Mach 30 Reports Hangout for May 2015

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What was Mach 30 up to over the past month? Find out with the May 2015 Reports Hangout.  You may be familiar with the (not so) new round table discussion format where volunteers discuss current events in space, making, and open source hardware.

This month, we reminded everyone why there was no Report’s Hangout in April and mention a few topics that we would have covered if there was: the 2014 Mach 30 Annual Report, Mach 30’s plan for the remainder of 2015, and introduction of the Yavin Cold Gas Thruster & the Apogee 2 Event.  Then we dove right into all of the current events regarding rocket, launch, and space-related events.  Finally, we celebrated the 25th anniversary of the Hubble Space Telescope in a very Maker-y way…  Check it out the video below to see how!

Many of these topics from this month will have periodic updates.  Naturally they will be covered in the new and improved monthly reports hangouts at Mach 30, so subscribe to our YouTube channel to STAY TUNED!

Hot off the presses: The Mach 30 2014 Annual Report

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We are proud to announce the publication of Mach 30’s 2014 Annual Report. This publication is Mach 30’s first annual report.  It highlights all the great stories from last year. Publishing this report is an important step for the organization because it signals a new level of maturity and demonstrates our continued commitment to our our open source values.

While it’s not a legal requirement, most established nonprofits publish annual reports to share their accomplishments, successes, works in progress, and project close-outs while setting the stage for the future plans and operations. As Mach 30 matures, we want to follow this best practice. More importantly, documenting our work is at the core of Mach 30’s values including transparency and the use of open source methods, even at this organizational level.

This report covers our progress in open source spaceflight hardware, our first conference, our contributions to the Open Source Hardware movement, and looks forward to the work coming in 2015. 2014 was a momentous year full of firsts, and this first annual report is one more milestone along our journey. We look forward to many more to come.

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Mach 30 Update for March 2015

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This post was co-authored by Mach 30 volunteer Aaron Harper.

The Mach 30 Reports Hangouts experiments have continued in February and March.  Our new format is a round table discussion of current events in space, making, and open source hardware, with a focus on events happening at Mach 30.  This new format is paying off and the result is this month’s reports hangout is well worth the time required to watch.

This month, we have a report on Alicia Gibb’s book Building Open Source Hardware in which some Mach 30 members and projects are featured. We had some HUGE news in the form of contributions to open source design software and great strides on simplifying export control compliance for open hardware projects.  Check it out below.

For those that prefer a written update on the status of Mach 30 projects, you can still check out the March Reports page on Google Drive.  Many of these topics from this month will have periodic updates.  Naturally they will be covered in the new and improved monthly reports hangouts at Mach 30, so STAY TUNED!

Our Favorite Moments from 2014

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For those of you who don’t follow +Mach 30, the Board of Directors and volunteer leaders gather each month for an On Air Hangout to present status updates on our various projects.  These Reports Hangouts are very business focused which can make them “a little dry.”  We are actively discussing how we can address the business need for status updates and reach out to fans (existing and new) to share with them all the great things Mach 30 is doing.  As an experiment in the outreach side of this equation we did something different for the December Reports Hangout.  Instead of going through the list of active projects by “bus”, board members took turns sharing their favorite moments and accomplishments from 2014.  Highlights included hosting Apogee I at Club Cyberia (and how well our new planning rhythm worked: strategic planning in person at Apogee and annual planning online at Perigee), completing the first version of Ground Sphere, and Jeremy’s very awesome contributions to CadQuery (starting us down the path toward a rich and open CAD modeling package).

Thank you again to all of our volunteers and donors, we couldn’t do this without you.

Don’t forget to join in on the conversation.  Post your favorite Mach 30 moment in the comments below.

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Jones Boys’ Rocketry

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As Open Source Spaceflight Hardware (OSSHW) developers, we love to see other people building, modifying, remixing, and using our designs. In fact, we believe that the “Prime Directive” of Open Hardware is that it must be reproducible. That’s why we got so excited when we were contacted through Open Design Engine by John and Christopher from Jones Boys’ Rocketry. Christopher was working on a rocketry project for school, and was attempting to get a copy of our Shepard Test Stand thrust measurement hardware working.

John and Christopher

John and Christopher in February of ’08

Having someone build your Open Hardware has another advantage – you find more bugs and design flaws. The more people build and use your hardware, the better it gets. Our work with Jones Boys on Open Design Engine was no exception. They found a couple of bugs in our software, and their work brought about some operational improvements that we had glossed over because we’re so used to the hardware.

Christopher Testing the Shepard Hardware

After about two weeks of back-and-forth work, John and Christopher were able to get a successful data capture with a live engine.

Jones Boys’ Test Firing

Christopher was able to collect and analyze data from various motor fuel grain configurations and assembled everything into his science fair project display.

Christopher’s Display

Christopher took his display to multiple science fairs, and did extremely well. He was in 9th grade when he competed, and in the regional ISEF Science Fair, took first place in physics for his group. After that he went on to win second place in the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics fair, which included a $100 cash award and a 3 day workshop at Goddard (I’m very envious). He also got an honorable mention from the USAF Office of Scientific Research.

Christopher Explaining His Project at the Science Fair

Congratulations to Christopher for doing a great job, and thanks to him for using Mach 30 hardware. We’re always excited to work with people who want to build spaceflight related hardware without starting from scratch. If you’re interested in building a rocket motor test stand or satellite receiving ground station, please feel free to contact us. We’d love to talk with you.

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Related Links

Testing for Catastrophic Capacitor Failure

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Ground Sphere Mk2 PrototypeSometimes what would appear to be a great idea turns out to be not-so-great. I had a concept of bedding the Software Defined Radio (SDR) and pre-amplifier for the Ground Sphere Ground Station in Greatstuff foam to make it more resilient to shipping and other mishandling, similar to the way delicate equipment is shipped in a two piece conformal foam mold.

Jeremy Wright asked a very simple question that I had not considered… what would happen if something electronic fried? That’s not entirely true… I did think of that, and so I selected Greatstuff Fireblock. Then he asked “Did ya test it?” The simple answer is no, I had not.
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