickly enough to feel like its moving. The mission designs have gone through a lot of iterations as new information comes along, which is great for learning but not so good for making overall progress because other aspects of the design cant begin until thats nailed down. The thing which would work really well is the software side of things. Instead of having just hardware projects, why not use the programming skills we have to create some of the software which will be needed down the track? By focusing on things like USOFS, or adding more detailed calculations to OpenRocket, those things will get out into the wider community and get attention that way. Not only are they useful for us, but others can use them as well which is the best way of building up a community of like minded people. Then within that wider group there may be people who can assist with different parts of our design.
One of the good things about the open source developement model is that it works really well for replicating (and in the process improving) existing software. One of the things I have been interested in is the trajectory calculations. Partly because by doing these detailed calculations it shows quickly wether a particular design is feasible, but also because its the sort of thing which so many other projects need. Really good detailed, accurate calculations of this sort are hard to do. However there was a program written under NASA in the 70's called POST – Program to Optimise Simulated Trajectories which can do exactly this. Although the current official code is under ITAR and tightly controlled, the documentation with all the information needed to replicate it is freely available from the NASA Technical Report Servers.
Would a good project be to use this information (technical equations and program design) to add this to OpenRocket? It would be incredibly useful for CLLARE down the track for working out how to get off the moons surface and rendevous in orbit, and also be a way of spreading the CSTART name around to attract more people who are already interested and skilled.
Anyway, just some thoughts.
KellyJ
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11:12 pm
June 13, 2010
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Luke Maurits
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KellyJ said:
Hi guys, will add my 2 cents worth here as a relative newcomer as to why CSTART doesnt seem like it is progressing. You can take this as a perspective of someone who is interested and would like to contribute in some small but meaningful way. The biggest issues for me are:
Hi KellyJ, thanks a lot for making this post, it's really good to see some newcomers sticking around and offering their opinions even when things seem to be alling apart. I really appreciate it.
KellyJ said:
1) Lack of focus. By this I mean that there is a lot of discussion about different projects but no actual results or even information about what the current status is. For example, on the CLLARE mission, I cant even find a basic summary of the mission architecture anywhere to get my head around how its going to work and what I can add. If I am looking to do some technical design work, I need to have a clear outline with all the current information. The more detailed the better! For example to do the structural design of the different modules you need to know what the mass and size budgets are. Without this data its not even worth starting. It seems to me that all the directors need to be putting their effort into creating these high level design summaries, to then enable others to come in and do work.
Have you seen the CLLARE Project Overview Document, by any chance? I think it answers most of your questions about CLLARE. The problem is that it's a little out of date – it's based entirely around our first ideas for CLLARE (what I've taken to calling "CLLARE 1.0") and since then we have both (i) realised problems with the old design and analysis and (ii) come up with better ideas. The reason there isn't a later version is not because we haven't got the ideas or approximate numbers: it's because we decided we wanted to use a proper process to vote and decide on which of the various ideas is the best. This just hasn't happened yet, despite a lot of effort by some of us, which has really held things up. Since I am the person most involved in CLLARE, as things have become more and more stagnant I've thought about declaring myself the Czar Of CLLARE until such time as we get a servicable democratic process in place: in this event I'd pick what I think is the best part of all our designs proposed so far and just run with it, and an updated version of the CLLARE Project Overview Document would be my first priority if I did that. An updated version of the document would help to make it clear which parts of the plan are most in need of more research and refinement.
KellyJ said:
2) Start small and get results. If the focus is on CLLARE, then we need to start getting in to the detailed design and making some small models. One thing I have been reading about is Armadillo Aerospace and how they design and build their landers. We would need to have something like this on a small scale for the Lander, so we can fly it, test it, develop the software and controls etc. If the focus is on OHKLA then we need to get some rocket motors built and test fired. But once again, in order for this to happen some big picture details need to be decided on dimensions, weights, designs.
This all makes sense to me. I do think the majority of the members of CSTART want to focus on OHKLA first, in which case some "toy" static hybrid firings would be the best first step. In order to maximise the usefulness of this we should try to use the same propellants we want to use for OHKLA, which brings us right back to uncertainty over the fuel (but not oxidiser). I guess making a choice on that would remove a major roadblock – not only would it let us start building small motors, but it would immediately allow us to finalise most of the dimensions. Once we know what the oxidiser and fuel are it's very straightforward to get the required volume of each. Maybe we should have an IRC meeting based just around this issue. With regards to CLLARE, I am in agreement that the most sensible first step to take on that project with regards to hardware would be to start playing around with the lander, since in terms of construction it is the simplest bit of hardware, and since we can do meaningful stuff with it (like testing cold gas RCS thrusters) on Earth in a modestly sized workshop. This does require deciding on a lander design, though. I am currently in favour of copying the Langley Lightest design as much as possible, but once again, at least in principle we are supposed to have a nice and fair process for deciding this. Once again, a CLLARE Czar would clear this obstacle.
KellyJ said:
3) Not working to the strengths of open source collaboration. It seems like there are not very many people here with engineering or aerospace knowledge which is always going to make it difficult to make progress quickly enough to feel like its moving. The mission designs have gone through a lot of iterations as new information comes along, which is great for learning but not so good for making overall progress because other aspects of the design cant begin until thats nailed down. The thing which would work really well is the software side of things. Instead of having just hardware projects, why not use the programming skills we have to create some of the software which will be needed down the track? By focusing on things like USOFS, or adding more detailed calculations to OpenRocket, those things will get out into the wider community and get attention that way. Not only are they useful for us, but others can use them as well which is the best way of building up a community of like minded people. Then within that wider group there may be people who can assist with different parts of our design.
One of the good things about the open source developement model is that it works really well for replicating (and in the process improving) existing software. One of the things I have been interested in is the trajectory calculations. Partly because by doing these detailed calculations it shows quickly wether a particular design is feasible, but also because its the sort of thing which so many other projects need. Really good detailed, accurate calculations of this sort are hard to do. However there was a program written under NASA in the 70's called POST – Program to Optimise Simulated Trajectories which can do exactly this. Although the current official code is under ITAR and tightly controlled, the documentation with all the information needed to replicate it is freely available from the NASA Technical Report Servers.
Would a good project be to use this information (technical equations and program design) to add this to OpenRocket? It would be incredibly useful for CLLARE down the track for working out how to get off the moons surface and rendevous in orbit, and also be a way of spreading the CSTART name around to attract more people who are already interested and skilled.
I agree that one of the most useful software projects for CLLARE what we could do now is to write code to simulate various descent and ascent profiles from the lunar surface to lunar orbit. Whereas the delta v required for things like TLI, LOI and TEI are relatively fixed and very well known, ascent and descent delta-v are quite variable, depending on the starting orbit shape, the thrust of the vehicle, the descent plan, etc, etc. I suspect we can very readily beat Apollo's figures of around 4000 m/s each by designing these profiles carefully (the Soviets sure did) and this is something it would be extremely valuable to know – it influences the mass of landing propellant required, which flows all the way back through mass allowances for the rest of the stack. I'll have to take another look at POST, but I suspect it won't be too useful for this – I reckon it will be focused mainly on interplanetary trajectories and short, roughly impulsive maneuvers, which is a very different kettle of fish compared to lunar descent and ascent. But I could be wrong. If it is true that POST can't do this, writing some software that can would be a very worthwhile project – and probably not all that hard.
Thanks again for posting, KellyJ, I feel this has actually been quite a helpful post. It has helped to highlight some particular obstacles which are holding us back:
- Choosing a fuel for OHKLA once and for all will really help us progress on that front.
- If we can agree on or if someone can unilaterally bless a particular design for CLLARE, the next step should be rewriting the Overview Document, which will help all sorts of progress on CLLARE.
- From a software perspective, descent and ascent modelling is probably the most valuable next step for CLLARE.
It almost feels like we have some kind of a plan again! The OHKLA fuel issue is particularly accessible, too – there's already a lot of good, relevant info in the Wiki here. We also have a hybrid rocket enthusiast/guru around here somewhere. If we can get his attention back he should be a huge help.
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Main CLLARE workgroups: Mission Planning, Navigation and Guidance. I do maths, physics, C, Python and Java.
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6:41 am
June 14, 2010
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KellyJ
| | Australia | |
| Member | posts 15 | |
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Luke,
I appreciate that you dont want to seem like a dictator and be making unilateral decisions, but I would actually encourage you to do more of this and not less. Since you are by far the most active director and also covering the most ground I would say you are in the best position to be making decisions about things. Sometimes there are no "best" choices, just tradeoffs between different things and keeping the CSTART ethos and capabilities in mind will be the biggest influence on a lot of these decisions. This is not to say that the group is not important, but in a case of deadlock or stagnation like this then keeping things progressing is more important than waiting for consensus and action from everyone.
I have seen the overview document, and had a good read of it but since I learned it wasnt the current plan I really havent invested in it.
Having all the tools/programs/spreadsheets shared in the repository will mean that any redesigns later will be much easier, so if a decision does need to be revised then it can be redone fairly easily.
Regards,
KellyJ
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9:00 pm
June 14, 2010
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antinode
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Luke Maurits said:
I have to admit, I was surprised to hear this from you! In the past you have been quite vocal about the need for there to be more long term thinking in CSTART!
What I meant is that we shouldn't limit the purpose of CSTART as this would do nothing but discourage horizontal growth in the future.
Luke Maurits said:
What should our large missions be, then?more long term thinking in CSTART! Fair enough if the things I've proposed here are too long term for you, but seeing as you have previously considered things not long term enough, you logically must have some kind of middle-ground in mind, right? Let's hear it!
I'm still in favor of a bottom up approach and modularity would lend well to that. For example, many of the major components slated for CLLARE (spacesuit, CM) could also be used on the proposed manned earth orbit mission so those could become their own separate projects. Multiple projects are brought together to fulfill the requirements of the given mission rather than being restricted to the "CLLARE Mission" project. Instead, there would be the "Command Module" project that could be forked depending on the needs of the given mission.
Luke Maurits said:
Well, the only way to change that would be either get them all to resign or to stage some kind of a coup. I'm very reluctant to do the former. If I ever come to thinking that it is strictly necessary for the survival of CSTART (and admittedly it's starting to feel that way) then I'll do it, but considering that in the past the directors have all done really great work to advance the cause of CSTART, I am very reluctant to kick them out over anything but the most extreme failure to perform – especially given that lately the entire project and everyone in it is in some kind of a coma-phase
My concern is that there aren't any qualifications for being a director. They are simply considered a director because they were here first. Holding the title of "director" should require some kind of commitment. If they're not able to dedicate a certain amount of time to CSTART, they shouldn't be considered a director. Basically disappearing and not even attending meetings should not be an option for people who are supposed to be leaders. Did CSTART go into a coma because the directors got busy, or did the directors get busy because CSTART went into a coma?
Luke Maurits said:
Well, heck, I'm doing the best I can!
I certainly respect your dedication and I'm aware your situation, but as KellyJ said you shouldn't be afraid to take charge and make decisions. Don't be afraid of offending people. If you try to please everyone, nothing gets accomplished.
Luke Maurits said:
If you've lost interest/confidence in that as an approach to get things started, what do you now think we need?
I haven't lost confidence in that approach. I've lost confidence in the organization.
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3:00 am
June 15, 2010
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Luke Maurits
| | Adelaide, Australia | |
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Thanks to you both for sharing your opinions. Seeing some actual
popular support for me making more unilateral decisions is making me
feel more confident about it. So too is the excitement of thinking about seeing genuine progress again!
antinode said:
I'm still in favor of a bottom up approach and modularity would lend well to that. For example, many of the major components slated for CLLARE (spacesuit, CM) could also be used on the proposed manned earth orbit mission so those could become their own separate projects. Multiple projects are brought together to fulfill the requirements of the given mission rather than being restricted to the "CLLARE Mission" project. Instead, there would be the "Command Module" project that could be forked depending on the needs of the given mission.
I like the idea of modularising CLLARE, although I worry about making things like the spacesuit and CM into completely separate projects. There's a need for interoperability of all this stuff, and I feel like that might work better if everything was under one project. With regards to the Earth orbit mission thing, as has been said, it was always the plan that the CLLARE hardware would be tested in LEO missions first, but of course this was not made clear enough. How do you (both) feel about the plan I have proposed previously of rebranding CLLARE as, rather than a lunar landing project, a "basic manned spaceflight" project? The objective would be something like "to develop a minimalist modular spacecraft capable of supporting a human crew and extensible through the use of modules from LEO through circumlunar to lunar landing flights"? This would make it very clear that LEO was the first step. We could then define "subprojects" of this project for the individual spacecraft modules (like spacesuit, CM, etc.). Largely standalone teams could work on the individual subprojects. Each subproject could have it's own leader, and the subproject leaders could coordinate with each other to make sure everybody's stuff works together well.
If people think this idea is worthwhile I can get to work on producing something like the CLLARE Overview document but for this "new" project and base it on the more recent, more feasible ideas.
antinode said:
My concern is that there aren't any qualifications for being a director. They are simply considered a director because they were here first. Holding the title of "director" should require some kind of commitment. If they're not able to dedicate a certain amount of time to CSTART, they shouldn't be considered a director. Basically disappearing and not even attending meetings should not be an option for people who are supposed to be leaders. Did CSTART go into a coma because the directors got busy, or did the directors get busy because CSTART went into a coma?
I can't really fault this line of reasoning.
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Main CLLARE workgroups: Mission Planning, Navigation and Guidance. I do maths, physics, C, Python and Java.
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