Mach 30 #EngineeringSpeak Hangout Sept 12, 2013
Discussion Topic: Shepard/Ground Station
Attending: J, Chris, Aaron, Juli, Jeremy, Ethan
Start: 22:00
End: 23:00
Minutes:
- J - so what do we want to do today?
- J - have a few things I want to do:
- J - first want to make sure we are all on board with the plan to have a meeting about the requirements for the Shepard structure (we did a good post mortem on the DAQ but not the structure and J thinks this is why the structure team is stuck)
- All - <agree>
- J - Jeremy, can you put on your action list to see if Matt from CCSSC can join us for a meeting about the requirements and if so when?
- Jeremy - will try, but that is not always something that works
- J - might want to try the pitching it as mission critical for their work (want to make sure structure will work with their program); give it until next week, and go without them if needed
- J - second want to check in about the cubesat communication partnership; have we heard anything more?
- Aaron - no
- Jeremy - no
- ACTION (J) - reestablish contact and get this going again so we can firm up this partnership
- Aaron - have been looking at upgrading the ground plane for use with their cubesat
- Aaron - speaking of coms, have an idea to bounce off the group:
- first - sounds very interesting, but not as sure how this will fit into the roadmap -> led to discussion on purpose of roadmap (J is of the opinion we should use roadmap to focus our resources on those projects needed for our first main tech goal - J leans toward minimal (read cubesat) RLV
- second - this smacks of just space application, which makes this likely to be export controlled
- Aaron - good point on export controls
- J - so we need to put this on hold until export control task force gets more work done
- J - third thing does Jeremy need any support for thermal sensor tests?
- Jeremy - it’s already done
- J - awesome
- Chris - wants to go over the requirements for the Shepard DAQ desktop software such as calibration and data processing
- J - saw Public Lab (publiclab.org) is building great momentum around their OSHW kits; since one of their objectives is to encourage users to publish their data and results, they have made all of their data processing tools web based, so when users go to process their data, they have automatically published their data (this also creates social opportunities for their projects)
- Chris - so, this totally makes sense (saw it coming while J presented it), but wonders what the objective would be if we did this
- J - some ideas include
- J - Down the road, one of the later test stands could be useful for testing one’s own motor (and brains). Offering a tool that they will find useful with the assumption of sharing results gives inroads into “open is good”.
- J - Test things for later stands in a low risk environment
- J - Can apply social aspects, such as comparison between schools to add another dimension to the curriculum
- Chris - Gives us a way to see what the usage characteristics of the test stand are
- Aaron - and gives us a way to test out ideas for community data processing for all types of test equipment
- J - and we would wind up with a large dataset of commercial rocket performance data
- Jeremy - is this a tab in ODE or another site?
- Chris - would make it another site, maybe at shepard.mach30.org
- J - would talk to Greg, Josh S., and CCSSC about what data processing we should do