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7:55 am
April 23, 2010
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Luke Maurits
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To an extent, the sentiment in this post may be a little obsolete in light of a few enthusiastic new arrivals on the forums, but this has been weighing on my mind a bit, so I'm going to let it out anyway.
I feel like perhaps CSTART as an organisation, with processes and structures and whatnot, is growing too large for the actual community to support. The fact of the matter is this: even after several months of existence (we're probably even getting close to 6 months now, right?) with us trying our best and putting in a lot of effort, we essentially have not grown noticably beyond the initial 5 people who saw this thing start on /r/tothemoon. Admittedly, in part this is due to the unfortunate and improbable passing of Dennis, and also it's noteworthy that antinode is a good exception to this trend. But in general, very few people turn up to this project, and those who do almost always disappear without a trace in 1 or 2 days. We failed to make much of a splash at all at SpaceUp. Even with the dedicated core team we have had from the start, we've still failed to make significant progress on the incorporation front.
With our small membership, there are frequently periods where the entire project effectively halts (and we've been in one of these periods for a while now). By no means do I intend here to criticise anybody for not putting in enough time – everybody, myself included, has periods where real life becomes too demanding for them to sink much time into CSTART. This is to be expected and nobody should be called out on it. However, the fact that there are so few of us active at the moment means that these random periods of individual absence overlap enough, from time to time, to entirely halt CSTART's progress, and that is a worry. Even if we did incorporate, right now, who here honestly
believes we have enough people with enough spare time and dedication to
continuously keep abreast of our legal obligations re: account keeping,
minute keeping, etc?
In light of all the above, some of our recent push for better organisation – with the Proposal System, Engineering Process, etc – seems a little counterproductive. These processes simply increase the amount of time and effort required for each individual to put forward each idea they have. Also, many of these new processes don't make a lot of sense for such a small group – e.g. the proposal system for CLLARE more or less presupposes (i) a large community to throw out original, competing ideas, and (ii) a large community to read up on each proposal and cast a vote. Right now, we simply don't have this community. We have 5 or 6 people, who have already given the CLLARE project a lot of thought and probably have a significant degree of (i) tunnel vision and (ii) attachment to a particular proposal.
Given that we are so small and are having so much trouble attracting active members with what "product" we have right now, does it make sense to bind ourselves with procedures which will reduce the rate at which we produce new product? Strict processes will result in increased productivity if there are enough of us that a large, disorganised blob of contributors will "clash" a lot, but if there is small number of us who already know the drill and work well together (and I see no evidence we will become more than that anytime soon), they may result in decreased productivity.
Is it time to think about "going kamikaze"? Throwing process more or less out the window and the 5 or 6 of us getting together in IRC for an hour or 2 and just hammering our CLLARE (or OHKLA) as much as we can – don't make decsions recklessly, of course, but also don't go overboard with due dilliegnece. Do some basic research, pick what seems best, write it down and just go with it until there is a clear need to revise it? This is kind of how we operated on /r/tothemoon in the old days (although back then we probably didn't do enough research – e.g. we all drank the low energy transfer orbit Kool Aid instantly because it sounded awesome without actually researching the pros and cons). It's light and agile and a little more like how open source projects traditionally operate.
We already have a significant amount of groundwork in place for CLLARE, with the material in the old Overview Document. Some of that is outdated (especially if we end up opting for a different proposal), but a lot of it isn't. If we took what we have and just pushed a bit further we could get something really complete. At the end of a single IRC session like this we should not only have a much clearer picture of CLLARE, but also a specific list of very particular questions we need answered and tasks we need completed to push things further. Two or three iterations like this and we could have the planning more or less done (with estimated masses and costs for everything), making CLLARE more or less a "complete product", idea-wise. It may not be optimal, but it is more likely to get attention, and hence feedback, which will facilitate refinement of the sub-optimal parts.
This may sound a little half-assed and reckless, but the truth is that it is starting to feel to me like at the current rate we are really going nowhere. We just do not have the manpower right now, and do not seem likely to have the manpower in the forseeable future, to run CSTART as a formalised, bureaucratic operation using traditional engineering methodologies. We do have the manpower to just go at it with guts and effort. Our chances of ultimate success with the first approach may be higher than with the second approach, but if the chances of us being able to effectively implement the first approach are lower than for the second approach, the second approach may still be the best logical choice.
Thoughts? Sorry to sound pessimistic. Our slow rate of progress lately has kind of gotten to me, though.
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Main CLLARE workgroups: Mission Planning, Navigation and Guidance. I do maths, physics, C, Python and Java.
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1:54 pm
April 23, 2010
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antinode
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I don't think it's too much structure that's hindering people. I think it's lack of structure that's confusing people. There is no flow. People come to the site and have no idea what is going on or what they can do. Most people are not inclined to read multiple pages on the wiki, or read a bunch of old threads on the forums. There is no motivation for them to do so, especially when they see how stagnant these things are. I'm not even clear on what's going on or how you plan to move foreword. I see random discussions that start, and then stop with no decisions reached. I don't see any roadmaps or milestones. I see wiki stubs with basic information. I don't see any detailed engineering. These are my reasons for the site structure change proposal I made.
I also think CLLARE should be frozen and efforts put on the more feasible OHKLA. Or even better, the proposed weather balloon project. Most people involved do not have extensive aerospace experience so it makes sense to start smaller and work our way up. A moon landing may be a bit too ambitious at this point. I realize it's a long term project but most people will either see it as too daunting to get involved in, or write CSTART off as a bunch of amateurs who are in over their heads.
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7:14 pm
April 23, 2010
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Kurouma
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Essentially I agree with antinode, especially about the current layout. Very new members like myself who are eager to help are confronted with a disorganised mass of conversations spread over fora and wiki stubs. Very new members who are also very technically experienced in the field are going to be turned off by this and the fact that we think want to try and go to the moon already. We need one (and that's 1!!) current project that we will actually construct and fly. We need this project posted for people to see, in place of honour, with actual work groups under each of the subdisciplines. Let people in the fora entertain and speculate about what we'd need for CLLAIRE, if it maintains their enthusiasm, but don't send new recruits straight there. Send them instead to a separate page for 'the project', where they'll see their subdisciplines listed as headings and beneath each heading a list of tasks that the community needs completed. That's it, no conversations yet. The people that can do the tasks will do them, the people that can't won't – as opposed to now, with the people who can not knowing that they should and the people who can't not wanting to believe they shouldn't. These tasks should, for clarity's sake, be set by a small work group with some experience who the community selects. Community isn't big enough? Fine, make everyone the work group for now. But have organised videoconference meetings or something, and don't send new recruits to the fora immediately. It's confusing.
I'm sorry if this upsets the idea that CSTART began with, but if it's going to do anything solid then it needs to become a proper organisation, which first requires it to be organised.
Kurouma
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6:26 am
April 24, 2010
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Luke Maurits
| | Adelaide, Australia | |
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| posts 1483 | |
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antinode said:
I also think CLLARE should be frozen and efforts put on the more feasible OHKLA. Or even better, the proposed weather balloon project. Most people involved do not have extensive aerospace experience so it makes sense to start smaller and work our way up. A moon landing may be a bit too ambitious at this point. I realize it's a long term project but most people will either see it as too daunting to get involved in, or write CSTART off as a bunch of amateurs who are in over their heads.
I would be extremely unhappy to see CLLARE be frozen. I understand that it is an ambitious and long term goal, but I think that serves two important purposes.
Firstly, and most simply, it captures people's imaginations, in a very real way. Proposing a private moon landing ignites the latent fascination and dreams that countless people have worldwide courtesy of Apollo. It's always going to bring in interested members and attract media attention, more so than anything else, anyway.
Secondly, perhaps more substantially, having a project like CLLARE as an "advance scout" in conceptual space allows us to better direct our earlier and simpler efforts. If we do end up launching CubeSats or balloon projects, etc., at every stage we are going to be faced with questions like what it makes the most sense to put onboard those projects, which technologies we should use, etc. Our work on CLLARE will provide answers, or at least partial answers, to these questions in a way which will maximise the future reusability of the work that follows. I think the relationship between Apollo and Gemini is a good example of this: The Apollo project was started first, and then after there was a basic plan in place and NASA knew what technologies and techniques Apollo would require, they started Gemini and used it to develop and test those apologies. We should use CLLARE as our Apollo, and more immediate, simpler projects as our Geminis. This will work much better for us than having these early projects be largely undirected and using whatever sounds good at the time.
Of course, I recognise the importance of, and have no objections to, putting as many simpler and easier projects "in front of" CLLARE as we need. This is why I proposed things like the balloon project. That would make a good precursor to a satellite project, which would make a good precursor to a lunar probe project, which would make a good precursor to the eventual launch of CLLARE. The more work we do on CLLARE in the meantime, the more we can hope to achieve things like, e.g. that lunar probe using exactly the same navigation and guidance hardware and software that we have determined is adequate for CLLARE.
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Main CLLARE workgroups: Mission Planning, Navigation and Guidance. I do maths, physics, C, Python and Java.
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6:26 pm
April 24, 2010
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antinode
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You make some good points, and I understand your resistance as CSTART was formed primarily for the purpose of CLLARE, but there is a huge difference between CSTART and NASA. During the Gemini and Apollo missions NASA had nearly limitless funds and thousands of the top scientists and engineers in their respective fields. We have barely any funds and a handful of amateurs. I'm not suggesting writing CLLARE off completely, as it's a very worthy long-term goal, but at this point it is more of a distraction and hinderance than an asset. We already know which types of technologies are needed for CLLARE, so why not let the results of the other missions help dictate the design of CLLARE, rather than letting CLLARE dictate the design of every other mission?
Side note: I'm having to retype this reply because it didn't post when I submitted it. This is the 3rd time this has happened to me. I didn't even notice the first two times until I viewed the threads later and didn't see my reply.
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8:49 pm
April 24, 2010
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Kurouma
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Of course CLLAIRE does capture the imagination, it's probably the reason many people got involved in CSTART and for that it's a good standard to rally around, but to sink time and effort into it so early is counterproductive. Think, before NASA launched its first moonshot, how many prior space missions had been conducted? How many years and thousands of man-hours and millions of dollars had been spent on research and on just developing hardware capable of reaching even LEO? Of course now this is better understood than it was then and for that reason these capabilities are available to amateurs such as ourselves, but that doesn't mean we're in a better position than NASA was before Apollo or Gemini. We still don't know a thing about astroengineering, and space is unforgiving. If you get it even a little bit wrong, somebody dies. A manned first mission is not sensible, letalone one to the moon. But neither is throwing the dream away; that kind of inquisitive spirit is what makes us human. But to be able to realise that dream we need the experience of repeated smaller missions that carry significantly less risk. Let's first make sure we know how to get something up there and keep it there, at least.
Search your feelings, you know it to be true.
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8:57 pm
April 24, 2010
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Luke Maurits
| | Adelaide, Australia | |
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| posts 1483 | |
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It has never been part of the plan that CLLARE is to be the first thing we actually put into space. That was established very firmly within the first few days of this endeavour (which originally was just CLLARE), and nobody has backed down on it since. There will be simpler and non-manned projects testing the technology for CLLARE first, and even when CLLARE launches do start, there will naturally be unmanned flights first. An example program of CLLARE flights, which is fairly conservative, can be seen in the CLLARE Project Overview Document (which you can find on the Wiki).
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Main CLLARE workgroups: Mission Planning, Navigation and Guidance. I do maths, physics, C, Python and Java.
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9:15 pm
April 24, 2010
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Luke Maurits
| | Adelaide, Australia | |
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| posts 1483 | |
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I didn't mean for the above post to sound as harsh as I've realised now that it
does, sorry. I'm recovering from a cold and still feeling kind of
grumpy for no good reason. I know a lot of stuff which has "been clear" since
the early days isn't actually clear at all to newcomers. What you
point out is very true, there is a definite need to pace ourselves with regard to actually putting hardware up there, and we will definitely do that.
The reason we do not have defined/advertised projects which are simpler than CLLARE is that we don't want to have too much on our plate at one time. There have definitely been ideas for simpler/lesser projects thrown around, though. Some of them are described here, others are around the forums.
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Main CLLARE workgroups: Mission Planning, Navigation and Guidance. I do maths, physics, C, Python and Java.
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10:35 am
April 27, 2010
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forever_erratic
| | Minneapolis, MN, USA, Earth, etc. | |
| Member | posts 8 | |
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Why don't we start having weekly IRC meetings in a different time slot each week and this schedule written very clearly on the frontpage? Or even a daily time slot.
As a newb (who has now read almost every post) this seems like an obvious, but missing, necessity to get people involved. It's not like everyone has to be at every meeting or anything.
Basic OHKLA plans could be put out pretty quickly, I think, with a few of these meetings. Decide necessary fuel quantity to get into space for a given mass, decide the fuel we want to use, decide grain volume, decide grain shape, have that dictate all other decisions. Once we have these basics underway it will be easier to divy up tasks.
A basic plan like this would also help people get involved – if we know our requirements, we can make a frontpage-linked wiki page with "things you should do" and then have tasks like "Casing material: find out what material can handle x pressure, y heat, is less than z kg, and not millions of dollars. Find company that will shape it for cheap." In other words, tractable, not-pie-in-the-sky problems.
I don't think CLLARE should be tossed. In contrast, I think it should be the goal that every project works toward. OHKLA is the project that teaches us how move with rockets, future projects will include how to keep electronics working in space, how to keep someone alive, how to move in space, etc., all with the ultimate plan of combining our knowledge to get to the moon. Sometime before we're all dead, but not any time soon.
Just my garbled thoughts.
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4:29 pm
April 27, 2010
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Rocket-To-The-Moon
| | Altus, Oklahoma, USA | |
| Member | posts 685 | |
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I like the idea of having regularly scheduled IRC chats instead of trying to coordinate for a time that suits everyone. What we need is a mailing list so that when an IRC chat is going to occur all members of the mailing list are emailed to notify them. This way we are always keeping CSTART members informed of when to participate.
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Main Workgroups: Propulsion & Spacecraft Engineering
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6:07 pm
April 27, 2010
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forever_erratic
| | Minneapolis, MN, USA, Earth, etc. | |
| Member | posts 8 | |
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>What we need is a mailing list so that when an IRC chat is going to
occur all members of the mailing list are emailed to notify them.
I like it. Couldn't an email list be simply compiled from the info on our logins (by someone who has access to that)?
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9:41 pm
April 27, 2010
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Rocket-To-The-Moon
| | Altus, Oklahoma, USA | |
| Member | posts 685 | |
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forever_erratic said:
>What we need is a mailing list so that when an IRC chat is going to
occur all members of the mailing list are emailed to notify them.
I like it. Couldn't an email list be simply compiled from the info on our logins (by someone who has access to that)?
Probably, the problem with that is signing people up without consent to be contacted for this purpose.
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Main Workgroups: Propulsion & Spacecraft Engineering
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5:00 am
April 30, 2010
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Kurouma
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Well, you sure have my consent. Let's get a mailing list to people who agree and let's get this happening  .
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5:12 am
April 30, 2010
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Luke Maurits
| | Adelaide, Australia | |
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| posts 1483 | |
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If there's a lot of support for mailing lists, I thought I'd point out that Google Code, which we already use to host our Software Library and a lot of documentation on the projects, integrates quite nicely with Google Groups, which is essentially a mailing list system (it's actually a sort of mailing list – forum hybrid, so it has a web interface as well as the usual SMTP interface). It seems a logical choice to use this for any CSTART mailing lists.
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Main CLLARE workgroups: Mission Planning, Navigation and Guidance. I do maths, physics, C, Python and Java.
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12:40 pm
April 30, 2010
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antinode
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If the chats are scheduled what's the purpose of a mailing list? Just to remind people? For that it'd be better to use Google Calender with email reminders for now, and eventually having integrated site-wide notifications with the ability to opt in or out of email notifications. Use of Google Groups would just encourage discussion there as well as the forums, which is not what is needed.
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12:27 am
May 1, 2010
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Luke Maurits
| | Adelaide, Australia | |
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| posts 1483 | |
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It would be possible to set up a Google group which could only be posted to by people with admin priveleges: this would not drag conversation away from the forums (which I agree would be a bad thing) and could be used as a channel for "announcements", which would not necessarily need to be limited to meeting reminders.
That said, this feels like a little bit of an obsolete paradigm these days: we could use blog posts and/or tweets for the same purpose and people could use an RSS reader to get pretty much exactly the same experience as subscribing to a mailing list. Perhaps it's not worth the effort after all.
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Main CLLARE workgroups: Mission Planning, Navigation and Guidance. I do maths, physics, C, Python and Java.
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