When this project first started, I thought we were pretty crazy and unique. I thought nobody else had dared to dream of something quite as ambitious as what we were talking about. I thought that CSTART was shaping up to be a world first, the only game in town.
In some ways, perhaps we still are – we haven't yet found any other amateur space exploration group which is (i) open source and (ii) a general organisation which could run many projects over its lifetime, rather than just dedicated to a single project. We also seem to have done a much better job of establishing a sense of spirit/identity than anybody else – the combination of our Mission Statement, Social Contract and Design Philosophy makes us a much more clearly defined group than anybody else. This is something to be proud of!
At the same time, it is clear that we are very much not alone. There are other groups out there who are interested in using the open source approach to do everything from launch rockets, launch satellites, put humans into space and, yes, even put humans on the moon. Not only that, but there are "meta groups" like the One Flag in Space people who want to make sure all these little groups do what they do for the good of everyone. I have been very pleasantly surprised to realise that there is so much of this sort of thinking going on, all around the world.
Since work on our website and Wiki is progressing well and we are soon going to want to make contact with many of these groups, perhaps now would be a good time to start thinking about the particulars of a "Friends of CSTART" program or the like.
This would be nothing fancy, basically a list of other groups somewhere prominent on our page or Wiki who have agreed to become an official "friend of CSTART". We would offer our friendship to any group or project who are dedicated to doing open source space work. Becoming a friend of CSTART wouldn't be any kind of binding agreement or obligation, just a friendly gesture saying "we believe in doing the same kinds of things in the same kinds of ways. We are very interested in learning what we can from you and very happy to teach you what we can. We'll put a shiny link to you on our webpage and you can put a shiny link to us on your webpage". As part of this program we would draft a standard "offer of friendship letter", something where we could just fill in a few blanks and send it away to these groups, telling them who we are, saying that we think they're cool and we'd love to be pals, if they would like this too, reply to this email and we'll make it happen". We could use the draft email to Copenhagen Suborbitals as a starting point. In addition to us actively offering friendship to other groups, we could have a form somewhere where other groups who met certain criteria could offer us their friendship.
Do people think this is a good idea, and do they think we are in a good position to start preparing for this now?
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