User Post

4:37 pm

December 13, 2010

shalrath Member posts 12 1 0 Hello. I am the founder of the Open Space Movement, and I would like to hold a discussion between the members of CSTART, Mach 30, and OpenLuna about collaboration with the OSM. Originally I was looking at holding an IRC meeting, but it may be problematic to find a time when everybody is available – so this thread will serve that purpose instead. As per my conversations with rpulkrabek, I understand that there has been some work on developing an "Open Development Environment", and the OSM may be suitable to fill those needs. Despite the default page on http://www.openspacemovement.org, we have a site that's nearing completion. The developers are in the process of squashing a few moderately annoying bugs – but we should be ready to deploy the site in a mostly-usable state soon after these issues are resolved. The OSM is more than just a development platform though. While the development environment can stand alone as it's own project, we also plan to use it as a means of raising public interest in space access, and providing an incentive for people to learn more about space science / engineering. Also, while the OSM is it's own organization, it doesnt necessarily mean that we're competing with Mach 30, OpenLuna, or CSTART. We hope to offer a service that everyone can use, and an organizational structure to help keep us all moving in the same direction. Before I go any further, does anyone have any questions for me?

5:12 pm

December 13, 2010

Nick Florida Member posts 34 2 0 I think it sounds like a great idea and would love to hear the specifics of this program. nick pantages

[email protected]

7:06 pm

December 13, 2010

shalrath Member posts 12 3 0 I'm currently rewriting a description for a kickstarter project in the most succint manner possible. However to make a long story short, the OSM is based on the principle that people are the absolute crux of any plans to support large-scale space development in a reasonable timeframe. As such, the OSM focuses on ways for people to participate, while offering essentially the same services to existing space organziations, with the aim of creating a unified effort behind a public space program. If you consider that we've spent more on cell phones in the last year, than the Apollo program spent in a decade, it stands to reason that a sufficiently large public effort could throw together more brainpower and financial resources than any single government agency or private company could hope to achieve. (another example would be the sales of Subway's "5 dollar footlong" sandwiches grossed approximately 3.8 billion dollars in 2009. This is equivalent to launching the space shuttle three times) Projects developed by the OSM are user-submitted and community funded. Prioritization of project funding is left to community voting, depending on how well the project author can argue the merits of their idea, and the level of detail and sophistication displayed. This whole project development activity bears several other important side effects, such as providing an incentive for people to learn more about engineering, ease of use to encourage wider participation, and a source of income for freelance developers and vendors. IE, a given project funding request may be something as simple as 100$ for a few hours of autocad work. The freelance vendor community would likely establish competitive market prices for their work – and this lower cost for incremental development makes it easy for the OSM to fund many requests on a regular basis. Maintaining a high volume of funded requests makes it easier for the OSM to demonstrate the tangible results of community funding – which in turn is a much greater incentive for donations than simply asking for support. In other words, project development, and community control over funding disbursements, are both key incentives for encouraging donations, and further participation. Another benefit. Even if we get a deluge of dumb ideas – it still helps to teach people about space engineering.

9:05 am

December 14, 2010

J. Simmons Dayton, OH, USA Member posts 46 4 0 Good morning shalrath, This is J. Simmons, founder and President of Mach 30. We actually briefly discussed OSM's project portal at the last CSTART IRC meeting as part of our updates on ODE. We had too many questions to make a fair comparison between the work to date on ODE and the OSM project portal, for instance how is it licensed (open source and if so which license, or is it a proprietary project). Since then I have thought of a few more questions. What is the license for the portal software itself? Who is developing it? Can you share a copy of the specifications/requirements used to guide the development? (For comparison, see ODE's requirements in the CSTART wiki – http://cstart.org/wiki/ODE) What language, framework, and/or core software package is the portal built in/on? Can you share some screenshots of the development version? Is there a roadmap for future releases? If so, can you share that? Do you have a date you are aiming for to release the first version and/or a public or private beta? I know that is a lot of questions, this is just the first time I have had a chance to sit down and list them all. One more question (only partly about the portal), have you given any more consideration to how you will deal with the ITAR challenge? I have some notes I will be writing up from some conversations and public presentations, but the short version is anything technically detailed enough to actually build space related hardware from (that is plans, etc) is almost certainly covered under ITAR, which means US citizens cannot share that material with non-US persons (citizens or permanent residents). More to come on that soon, I hope. -J Founder Mach 30, Inc. and Friend of CSTART

11:07 am

December 14, 2010

shalrath Member posts 12 5 0 What is the license for the portal software itself? Who is developing it? Can you share a copy of the specifications/requirements used to guide the development? (For comparison, see ODE's requirements in the CSTART wiki – http://cstart.org/wiki/ODE) What language, framework, and/or core software package is the portal built in/on? Can you share some screenshots of the development version? Is there a roadmap for future releases? If so, can you share that? Do you have a date you are aiming for to release the first version and/or a public or private beta? Open source, or equivalent. Pixelsweatshop.com, per my design specifications. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1PnTgOT5d_QOLsy-z5EA_3Y2SoCPlMXi21-qsKRweOP4/edit?hl=en The site is being developed in drupal 6. Several pictures available here: http://twitpic.com/photos/Shalrath This is impossible, given the complexity and growth model of the project. However, the OSM community will be able to submit requests for changes in order to support features needed by certain types of users, modify or change the UI, or suggest and implement any other modification that improves the site without detracting from it's core functionality. There will be working groups – and one of these groups will likely contain web developers. This gives the OSM a pool of talent necessary to produce changes in-house. Else, the community could decide to pay a third party developer. Everybody who uses the site is encouraged to suggest changes – and this implies any changes you would like to see to help support the ODE specification. "next week", or as soon as the developers knock out the bug list, whichever comes last. Hopefully we should have the rest of the semi-major annoying issues worked out by this week, and everything else on the list is pretty easy in comparison. So as soon as we can. Bear in mind that some of the pictures I posted are a little inconsistent with how they should look. The devs have a few changes to make after they figure out this permissions bug. This is just scratching the surface – I can post a more in-depth explanation if you're want.

11:22 am

December 14, 2010

shalrath Member posts 12 6 0 I know that is a lot of questions, this is just the first time I have had a chance to sit down and list them all. One more question (only partly about the portal), have you given any more consideration to how you will deal with the ITAR challenge? I have some notes I will be writing up from some conversations and public presentations, but the short version is anything technically detailed enough to actually build space related hardware from (that is plans, etc) is almost certainly covered under ITAR, which means US citizens cannot share that material with non-US persons (citizens or permanent residents). More to come on that soon, I hope. -J Concerning ITAR. The plan we have in mind would be a combination of a EULA to inform users about their responsibilities in NOT posting ITAR controlled information, and assigning duties to the forum moderators/project maintainers to actively monitor site content for infringing material. This would require a POC within the State Dept (and Dept of Commerce for EAR-database stuff) so that the OSM moderators/maintainers could have someone to contact in case of suspected ITAR violation. The mods/maintainers also have the ability to unpublish data from the site, as to render it invisible to outside users. This would be done first to minimize exposure before the incident could be properly investigated. If we could get more support from the Dept of State, it would be nice to have a representative of theirs available on the OSM site to meet with the moderator/maintainer teams on a regular (bi-weekly or monthly) basis, to discuss any changes in policy, ITAR database, and conduct training. Since we can not reliably verifiy the nationality of any given user, all users must be treated equally. This might offend and annoy a lot of Americans. This also might very well be a key issue to get a lot of Americans involved with ITAR reform, by giving them first-hand exposure to its effects. In the case that we need to work with a third party vendor who's products or services are ITAR controlled, we can hire a product integration specialist from that company, or elsewhere (or ITAR-cleared OSM members) who can perform black-box integration between the ITAR-controlled product, and open-source designs. Given a comprehensive policy for ITAR-related due diligence, we may apply for a blanket exemption to help shield us from liability in the case that ITAR controlled material is posted to the site – provided that we follow our procedures of unpublishing the offending material, reporting to the State Department, and providing assistance with any investigation. If someone here has experience dealing with ITAR, I would like to know if the aforementioned plans would be feasible.

2:26 pm

December 14, 2010

shalrath Member posts 12 7 0 If you're interested, we're about to launch a kickstarter project. The project description draft can be seen here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1TmHnF4Abw9rbva4n1xSRQ45sdYjGvAJXuiINFh3MptY/edit?hl=en&authkey=CPjb4ewF (not totally complete yet, but pretty close.) Your thoughts?

2:48 pm

December 15, 2010

shalrath Member posts 12 8 0 Having a meeting with a Hubble Space Telescope engineer and a congressional aid who wants to bring the OSM to the attention of her representative this weekend. I know this thread has been a bit slow over the last few days, but I am still wondering if there is interest in forming a coalition of sorts.

5:34 pm

December 15, 2010

Nick Florida Member posts 34 9 0 Hopefully Luke will be back soon (he went on a month long vacation around the world) I'm sure he will get in contact with you when he gets back. nick pantages

[email protected]

1:27 am

December 18, 2010

shalrath Member posts 12 10 0 This is up with a bit more information on it. http://www.openspacemovement.org/

5:35 pm

January 17, 2011

shalrath Member posts 12 11 0 quick announcement – we have our wiki software setup, if anyone here wants to try it out. wiki.openspacemovement.org And look! We has graphs! http://wiki.openspacemovement……nt-1048582 If someone wants to play around, we can create a CSTART group on there, and name someone from here as an administrator for that space.