OSHW Archives - Page 7 of 7

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At Mach 30, we dream of a world where people live and work on other worlds and in space stations. When we say people, we don’t mean six at a time, we mean hundreds, then thousands, then tens of thousands. One of the keys to making this dream a reality is to share the technology of space as widely as possible, and so we are doing all of our engineering work as open source hardware, and we are not alone. In the last four years nearly one dozen groups have formed with the stated purpose of developing space flight systems in a manner similar to that of open source software projects. These groups intend to develop and then share the designs of a wide variety of space systems including launch vehicles, satellites, and lunar probes.

The path in front of all of us is a steep one. Tomorrow, we’ll discuss the challenges and opportunities on our shared path to a strong open source spaceflight industry. Today, let’s meet the revolutionaries of open source spaceflight.

Copenhagen Suborbitals

Copenhagen Suborbitals is an all volunteer Danish organization founded by Kristian von Bengtson and Peter Madsen. The mission of Copenhagen Suborbitals is to launch a human being into space. They are currently developing a sub-orbital spacecraft composed of a one-person capsule called the Tycho Brahe, and a booster called HEAT.

The Collaborative Space Travel and Research Team

The Collaborative Space Travel and Research Team (CSTART) is an all volunteer organization with members throughout the world. CSTART was founded in 2009 by a group of space enthusiasts who met in an online community site called Reddit. The mission of CSTART is to organize and finance open source spaceflight projects run by space enthusiasts. Current CSTART projects include a cubesat called COSMoS, a high altitude balloon called Cloudlab, and a hybrid rocket called Chimera.

Develop Space

Develop Space is a 501c3 non-profit organization founded in 2007. Its mission is to enable human exploration and development of space through open collaboration. Develop Space projects include an architecture study for a minimalist human mission to Mars, the development of a space exploration reference library, and research into engineering tools that are licensed as open source software.

Mach 30

Mach 30 is a non-profit organization incorporated in 2009. Our mission is to hasten the advancement of humanity into a spacefaring society. Current projects at Mach 30 focus on developing a strong legal and organizational foundation for running open source spaceflight projects. These projects include the Openeering Wiki, a community portal documenting the existence of and experience using free and open source engineering tools, Open Design Engine, a web based engineering project management portal, and research into licensing and management of open projects within the boundaries of export control laws such as ITAR.

Open Aerospace

Open Aerospace was founded by Ralph Ewig in 2009. The mission of Open Aerospace is to be the organizing framework for space enthusiasts to collaborate on human activities beyond Earth. Open Aerospace’s projects focus on defining an end to end architecture for space exploration.

OpenLuna Foundation

The OpenLuna Foundation is a 501c3 non-profit organization founded by Paul Graham and Gary Snyder. The mission of Open Luna is to return humans back to the moon through private enterprise. Early projects at Open Luna are focusing on a series of robotic missions and public outreach. Their eventual goal is to build a small human outpost on the moon.

Open Space Movement

Open Space Movement was founded in 2010. Its mission is to provide a collaborative engineering environment, educational resources, and organizational framework for a public space venture. Open Space Movements current primary focus is the development of their collaborative engineering environment as a web portal similar to those used to host open source software projects.

Portland State Aerospace Society

The Portland State Aerospace Society (PSAS) is a student organization at Portland State University. PSAS projects center around the development and operation of low cost open source rockets. Their most recent launch, held in October of 2010, was a complete success.

Team FREDNET

Team FREDNET is an official competitor in the Google Lunar X-Prize. Team FREDNET is incorporated as a 501c3 non-profit organization. As a competitor in the Google Lunar X-Prize, Team FREDNETs projects all center around the development of a prize winning lunar rover.

Ultra Light Space Flight

The Ultra Light Space Flight (ULSF) group is a community of individuals who are working on developing open source space probes. Their core value is to “to the smallest possible craft operating on the smallest possible budgets” and they believe that robotic probes have been and will continue to be the backbone of space exploration.

WikiSat

WikiSat is an international group of volunteers and students. Their mission is to make access to space open to everyone. Their current projects include a high altitude balloon that will act as a proof of concept for their engineering processes, and a ultra-small scale satellite launcher as an entry to the N-Prize.

Want to join Mach 30’s team in the Open Source Spaceflight Revolution? Learn more here.

Update 07/06/2011:

HexBright has setup a wiki on their website. Not much content posted yet, but the structure that is in place looks good. Looking forward to licensing information and documentation.

Update 06/09/2011:

Just got this very clarifying tweet from @Hexbright:

We are going to release mechanical drawings, electrical drawings, and source code for the Flex!! That’s what we mean by open source!

That is very exciting news!!! It turns out that google linked to much older comments and the team over at Hexbright decided to open everything up on June 2. Thanks to Hexbright for clearing this up. I can’t wait to get one of my own (and see the plans).

“World’s first open source flashlight?” This headline caught my eye the other day. As a supporter of relatively new Open Source Hardware (OSWH) movement, I thought to myself, now here is an interesting idea for an OSHW project. I can’t wait to see what type of flashlight it is and what the plans look like. After all, a flashlight is clearly hardware, so surely the developer is talking about opening the entire design… Boy was I in for a surprise.

Before I even read the article, I followed the link to the project website, which is really nothing more than an advertisement for the Kickstarter page. Despite the very clear language indicating the HexBright is open source (“Hex Bright: Open Source Light”), there are no links to a project page of any kind. No information on where to get any plans, source code, or documentation. There is just an email address and the previously mentioned link to the Kickstarter page. Contrast this with open source software projects such as the Python programming language, which prominently links to the source code, documentation, and forums in the sidebar on the project homepage.

Needless to say, this was not an auspicious start as far as I was concerned. Still, I was determined to see what the story was, so off I went to the Kickstarter page. Here you will find a number of videos showing off the HexBright (including one with Grant Imahara of the Mythbusters), but still no links to the plans, source code, or documentation one should expect of a project that is advertising itself as open source. So, I dug still deeper, and googled for “hexbright plans” and found this discussion page on the Kickstarter site. If you scroll down to the bottom of the page, you will find a question posted by user mitpatterson, “Any plans to release the schematic for the electronics inside at all? …”, to which Christian Carlberg (one of the developers) responds:

I just plan on releasing the source code for you light hackers to play with. It’s a good question, but part of what makes the HexBright special is the body shape which I want to keep hold of.

So, it turns out that this is not an OSHW project at all. It is an LED flashlight for which the developers plan to release the source code for the embedded processor that runs the LED.

There are two important points for supporters of OSHW to consider from this story. The first is the need to come up with a common language to describe the relative openness of hardware projects. I think it is important for the maker community to avoid misunderstandings about what is being shared, what will be shared, and what will not be shared (and under what terms does the sharing take place) when it comes to hardware projects. These kinds of misunderstandings can at best lead to frustration (such as I felt while researching the HexBright) and at worst can lead to intellectual property violations (such as someone misusing a design or source code because of a failure to understand their rights to that information). This will likely involve both educating the maker community about how open source can be applied to hardware, and having a dialog about how to clearly label projects.

The second point is that something is not open source just because you say it is. There are clear definitions for both software and hardware, and in both cases being open source requires that the appropriate material (source code and accompanying instructions in the case of software, and drawings, instructions, etc in the case of hardware) be available to the users. Planning to release this material is not the same thing… At all. It is just plain unfair (and untrue) to label something as open source when there are no aspects of the project that are available to end users (and covered under a valid open source license). Again, this is likely something that needs to be addressed through education in the maker community. Though, to be perfectly fair, this is occasionally a problem even in organizations that should know better.

So, tell me what you think. Am I being too harsh or do we really need to address these issues? And is educating the maker community about open source the right path forward? If so, what does that look like? If not, what do you think is the right path is?

ad astra per civitas

Category Archives: OSHW

Introducing the Open Source Spaceflight Revolutionaries