whew

That's all we'll say.

Happy New Year's from Team Phoenicia!

New Website

While the blog remains largely the same, Shane has put together for us a new website. At last we are out of 1998 in the websphere at least!

Check it out!

A Little Update and Some Troubling News

We at Team Phoenicia got over our frustration with the manufacturing and funding issues and got back to work. We have more parts coming in. We're changing some of our suppliers and getting the parts from them reordered. We're also engaging some very helpful people for the fund raising. There's never ever enough money unless you're John Carmack. (Oh! Hi John!) We're looking for for October 2009.

Except...there may not be an October 2009.

We are hearing some disturbing rumors. In all probability this is a game of internet telephony and we are mishearing. However, what we are hearing is making us distinctly uncomfortable. The rumor is that the X Prize Foundation, due to the enormous cost of running the Lunar Lander Challenge in one fell swoop in October with all the teams is considering changing the format of the LLC to one like the original Anasari X Prize and the current Google Lunar X Prize: whoever does it first, wins. There's no big gathering. There's no big event. The X Prize Foundation and judges just show up at the team's locale for the flight and observe. Then they're done.

Which means any other team other than Armadillo is pretty much out of the running for taking the Level Two First Place. No one else is even close to ready for it. Period. Armadillo just has to sort out their valve issues and whambam they have the prize. If they don't get it by the first try, they have the money, the time and the experience to have it by next June.

It would make the Lunar Lander Challenge a success. A NewSpace start-up won the top slots and leveraged it into a real, honest to goodness space venture (suborbital tourism). That would make both the Anasari X XPrize and the subsequent Lunar Lander Challenge seeds for a completely new industry and prove the model for using prizes. However...and there is a however...it will not be the success that it could have been. Or rather it will be if the changes are not implemented.

Consider: the whole purpose of the LLC is to provide seeds for teams to grow from just building rockets for a competition and through that competition to gain credibility and experience to sprout into start-up space companies. This is what is happening Virgin Galactic. This is what is happening with the Armadillo-Rocket Racing League-New Mexico alliance. This is great. Let's make it better.

If that extra time for preparation, there is the chance - more than a chance! Has anyone been watching TrueZer0 and Unreasonable?! Or Masten? Or Speed Up!!! - that the other teams will catch up and be able to fly an exciting, interesting competition for the Level Two Lunar Lander Challenge. Then Paul et al and Todd & Scott et al, Bob and Dave - AND US!!! - will have time to build and fly a rocket in a sanctioned public arena with attention from media and the major players. This will build up their reputation as more than merely being tinkerers. Positive attention, especially for a start-up such as the NewSpace ones, with fresh blood - who is all of us here! - is especially hard to get.

By allowing the extra time to develop the rockets for the other teams and preventing the First Prize from being taken before October 2009, the X Prize Foundation allows the other seedlings, the other teams time to grow. They may or may not be grown enough to survive past October 2009, but at least they'll have had a creditable chance to have grown more credibly and be better prepared. The whole purpose of this competition is not just to give out the prize: it's to foster new development and sprout new companies. Let the LLC continue to do so. Let's not change the format.

Not yet.

Perhaps if no one gets in in October 2009, then change it to the first come, first serve, since the Prize will evaporate at the end of FY2010. John et al have had 8 years of metal bending to get to this point and Armadillo will still have its subortbital space tourism venture no matter what happens with the LLC, format change or no format change. Until its crunch time, let's grow the teams more and let's have the excitement build again for October. Then let's see the skies of Southern New Mexico flight up with the fires and smoke trails of not one, but several rockets. Let's see the scorch marks of not one, but many engines upon the launch pads. Then let's see, not one very hard working team be rewarded and acknowledged, but all of those that fly to the finish.




Impassioned speech over. Let's hope that its just internet rumor and we're just hearing a lot of dropped packets in our internet game of telephone. Rumors online are pretty strong stuff and in the blogosphere they pop up a lot. If it's not though, we sincerely hope the X Prize Foundation doesn't make this decision. From our point of view, it's a mistake. A pretty big one.

PS videos to come soon, we hope!

Delay...Delay...Delay...

Holloman AFB has some testing that has trumped the LLC this year. That means either a delay at the site or a change of venue (and probably another, longer delay).

There is a lot in play at the moment and we await seeing what happens. For our team, due to some manufacturing oopses, this actually plays well. A month will help. If its longer, as seems likely to us based on the info as we know it now, it will help us even more.

We had our suspicions something was up based on the interactions we had with Holloman (or at times, lack there-of). Something seemed off after the interested reception we received at the LLC Team Summit. This definitely explains it.

We'll wait and see. The X Prize Foundation has been pretty forth coming as to the status of this. We'll know more as they know more. The official XPF release is over on their blog, The Launch Pad.

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.

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