Hello,

This is my first time posting on a message board, so forgive me if I
violate any rules (and tell me what i have done wrong).

I am trying to organize an new open source project, the Mass Driver
Project. www.massdriver.com - Use, login: guest password: guest ,to
review the site.

Open source is an internet collaboration method that has
successfully developed software like Linux Operating System. These
open source programs are developed by people sharing their time and
talents over the internet.

The www.massdriver.com has been setup as a space on the web where
interested people may exchange ideas, share and post knowledge,
identify and work through technical problems and eventually produce
a successful mass driver concept.

Open source projects are successful because it allows many different
people to work together towards a common goal. The goal is set and
modified by the people participating in the project. Large projects
like mass driver technology cannot be developed by one individual
successfully; however connecting many individuals together can
acheive such large tasks.

If you have a moment, please review the website.
(www.massdriver.com login: guest password: guest) - this gives read
access

Click on the "Wiki" tab, OpenEngineeringProjects and
MassDriverProject. Feel yourself around in the rest of the site.

If you are interested in joining please contact me.

This project is purely an academic exercise sponsored by Ryerson
University in Toronto Canada. I am a graduate student at Ryerson
University. All the information obtained is public information.

The web site is young, and not so pretty, so please bear with us.

Thank you in advance,

Dean Gerl

> Hello,
>
> This is my first time posting on a message board, so forgive me if
I
> violate any rules (and tell me what i have done wrong).

Welcome. I went over to your site and was going to leave a message
for you but I suppose you've restricted posting privilges for
guests, therefore this post will have to serve as the vehicle for my
comments.

First off there are a few people from this list who immediately come
to mind when I think of collaborative project management. I'm sure
they'll chime in in due course.

Now, I'm unsure of exactly what your purpose is other than designing
a mass driver. It appears that you want to locate it at the south
pole and launch packets into orbit.

If this is correct, I'd suggest doing some more feasability studies
on the concept itself. First, is there a need for this service.
Payloads launched via mass-driver will have to reach escape velocity
and if all of that velocity is provided by the mass driver you'll be
looking at horrendous accelerations that will restrict the type of
payloads to only a few commondities. Rockets gain most of their
velocity in lateral acceleration through the atmosphere. With a
massdriver all of the KE will have to be imparted at launch.

You also have atmospheric drag issues, heating, sonic booms at the
launch site at ground level unless you're launching through a vacuum
tube and then your sonic issues occur at the interface, if at the
interface then you have synchronization issues at opening the tube
at just the right millisecond to allow the payload to exit but not
flood the tube with atmosphere and impede the acceleration within
the tube, etc.

If the project is simply to design a mass driver, I would suggest
that you look at a lunar mass-driver instead. Any serious effort at
orbital infrastructure development will *never* launch the
construction material from Earth; it will all be sourced from
orbital resources, either the moon or NEOs.

With the moon you would have a lower escape velocity 2.4 km/sec. No
atmosphere. You could launch and deliver the payload to a catcher at
L2. Look to the seminal work by Gerard K. O'Neill "The High
Frontier" and also Tom A. Heppenheimer's "Colonies in Space" for
good introductions to the issues. The books should also give you
good background on ancillary issues.

If the purpose of your project is to deliver material into HEO, then
I would suggest looking at means other than mass drivers, perhaps
tethers. Look to Tethers Unlimited for a series of papers on the
mathematics, physics and orbital details.

Lastly, split the task between your members and work your way
through the archives of this e-mail list and you'll find lots of
detailed discussion on the issues you may be facing with a
massdriver designed to launch payloads from Earth.

Feel free to post your questions to this list. Also, look in the
FILES section for some resources. You have a very ambitious project
and I look forward to reading of your progress.

*Shameless plug* Look here for a first order logistic overview of a
bootstapping process for orbital development.

TangoMan

> *Shameless plug* Look here for a first order logistic overview of
a bootstapping process for orbital development.

Thank you for your response. I looked at your extensive work on
orbital development. Very interesting.

> I went over to your site and was going to leave a message
> for you but I suppose you've restricted posting privilges for
> guests, therefore this post will have to serve as the vehicle for
> my comments.

Very shortly I'll have the privileges changed so guests can post
comments. I will notify you here when the change is made.

If you would like your own personal login with full privileges
please contact me (dgerl@...

> Now, I'm unsure of exactly what your purpose is other than
> designing a mass driver.

This project has two purposes:

1) Evaluate the effectiveness of open source principles to develop a
feasible physical system design. As the project proceeds new
methods or software tools may be introduced to make the
collaboration process easier.

2) Develop a feasibility study and conceptual design of a mass
driver system capable of delivering material from the Earth surface
to Earth orbit. A mass driver was chosen as the physical system to
be developed using open source principles because it is an
interesting, complex problem that would have minimal potential
intellectual property disputes.

The initial concept system that I am trying to analyze for
feasibility is as follows.

1. The launcher mechanism is located on (or near) the Earth
surface; it will launch a series of material pellets as a stream.
The launch technology used must be capable of a rapid launch rate.

2. The material pellets are to be relatively small, to keep the
launch energies low (probably below 1 kg total mass). The material
pellets may be a layered construction; a heat resistant material
encases more sensitive material like water and fuel.
*The idea is the first few material pellets of the material stream
will be sacrificed to "cut" through the atmosphere. A rapid launch
rate will allow the material pellet stream to travel through
essentially a "hole" in the atmosphere. I.E. the first few pellets
rarify the atmosphere by burning and pushing the atmosphere out of
the way.
*It also has been suggested that the atmosphere may also be rarified
by ionizing it with a laser.
*It is hoped that the construction of the material pellet can be
very simple and therefore cheap. It is intended that the pellet
remain 'dumb'; i.e. no guidance, telemetry or propulsion systems.

3. A 'catcher' satellite, located in geo-synchronous orbit,
captures the material pellets. This satellite uses the material
pellets or distributes to other satellites.

*GEO was selected because it simplifies the design of the launcher,
since with respect to the launcher the 'catcher' satellite will be
stationary. The launcher will not have to be aimed at a moving
target in the sky.
*The velocity difference between the orbiting 'catcher' satellite
and the material pellet will have to be minimized to simplify
the 'catcher' satellite design.

These are the big boxes that will be defined as the project proceeds.

Note: The concept system is not set in stone. Please consider it
as iteration ONE. It is intended the concept will evolve as
problems are discovered and resolved.

Any ideas, suggestions, references and volunteered time will be
appreciated.

--- In ssi_list@... "victoriatangoman"
> > Hello,
> >
> > This is my first time posting on a message board, so forgive me
if
> I
> > violate any rules (and tell me what i have done wrong).
>
> Welcome. I went over to your site and was going to leave a message
> for you but I suppose you've restricted posting privilges for
> guests, therefore this post will have to serve as the vehicle for
my
> comments.
>
> First off there are a few people from this list who immediately
come
> to mind when I think of collaborative project management. I'm sure
> they'll chime in in due course.
>
> Now, I'm unsure of exactly what your purpose is other than
designing
> a mass driver. It appears that you want to locate it at the south
> pole and launch packets into orbit.
>
> If this is correct, I'd suggest doing some more feasability
studies
> on the concept itself. First, is there a need for this service.
> Payloads launched via mass-driver will have to reach escape
velocity
> and if all of that velocity is provided by the mass driver you'll
be
> looking at horrendous accelerations that will restrict the type of
> payloads to only a few commondities. Rockets gain most of their
> velocity in lateral acceleration through the atmosphere. With a
> massdriver all of the KE will have to be imparted at launch.
>
> You also have atmospheric drag issues, heating, sonic booms at the
> launch site at ground level unless you're launching through a
vacuum
> tube and then your sonic issues occur at the interface, if at the
> interface then you have synchronization issues at opening the tube
> at just the right millisecond to allow the payload to exit but not
> flood the tube with atmosphere and impede the acceleration within
> the tube, etc.
>
> If the project is simply to design a mass driver, I would suggest
> that you look at a lunar mass-driver instead. Any serious effort
at
> orbital infrastructure development will *never* launch the
> construction material from Earth; it will all be sourced from
> orbital resources, either the moon or NEOs.
>
> With the moon you would have a lower escape velocity 2.4 km/sec.
No
> atmosphere. You could launch and deliver the payload to a catcher
at
> L2. Look to the seminal work by Gerard K. O'Neill "The High
> Frontier" and also Tom A. Heppenheimer's "Colonies in Space" for
> good introductions to the issues. The books should also give you
> good background on ancillary issues.
>
> If the purpose of your project is to deliver material into HEO,
then
> I would suggest looking at means other than mass drivers, perhaps
> tethers. Look to Tethers Unlimited for a series of papers on the
> mathematics, physics and orbital details.
>
> Lastly, split the task between your members and work your way
> through the archives of this e-mail list and you'll find lots of
> detailed discussion on the issues you may be facing with a
> massdriver designed to launch payloads from Earth.
>
> Feel free to post your questions to this list. Also, look in the
> FILES section for some resources. You have a very ambitious
project
> and I look forward to reading of your progress.
>
> *Shameless plug* Look here for a first order logistic overview of
a

> This project has two purposes:
>
> 1) Evaluate the effectiveness of open source principles to develop
a
> feasible physical system design. As the project proceeds new
> methods or software tools may be introduced to make the
> collaboration process easier.

Take a look at Mitchell's site:
http://www.innertransit.org/common/index.php

> 3. A 'catcher' satellite, located in geo-synchronous orbit,
> captures the material pellets. This satellite uses the material
> pellets or distributes to other satellites.

You didn't specify a location for the mass-driver but I recall from
your literature that there was a reference to the South Pole.

How will your payloads navigate through the satellite traffic of Low
Earth Orbit and Mid Earth Orbit?

Your payloads will have a lot of kinetic energy in the LEO region
and depending on the mass sriver location you'll probably have a
varying orbital path to the mass catcher at GEO. Even if you launch
from the equator you're still left with HUGE impact potential. How
will you mitigate against this liability.

This could be a show stopper.

> *The velocity difference between the orbiting 'catcher' satellite
> and the material pellet will have to be minimized to simplify
> the 'catcher' satellite design.

How will you stabilize the mass catcher as it absorbs all of the KE
of the incoming payloads?

> These are the big boxes that will be defined as the project
> proceeds.

TangoMan

If this really is at the South Pole, then the main part of it can be
buried in ice. Perhaps even a vacuum tunnel in the ice. I would
suggest deep, deep in the ice.

And the first few pellets, the ones sacrificed, can be made of... ICE!
Yes, I'm serious and no, I'm not being sarcastic. Why not ice?
You'd have plenty of it around, and it melts, then evaporates, and is
non-polluting. You would have to work out just the right size, so
that no icy cannon balls are put into orbit, but you'd have to do that
with any sacrificial pellets anyway.

In fact, ice may become your biggest payload. Just make a bigger
ice-ball, so that some of it survives into orbit. The water is useful
for everything from drinking to bathing to electrolyzing into rocket
fuel to radiation shielding. Yes, I do think that dormant comets will
eventually make a better source of volatiles, including water, but in
the short term... And there can always be a chunk of silicon, iron,
aluminum, etc. in the center of the ice-ball.

Also, you might want to re-think a LEO destination, in order to avoid
the wrecking-everybody's-satallite problems described by Tangoman.
This does add the complication of a moving target, but orbits can be
predicted with great precision. If your mass-catcher is also a
tether, then you can lower your launch speed, perhaps to as low as
4,000 mph (1.11 miles per second), instead of the four to seven miles
per second needed without the tether (the tether also means that the
altitude reached via mass-driver need only be about 100 km [62 miles]).

Well, this that I'm posting might all be BS, but I hope not.

Xenophile (who remembers reading somewhere that glacial ice is pretty
strong)

> This project has two purposes:
>
> 1) Evaluate the effectiveness of open source principles to develop
a
> feasible physical system design. As the project proceeds new
> methods or software tools may be introduced to make the
> collaboration process easier.

Take a look at Mitchell's site:
http://www.innertransit.org/common/index.php

I have had serious lack of time lately and so I haven't spent the time to look at your site properly. I will throw in a comment or two on what I have learned about trying to push open collaborative engineering. All open projects require some sort of continuous developer/user usefulness. If the project is not immediately useful to the developer as a user then the developer will have little interest in continuing to improve the project. Open projects improve upon an existing base that has at least a minimal usefulness to the developer/user.
The project that you outline meets none of those criteria and so will simply not gather any developers.
This of course makes for a great problem. How to attract developers to something that will take many years to complete.

Mitchell James
www.Innertransit.org (Home base for collaborative engineering development)

Dean,

For the past year or so I've been mulling over this
same issue and like you, am looking at putting
together a colloborative open content project for my
master's work. I've been very interested in this
group hearing of the projects by both Mitchell James
and Paul Fernhout in which they have been trying to
some sort of colloborative engineering going on. I
have also studied the Artemis Society and PERMANENT as
they strive towards a more inclussive effort to
provide an area to stimulate ideas on space
development.

I have to agree a lot with observations by James
Mitchell on the his efforts. And I am hoping to learn
from his efforts. One of the important things I have
noticed in almost all these efforts is the drive to
continue the project AND the need to attract people to
the project.

All too often, people just assume that if they
build it, people will come. Sometimes they do, but
often times they don't. So what I've been looking
around at was a place that already had a strong base
of contributors and see if it could be expanded to
include these people into an effort to expand
knowledge on space related topics. About three months
ago, I finally found it at en.wikipedia.org. Judging
by the way you've set up your project, you look to be
familar with it already.

A spinoff of wikipedia is wikibooks.org. In this
project people are contributing in writing text books
together. It is this area where I see a lot of
potential of finally finding a place where you can
bring people together to colloboratively work
together. It is also this area where my thesis shall
concentrate on putting together a book on on space
studies. (more on that in a future date - still
working on the proposal!)

The large advantage I see here is that you have an
area already where thousands of users go and
contribute (wikipedia) that is helping to push its
users onto its sister project project (wikibooks). So
theoritically, you could have a larger audience to
contribute then one would have by "going-it-alone".
Of course, the minus is that you do give up some
control on being able to tweak the code behind the
project. Then again, you could always volunteer to be
a developer :)

My 2 pennies,

Ryan

--- Mitchell James
mejames@...

Thank you all for your thoughts.

The guest login now can be used to add comments to the message board
on the Mass Driver Project. I have added your messages to the web
site for the benefit of the Mass Driver Project members. (I hope you
don't mind!).

>Take a look at Mitchell's site:
http://www.innertransit.org/common/index.php

I spent some time on your site Mitchell. It is essential what we are
trying to do. The other project massdriver.com web site is the PLM
(Product Lifecycle Management) project. The goal of this project is
to develop a better software solution for allowing collaborative
engineering design. I.E. the PLM project develops a better method to
allow design projects like the Mass Driver to proceed. That is the
idea anyhow. Another graduate student is working on the PLM project.

The PLM project is closer to a "standard" open source software (OSS)
project. We are trying to get small to medium enterprises (SME's) in
the Southern Ontario area to invest some developer employee hours to
develop a collaborative software solution capable of meeting their
own specific requirements because they are aiding in the
development. So far it also has been a tough sell also.

>I have learned about trying to push open collaborative engineering.
All
open projects _*require*_ some sort of continuous developer/user
usefulness. If the project is not immediately useful to the
developer
as a user then the developer will have little interest in continuing
to
improve the project. Open projects *improve* upon an existing base
that
has at least a minimal usefulness to the developer/user.
The project that you outline meets none of those criteria and so will
simply not gather any developers.

Mitchell your advise is absolutely correct. The Mass Driver Project
is going to be a tough sell. The owner of the sponsoring company
(for the Mass Driver Project) has a dream to build even a small
prototype mass driver. He wants to see this project succeed. So by
hook or crook, I have to provide him with something.

The idea from the start is the Mass Driver Project will be an easier
sell to academic people, ie. retired profs. and students for
thesis/class projects.

>How will your payloads navigate through the satellite traffic of Low
Earth Orbit and Mid Earth Orbit?

That issue was mentioned, but to simplify the initial problem we
assumed GEO. It will probably better that we include this issue in
the beginning of the design. A tether might be the way to go,
however it adds more complexity to the system.

> For the past year or so I've been mulling over this
> same issue and like you, am looking at putting
> together a colloborative open content project for my
> master's work. I've been very interested in this
> group hearing of the projects by both Mitchell James
> and Paul Fernhout in which they have been trying to
> some sort of colloborative engineering going on. I
> have also studied the Artemis Society and PERMANENT as
> they strive towards a more inclussive effort to
> provide an area to stimulate ideas on space
> development.

Ryan,

I understand your problem, I am also trying to find a successful OS
project that I can study and compare to my Mass Driver effort.

My thesis advisor enjoys computers. His side project is to develop a
better WIKI program, one that is more user friendly in terms of
formatting. As you noticed the Mass Driver Project uses a WIKI
module to allow users to add and edit web pages using only their
browser. Buried in the Mass driver project under 'Knowledge Base' is
a listing of some of the OS projects I have found. I'll save you the
digging below is the list:

Open Source Hardware Development
* An Open Source Design initiative to design a device that will be
useful to developing nations.
http://www.iee.org/OnComms/PN/sustainability/open_source_e.cfm
* An Open Source Design initiative that produced a car design.
http://www.theoscarproject.org (English Site)
http://www.theoscarproject.org/de (German Site) A PDF describing the
project can be found at
http://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~sjournal/articles_02/os_car_project.pdf
* An Open Source Design initiative to reuse previously developed
microchip circuits.http://www.opencores.org
* A web site dedicated to supporting open source design projects.
Created by students at MIT. http://www.thinkcycle.org

The OSCAR project is particularly interesting. A group of automotive
engineers in Germany got together to design a 'better' car.
Apparently the project took three years to complete and a successful
prototype was built. I don't believe the design was sold to a car
maker though. The project is starting again (however it is late).
The german site for the old project remains. I have translated most
of the site using google. I would like to find more information how
the project worked but I have had little time to do so.

Dean