It should come as no surprise that I am interested in Reusable Launch Vehicles (RLVs), specifically their design. Since founding Mach 30, I have come to believe that the key to successfully developing the first true RLV is to follow the example of the Wrights and other successful innovators, and start with much more modest requirements than in the past. But developing improved requirements is only the first step of many. The next step is to develop and analyze concepts for systems which can meet these requirements. And, while I do have some ideas for some concepts, there is still the problem of analyzing these concepts. As a Phoenix Integration employee, and someone with a good deal of experience with their tools, my first tool of choice for approaching this kind of work is ModelCenter. ModelCenter’s role in this kind of analysis is to bring a variety of specialty tools together and facilitate their interconnection into a system level model. For any given modeling scenario, the next question is then how to develop the interconnected analyses, and what tools are best used in their development. (more…)
Modeling RLV Conceptual Designs
Open Source Farm Hardware
I have not had much time to dig into this site (sorry about the pun), but it looks very interesting. It’s a site dedicated to the development and sharing of open source farm tool and processes. For example, check out the open source tractor. Like the rest of the growing open source hardware community, it looks like they are using a mix of wikis, blogs, and other tools to distribute their work and share the results. [vimeo 16044716] Lifetrac II- Wheel Mounting from Sean Church on Vimeo. We should see if they would be interested in a more integrated approach along the lines of ODE.
A couple of interesting articles from last week
So, I am a member of AIAA and I receive a daily email with news and headlines from the aerospace industry. Two from last week caught my eye as being extremely relevant to Mach 30.
- NASA’s New Reality Check – Take a look at the opening line of the article – NASA’s administrator is saying that NASA must focus on “affordable, sustainable, and realistic” programs. Sound familiar? It should, sustainability is one of Mach 30’s core values. It is encouraging to see NASA start to talk about this value. It is unlikely to change things overnight, but one never knows, if the idea were to really take root, then maybe NASA can start to really rebuild its human spaceflight program. Only time will tell.
- Amateur Astronomers Usher in New Era Of Discovery, Says Report – This is very exciting news for the astronomy community. Professionals and volunteers are working together, using new and old techniques and tools. This is exactly the kind of collaboration I am hoping we can create in the engineering communities (especially spaceflight). I eagerly look forward to articles like this being written about the work we are doing.
Major Milestone Reached: IRS Form 1023 Submitted
I am very excited to report that Mach 30 has just submitted our application for non-profit status to the IRS (Form 1023). While that may not sound exciting, this document (45 pages long) is the result of over a year’s worth of discussions, writing, and (oh so many) meetings. By submitting this document we have taken a giant step toward becoming a “real” 501(c)(3) nonprofit and are that much closer to a world where regular people (like us) get to go to space.
Congratulations and thanks to everyone who contributed to the application. Mach 30 couldn’t have done it without you.