[Space] Reminder: Spacebridge, 5pm tonight (pants optional) EOM

[Mikolaj Habryn]

A meeting with genuine progress to report!

We now have *teams*. With *leads*. Whose job is purely to be the
person who can authoritatively say what the status is with any given
sub-project, not necessarily to do the work singlehandedly. We also
have a tentative launch location - Mt Diablo, somewhere over to the
east. In the next week or two, I expect we'll be able to pick the
specific date in February to aim for.

Team Power (leads Alex, Thom): this is the main environmental concern;
some batteries are known to have problems at low temperatures, some
may have problems at low pressures. Devising a solution to power
electronics that want to draw from a common bus.

Team APRS (lead: Christie): two-way telemetry once we get too high for GSM.

Team Video (lead: Sam): getting amazing photography is hugely
important (Team Money Shot?). Also useful would be visual monitoring
of payload.

Team Arduino (lead: Me? Really?): there's some sensors that would be
neat to send up that we can't really do any other way - pressure,
temperature, and radiation. Also provides a way to trigger other
devices (solenoids, nichrome wire to melt through cables, etc).

Team Android (lead: Jonathan/Mikolaj, whoever creates a repository
somewhere first): a G1 or two will be the easiest brain to add, since
it provides communications, video, GPS, accelerometer, magnetometer,
and shock-hardened hardware - task is to write code that will film the
action, log every scrap of data, and scream its location onto the
network with heartfelt despair as it ultimately plummets to its fiery
doom.

Team Mech (no lead?): mechanical matters - parachutes, probably
balloon inflation and such things. We didn't discuss it much, but it's
critically important. Anyone feel particular affinity for it?

Team UAV (...not really at the lead stage :P): ...but we're going to
try it anyway. (Semi-?)Autonomous payload return - drop a glider from
the balloon with a gps and an autopilot. What could possibly go wrong?

Team Flight Ops: Ozzy (sp?) stepped up to talk to FAA and ATC, which
is mightily appreciated since I was kinda fumbling around randomly and
it's probably about the most important thing to prevent horrible
consequences :P Thanks! I'm hoping us non-pilots can assist with some
of this, too.

We also had some excellent conversational digressions that were
minuted badly if at all, and felt the love. It was too cold not to
wear pants, though.

m.