I would like to hold a Teamspeak meeting on Monday night starting at 9 P.M. eastern time. Between now and early December I am going to be putting together a plan forward and I will be seeking input from many of you. We need to hold a meeting as soon as it is practical to hold it and we find the appropriate venue. My only mandatory attendance for this particular Teamspeak session is Bob Davis and I, so if Bob cannot make this, we will move it.
Secondly, if Jim is available, I would like for him to come and give us his exit report if he wants to and for us to be able to let him hear much we want him back when he finds his busy life will allow him to return.
My main agenda item for Monday night will be for us to get a report on the activities of the AMSAT lab construction delivered by AMSAT Lab director Bob Davis. Ron Bettini of Hawk Space Institute is about to deliver a request for volunteer help for some specific tasks that need doing for Hawk to finish integration of its Cubesat. I have agreed to try to advertise the need. I assume Bob will be his proxy but Ron is most welcome. AMSAT and Hawk are going to jointly administer a "space camp" at UMES next summer if the details can be worked out (we stop talking and start acting) and we are rapidly approaching the time when the teachers we are trying to attract will have already made application to others and committed their available funds. We are going to need to volunteer adjunct faculty from our engineering team to aid with this. AMSAT is going to join with Hawk in a balloon project at the "spend a few dollars and package the Suitsat hardware for the balloon" level. I would like for Bob to fill us in on those details. I want to get together as soon as possible a clear set of parameters for the RF systems I intend to have us build during 2008 and for which the AMSAT BOD has given us a budget. I am not looking to build flight hardware but a significant investment has been made in prototyping tools so we can develop code for the full up HELAPS and the ACP software foundations on the same development platform.
We need to put together a clear concept of our intended operations on Intelsat and to get some prototype hardware built so the prototype development system can put it all on the air and demonstrated and tested.
As soon as is practical, we need to be able to demonstrate a prototype ACP and a prototype SDX so we show the functionality can be built if funding is found for the flight system and the launch. We have not yet reached the point where any firm decisions can be made which would allow us to build fight RF hardware for either Eagle or Rideshare because they are significantly different missions. One is RF with a few space challenges and with more DC power than we ever dreamed possible. The other is all the challenges of managing a complex satellite on which we grudgingly allow what RF can be accomodated. But I have my marching orders from my boss, BUILD SOMETHING. I am prepared to demonstrate we can.
By the time I get done writing all of that up for the journal Engineering Notebook column, my arms will be breaking off. Should we have other agenda items that need to be covered, please email me directly. The bod and officers outside the Eagle team members are NOT invited to this session because this has nothing to do with tech snobbery. There is a limit to the number of people we can get on there. We have never reached it and I don't want to try and I want to try to stay focused on the long reports I have requested. I am seeking your input on things you would like to see us to discuss. You will be able to listen to the entire session should you so desire afterwards and we finish transcoding it and putting it up for download. There will be a written report posted to Eaglepedia as soon as I figure out the levers to pull.
Bob