Hi Lyle,
I appreciated your response to my terse post. Perhaps my very brief comments reflect my frustration in what has been (from where I sit) a grindingly slow year lacking in "visible" progress on Eagle development - expect for the fine work being done by Juan Rivera and his team with John Stephensen and recently Dick Jansson.
But regarding you comments about technical discussions over a beer, I must bring up a 5/28/07 'Eagle" post from Bob McGweir-----"
I agree with Tom's sentiment and I gave the old "Bob can be a jerk" stomping to private conversation's on Eagle technical matters off list. It ends NOW. We discuss project technical matters here, from the beginning to the end. Personnel issues are to be dealt with privately with/by the project manager and NEVER on this list.
There are many who are on this list who have lots of experience in building these packages for spacecraft. We need the benefit of all of their experience.
Bob"
I'm hoping we are following Bob's post. I just think it's appropriate that when technical discussions over a beer appear to become a consensus especially among two or more Board members and other Eagle team members, that can appear to be an "ad hoc committee" whose opinions and weight of authority can easily become a course of action without getting the opportunity for "other" inputs.
You also say " we all know, there are certain limitations to who can discuss what with whom due to the way our governement views spacecraft and related technology." well I certainly don't know what these are.
I know management has been working on ITAR issues but I haven't heard anything about it since June 07. I think it would be very appropriate for the results (if any are available) of those discussions to be made available with "guidelines" distributed to the uninformed as to what it all means us. In my discussions with associates worldwide about technical issues (not directly Eagle related), I would hate to ignorantly stub my toe on ITAR/AMSAT issues.
Regards...Bill - N6GHz
lyle johnson wrote:
The Eagle design has been the most open in the history of AMSAT.
As we all know, there are certain limitations to who can discuss what with whom due to the way our governement views spacecraft and related technology. So, if certain parties make an observation to certain other parties, this information has to be distilled and then shared in mandated ways. This may result in some lag before the larger community is generally aware of such information.
Further, if two or three members of the Eagle team have a beer and discuss certain things, and they have not come to any well-defined suggestions, it is not being "closed" to continue to discuss (maybe over another beer) before floating the idea(s) to the group.
We are all in this together, we are partner-volunteers trying to create a significant technical resource, and we need to always give one another the benefit of the doubt and attribute only the highest and best possible reasons for any particular event.
I choose to not believe anyone is deliberately trying to hide anything from anyone else. Further, if I get a phone call and discuss something or field a question, I don't necessarily feel obligated to transcribe (or even summarize) the conversation and report it here.
I know, and I think everyone else does (if not, they do now) that IHU-3 development has been stalled for a while for various reasons. I am the guy most at fault for this delay. Bob, Rick and others are looking at ways to get it moving forward again. I don't think Rick was announcing a major change to the IHU-3 as some secret conclave's conclusions. He simply mentioned that some aspects of it are being thought about by some members of the team in the context of the larger issues surrounding it. His mention of the fact that this is being thought about is *sharing* -- not hiding.
I saw no specific proposal, nor did I get the impression that there is a specific proposal being hidden.
This is a hobby, guys.
Let's have fun!
73,
Lyle KK7P
Via the Eagle mailing list courtesy of AMSAT-NA Eagle@amsat.org http://amsat.org/mailman/listinfo/eagle