3rd Nanosat Launcher Seminar has been canceled

Team Phoenicia regrets to announce that the Nanosat Launcher Seminar has been canceled. 

This is due to multiple reasons. The first is that there has been low interest this time around. Additionally, a number of speakers have cancelled as of today and Space Florida is unable to attend in person. 

Those that have registered will be getting refunds.

3rd Annual Team Phoenicia Nanosat Launcher Seminar: Registration Now Open

Registration is now open.  The current draft agenda is here and evolving.

Early registration will be $50 (9/19/2012 through 10/1/2012)

Full Registration will be $75 (10/1/2012 through 10/31/2012)

Late Registration will be $100 (11/1/2012 through 11/16/2012)

Walkin Registration is $125 (11/17/2012).

All reservations will be confirmed!

Email with questions

3rd Team Phoenicia Nanosat Launcher Seminar: Draft Agenda

Here is the delayed draft of the 2012 Nanosat Launcher Seminar agenda.  There will be some changes over time.  We are awaiting some speakers confirmation prior to officially putting them on the agenda.  Registration will open on Wednesday.

Early registration will be $50 (9/19/2012 through 10/1/2012)

Full Registration will be $75 (10/1/2012 through 10/31/2012)

Late Registration will be $100 (11/1/2012 through 11/16/2012)

Walkin Registration is $125 (11/17/2012).

AGENDA:

Nov 17th: 

8 AM to 8:50 AM: Sign in and continental breakfast 

8:50 AM to 9:00 AM: Welcome by William Baird of Team Phoenicia 

9:00 AM to 11:00 AM: Draft Rules Input for the Community, Space Florida, Percy Luney 

11:15 AM to 11:30 AM: BREAK 

11:30 AM to 12:30 PM: FAA AST Presentation 

12:30 PM to 1:30 PM: Lunch, Lunch Speaker 

1:30 PM to 2:30 PM: PPOD User Requirements, Cal Poly SLO/Tyvak, Roland Coelho 

2:30 PM to 2:45 PM: BREAK 

2:45 PM to 3:45 PM: Cubesats and Nanosat Launchers, Pumpkin, Inc, Dr Andrew Kalman 

3:45 PM to 4:00 PM: BREAK 

4:00 PM to 5:00 PM: Funding Panel, Wade Woodson, TBD

5:00 PM to 6:00 PM: Speakers (potentially test sites) TBD

6:00 PM to 7:00 PM: Dinner, with speaker

7:00 PM to 8:00 PM: Feedback to Rules for the Nanosat Launcher Challenge, Percy Luney

8:00 PM to 10:00 PM: TBD

Nanosat Launcher Challenge Seminar Raw Video #5: Amateur Rocket Rules

Nanosat Launcher Challenge Seminar Raw Video [3]: FAA Presentation by Sherman Council

Team Phoenicia/Techshop Nanosat Launcher Challenge Seminar: Gathering Questions

The seminar seems to be filling up and we are now at 35 seats left if everyone shows up that has made commitments. If you are traveling to Techshop for the seminar, it is a very strong suggestion that you get a reservation. Even if you are local, it may be in your best interests to reserve a seat if you are set on participating. Reservation link is below:


Reservations link:

The FAA-AST has asked Team Phoenicia to gather questions that the community would like answered for their part of the challenge. It ought to be remembered that the rules of the challenge are not their purview. Licensing, permits, and safety of the rockets are their area of responsibility.

That said, we are willing to take questions for NASA as well so that those that cannot make it and need rules clarification can at least get the questions to the those that are going to be presenting.

So, to that end, we are asking that the community send us questions that they need answered to nanosatseminar@teamphoenicia.org. For the FAA and NASA to have any chance that we will be able to answer, we need these questions no later than Thursday noon pacific time. We will, of course, funnel in those that are late, but NASA and the FAA may not get to them.

Thank you.

A Spin off Idea, son of the LLC Team Summit

We are back from the LLC Team Summit. Our blogging has been a little behind schedule. We're going to try to get caught up. Life's been a little complicated. That said, we have to agree with the X Prize Foundation that the event was definitely a success, even if we would have worded it a bit different. There were some brilliant people there and we found their designs absolutely fascinating. There were things we never thought of. One team, a new one under wraps still, really impressed us. We hope that the team makes it to the launch pad this year.

We, ourselves, are rushing as fast as we can to get our ducks in a row. It's going to be a harrowing journey, no matter what, but we came away with something from the summit that really needs to be brought to a larger audience. Perhaps our blog might be a vehicle (ha! we kill ourselves...errrmmm...bad choice of words) to see if that idea might gain soem traction. We have already bounced this off our FAA contact and we'll see if it gets anywhere.

That idea is what we light heartedly calling the "So You Want to Build a Rocket" conference. The suggestion that we made was that the the FAA would present the requirements for their paperwork and the reasoning behind that paperwork. We think that this should be the the opening conference for the next Lunar Lander Challenge, a required conference, that would preceed registration as to give teams an idea of what they are getting into and why.

This would greatly improve what the teams for the LLC - or any other group that wants to build rockets without much prior experience - generate and reduce the time that the FAA would need to hand hold each and every group that comes to them. It would also help the X Prize Foundation as well.

Just a thought.

Mountains of Paperwork

One of the things we keep going on about is the amount of paperwork that needs to be done. It really is enormous. There are two sets of paperwork that any team that wishes to compete need to be aware of. The first is that of the X Prize Foundation's and the second is the FAA. Neither is nontrivial. However, the latter is emphatetically the heftier of the two.

The X Prize Foundation's requirements are not too bad. They require the team to register, make some presentations, and keep them up to date each month on the team's progress. Our registration came in at approximately 24 pages. The presentations are approximately twice that in PDF form. The monthly updates are about two pages in length. Again, still nontrivial.

Other the other hand, there's the FAA requirements. oy. They require a burn time waiver, a tethered flight waiver, and a permit for flying your vehicle. These overlap, but they are not the same. The example permit application that the FAA places up on their webpage is 75 pages long and omitts some big "attached documents." Ours came out to be 92 pages long. The burn time waiver comes out to be around fifteen pages. The tethered waiver, which we haven't yet submitted, is around ten pages so far and growing, but we're holding off on submitting this as yet.

This has all been generated since the X Prize Foundation said go in mid June...and based on what we have been told there will be some revisions and growth needed in the FAA application. We don't have a dedicated paper generator and it has been causing us some problems as far as resource contention. It has impacted our testing and coding. As a consequence, we will be pushed to the limits in order to make our deadlines. Sleep is not an option. At least until the papers have been served.

That is why we are strongly recommending any participating teams in the future have a dedicated writer/paper generator/human printer. This person is someone that needs to be more than jsut a technical writer. This must be a person that grasps everything that will be covered in the writing. This person also has to have very good people skills as well: they have to interact with the FAA, XPF, and the whole team seamlessly and flawlessly. Making enemies of any of the above causes the cart to lose its wheels, folks.

Switching gears, we have some more thank yous to put out. These go out to the following people:

1. Andrew Gray
2. Pascal le Rudulier
3. Rachael Moore

That's a wrap for today and we hope you will join us again soon.