An Appearance at Space Exploration: Not Just for Billionaires Anymore

Team Phoenicia was delighted to participate in the MIT/Stanford Venture Lab Seminar entitled "Space Exploration: Not Just for Billionaires Anymore." Two team members, Anand Karasi and Mel Olivares, participated in the networking session of the seminar. They were hosted at the Silicon Valley Space Center booth and displayed a Z150 rocket engine with injector plate and manifold, a Z550 thrust chamber, a pair of unwelded 6 in (15 cm) milled pressure vessel hemispheres, and a spun 18 in (45 cm) spun aluminum propellant tank.

Anand and Mel reported back that things went exceedingly well and we made a number of new contacts. They stated that a lot of people were very impressed by the manufacturing that the team has done.

We look forward to participating in many more events in the local area promoting NewSpace.

We want to thank Dr Sean Casey for the invitation and being willing to give us display space.

Team Phoenicia/Techshop Nanosat Launcher Challenge Seminar Presentations

Here are the presentations from the seminar. Some we are still waiting for. We will update the post as we get them. We will be getting the video up online as we have time. Relatively close to the order that they were done is:

Andrew Petro, NASA Centennial Challenge Program, Scope and Hopes for the Centennial Challenges

Dr Andrew Kalman, Stanford University's Space and Systems Development Laboratory, The Potential of an Affordable, Responsive Nanosat Launcher

Andrew Petro, NASA Centennial Challenge Program, Draft Nanosat Launcher Challenge Rules

Sherman Council, et al, Federal Aviation Administration: rules and requirements

Paul Breed, Friends of Amateur Rocketry, What FAR is and what it can do for the NLC teams

Dr William Gutman, SpacePort America, How SPA can help the Nanosat Launcher Challenge Teams

William Baird, Team Phoenicia, What Team Phoenicia Is Doing for NLC Teams

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.

Back from the Maker Faire

We had a very good time in side the TechShop Pavilion. We can barely talk now. We met a lot of new people and have some interesting developments from the excursion. Paul Breed (!!) of Unreasonable Rocket unexpectedly popped by. We were absolutely delighted by that. We made a ton of new friends and hopefully more than a few of you are reading this.

We impressed some machinists with the He reservoirs that we are working on with the Bridgeport mills. We were often asked if The Wind at Dawn was a sculpture!

We had a very good time. We were very happy to support Techshop.

Onward and upward!

Should We Stay or Should We Go Now?

Should we go?

Or no?

The funny part is that Team Phoenicia is not interested in the suborbital market. As odd as it may seem, we're not even that interested in pursuing the cheap access to orbit problem: it's hard and we have enough of a learning curve to deal with as it is. It'd be ten years at the rate we are going before we are able to make a stab at it, truthfully.

So what are we interested in doing? Beyond participating in the competitions?

We'll confess later.

However, for those that participate in the above, thoughts?