Open Luna Foundation | Similar organizations | Forum

Well, these people (found them on SpaceHack) are pretty much a second CLLARE.  They are an open source unmanned and manned lunar expedition project, with a Facebook page, Twitter account and blog, incorporated as a 501(c)(3) with a few industry partners helping them out.  This is extremely close to what CSTART wants to be.

My initial impression, based on the material they have online is that they have a more detailed "big picture" plan of their mission timelines than us, but we have a more detailed "small picture" plan (with regards to spacecraft/rocket components and technologies) – but not very much more advanced.

At least they aren't light years ahead of us.

Our goals and methodologies are so very similar that it might be worth seriously considering the possibility of some kind of merger.  At the very least we will want to work very, very closely with them.

It feels to me like they may be quite interested in our propulsion ideas.  They seem to have put more effort into considering commercial options than into building their own.  Where they have considered doing their own, they seem to be going for the liquid option.  Our hybrid cluster ideas may really excite them due to lower cost and increased safety and simplicity.

They also should be able to give us lots of good 501(c)(3) advice.  I think 501(c)(3)s are required to make their certificate of incorporation publically available, so having a look at that would provide a good starting point for our own.

We are going to have to think long and hard about what our eventual relationship with OLF will be.  Of course, any arrangements will be preconditioned on what they feel as well, and we can't tell that in advance, but we should at least start thinking about this now.  It may end up being one of our most important decisions, so near unanimity would be nice.  It sort of feels like we shouldn't be discussing this here since once we make contact (and I think we should do that, fairly soon) it seems quite likely that people from OLF will read this post.  On the other hand, planning amongst ourselves in secret looks kind of suspicious for a group that is supposed to be all about openness.

A few "opening statements" which should be uncontroversial and inoffensive to both all of us and all of them:

• OLF and CSTART (or more accurately OLF and CSTART's project CLLARE) have very similar goals and very similar ideas about how to best pursue those goals (with regards to openness and public involvement).
• It would be a shame to see two such efforts happen in an uncoordinated, parallel fashion, when we could work together and achieve our goals twice as fast, twice as cheaply, etc.
• Nobody at CSTART is going to want to shut CSTART down and just go off and join OLF, because we are all now emotionally invested in CSTART – our name and our logo are home.  Also, CSTART is an open source space agency, not just an open source partiular space project.  I think this is maybe our most unique feature.
• Of course, nobody at OLF is going to want to shut OLF down and just go off and join CSTART (specifically CLLARE), because no doubt they are all now emotionally invested in OLF – their name and their logo are home to them.

Given the above, what sort of mutually beneficial relationship can we envision for the two of us without either of us losing too much of our autonomity?  Or should we be willing to actually contemplate a complete merger?  I am not outright opposed to this (of course, they may be), but it may be a little awkward – since they have a functioning 501(c)(3) structure and we are just a group of people, it makes sense for the merger to work legally by us being subsumed by them (by just joining their corporation), but this doesn't make a lot of sense logically since, as mentioned, we want to be a fully general space agency where as they want to be a lunar project.  We are the conceptually more general group but they are the legally better defined group.  Is it possible for a 501(c)(3) to completely change its name after formation, or is that fixed for life?  If it were possible, maybe the neatest overall thing would be:

• The OLF 501(c)(3) changes its name to OSTARF, for Open Space Travel and Research Foundation (a fairly equitable way of merging our names, I think, although I admit the abbreviation both looks and sounds a little gross – too close to "barf"!).
• OSTARF becomes the new general open source space agency, adopting the current CSTART mission statement, social contract and design philosophy (perhaps with some tweaking if they have concerns).
• OSTARF adopts OHKLA.
• OSTARF starts a new lunar project which combines the ideas, technologies and people of the current OLF and the current CLLARE.

Of course, it's all well and good for us to speculate about something like this, but they may be totally disinterested (for all I know everybody else at CSTART would be disinterested in a deal like this).  We don't want to appear rude by just suggesting this out of the blue as if it were natural they would be up for it.  We should talk amongst ourselves about what sort of outcomes we would and would not want, send them a friendly hello email, talk a bit and get a feel for what sort of outcomes they may be interested in and propose this kind of merger if and only if we think it will go over well.

There are a lot of things to consider about a merger like this (pros, cons, dangers), but I will refrain from talking about them here until we can guage the project's general enthusiasm about the idea and decide if we want to talk about it in public.

Failing a total merger like that outlined above, I am not sure what other scenarios I can envision.  Maybe the best thing we can expect is to just work side by side as two separate entities but make a real effort to share data and resources often, bounce ideas off one another, etc., fostering a sense of friendly competition and cooperation.  In a sense there's a useful redundancy in this.  If it turns out that one of us has a disasterous failure (i.e. a booster system ending up unworkable), they can recover quickly by just adopting the other group's solution to that problem (assuming there is one – if not, at least the other group will be able to avoid making the same mistake).

Rizwan said:

To be honest, I am too attached to CSTART, a merger would probably break my heart :(

I know how you feel. :(  I am attached to CSTART too.  I don't think I would usually consider a merger seriously, but these people have a lot to offer so to speak – all the 501(c)(3) difficulties taken care of, a few very qualified/experienced people, some industry and university partners, etc.  Still, it is nothing we couldn't achieve ourselves with a bit of hard work.  Perhaps it would be best to go for the second option and maintain our current identity.  After all, we have done a lot of excellent work in getting ourselves to this point.