First and foremost, we will be returning our full attention to the long-neglected task of becoming a non-profit corporation.  If we choose to incorporate in the United States, the ultimate goal of this effort will be 501(c)(3) tax-exempt certification, so that donations to CSTART will be tax deductible.  The CSTART community contributed very generously last year to raise funds for this effort, and we hope to finally put this money to good use some time very soon.  This will be one of our top priorities for this month.  Once incorporation has been achieved, work can begin on dissolving the current temporary leadership system of acting directors taking on the role of “benevolent dictators” and replacing it with a proper organizational hierarchy, with responsibilities and powers clearly outlined and controlled by formal bylaws.

We also hope to start selling CSTART merchandise soon.  We have spent some time looking at various online store options for this, and we are close to making a final choice (Zazzle.com is looking like a very likely contender at present).  Once this choice is made you should expect to see CSTART tshirts and the like become available in short order.  Naturally, all money raised from the sale of these items will be used to finance further CSTART activities.

Several of our most recent members bring solid experience in graphics, animation, film and related fields to the CSTART community, and there is a lot of excitement at the prospect for both much higher quantities and a much higher quality of online promotional material in the near future.

In addition to the above changes to the team’s legal status and outside appearance, we are also aiming for a major overhaul in our internal organisation.  The process by which plans for CSTART’s projects have developed so far has been extremely ad hoc and informal, and while some great work has been done in this manner, the system is really starting to fray at the edges.  Some parts of the website (like the Wiki) have shown a tendency to get out of date with respect to other parts (like the forums, and documents in our Mercurial repository), new comers to CSTART have had a difficult time getting up to speed on the current state of things, and recent ideas in the forum have made it apparent that we have no clear process for handling the parallel development of different approaches to a project.  Thus we will be devoting a lot of effort in the coming few months to developing some clearly defined, formal processes for project management, data managment and making engineering decisions in an informed, documented fashion.  We will also be both installing and developing open source software to support these processes.  It will be challenging to find a workable system that sits on the fine line between having projets fall apart due to disorganisation and stifling development with overbearing administrative processes, but we will do our best.

These are just some of the most important items on a long list of things we hope to turn our attention to in the immediate future.  Naturally, all of the changes above will happen in the most open and transparent manner possible.  A large IRC meeting in the #cstart channel on the Freenode network is being planned for an upcoming weekend to help facilitate this work: once the date and time of this meeting is decided it will be published in this blog so that any interested people from the community can come along and either offer their advice or opinions, or just watch to see how things work.

Of course, once these organizational issues are sorted out, the community will return its energy to working on our established projects, which are progressing very nicely indeed.

The acting directors of CSTART express their gratitude to all the members of our community who have offered their time, skills and money to help get CSTART off the ground, and look forward to the community’s continued input, help and support as CSTART continues to grow and evolve into the future of space exploration.  Thank you for believing in us!

This is a very important Friendship from the perspective of the OHKLA project, since the PSAS group have a tremendous amount of knowledge, experience and facilities relevant to high altitude rocket launches, and some degree of previous experience with paraffin-fueled hybrid rockets (paraffin being a current favorite contender for OHKLA).  Close cooperation between CSTART and PSAS on the OHKLA project has the potential to offer an extremely accelerated pace of development for the project, to the benefit of both teams.  Everyone at CSTART is very excited about this possibility and looks forward to a long and mutually rewarding Friendship with PSAS.

PSAS is the third official Friend of CSTART, joining Copenhagen Suborbitals and the Open Luna Foundation.

Ben’s talk provided a first-time introduction to CSTART, our principles, goals and current projects, to a wide audience of just the kind of people whose help we will need. You can watch a recording of the talk yourself using the embedded Flash player below.

Today Ben will have given less formal presentations on our OHKLA and CLLARE projects to interested conference goers, to give people a clearer idea of what we have done so far and what we hope to do soon.

Downloadable versions of all the CSTART material presented at SpaceUp will be available in .pdf format from this website in the near future. Many thanks are due to the members of the CSTART community who helped us to raise the money required to cover the registration, travel and accommodation costs associated with talking at SpaceUp. Hopefully this event has raised the profile of CSTART amongst space enthusiasts and will bring in eager and talented new members to help us achieve our goals.

The OLF is the second official Friend of CSTART: Copenhagen Suborbitals became the first in late 2009.

The result of the poll was quite definitive: “Space exploration, by anyone, for everyone” received 51% of the total votes, making it the clearly most popular motto.  You can see the number of votes received for each option by visiting the closed poll.

Effectively immediately, “Space exploration, by anyone, for everyone” is the official motto of CSTART!

CSTART shares One Flag in Space’s conviction that space exploration should be performed for the advancement and benefit of everybody on Earth, not only the nations who have developed a space fairing capability so far.  As such our Social Contract has stated for some time that “all rockets, spacecraft and spacesuits whose construction, launch or use are organized or financed by CSTART shall display the “Blue Marble” flag, in support of the ideals of the One Flag In Space movement”.

We are very pleased to announce that today the relationship between CSTART and OFiS has been carried a step further in the form of an official partnership between the two groups.  The OFiS website now contains a prominent link to CSTART’s and you should expect to see a reciprocal link on our website soon, as well as the inclusion of Blue Marble flags in future 3D renderings of our concept spacecraft.  This partnership is a great opportunity for each group to help promote awareness of the other, contributing to a true sense of community surrounding the emerging concept of open and accessible space travel.

This poll is programmed to start accepting votes at midnight on the 7th of Janary (PST).  The motto selection phase of the competition lasts for one week, until midnight on the 14th of January, at which time the poll will automatically stop accepting votes.  The motto with the most votes at this time will be adopted as the official motto of CSTART!  Make sure to have your say in the future of your space agency.

CSTART needs a motto and in keeping with our open and collaborative spirit, we are going to let the community decide.  Thus, we are excited to announce the CSTART Motto Selection Competition, which opens now. This is your chance to leave a mark on the face of CSTART which could last for decades!

The competition will be conducted using a combination of our /r/tothemoon subreddit and a poll on this blog.  There are two phases of the competition:

The candidate selection phase, which begins as soon as this blog entry is posted and lasts until roughly midnight on the 7th of January 2010: During this week-long phase, anybody and everybody can suggest a motto (or two or more!) by posting a comment on this thread on our subreddit.  There are no restrictions on the mottos you can suggest: we will let upvotes and downvotes by the community weed out trolls and submissions which are considered undesirable or inappropriate by the majority.

The motto selection phase, which will begin immediately after the announcement of the end of the candidate selection phase and last until roughly midnight on the 14th of January 2010.  During this week-long phase, the 5 most upvoted submissions to the Reddit thread will be made the choices for a poll entry in this blog.  Each member of the CSTART community will be able to vote once on one motto from this list of finalists.  The entry which receives the most votes before the closing date will be adopted as the official CSTART motto!

So what are you waiting for?  Post your motto ideas to the Reddit thread now!

Not only have Copenhagen Suborbitals become a Friend of CSTART, but they have made an extremely generous offer for someone from CSTART to visit their workship in Copenahgen and attend a static test firing of one of their rockets, and also to exchange ideas and ask questions of them in person.  CSTART is very keen to take advantage of this excellent opportunity and will do everything in its power to make sure we can do so.

Offers of Friendship have been extended to a number of other groups whom we are still waiting to hear back from.

This blog will be used as CSTART’s main outlet for news and other important information about the activities of the CSTART organization and progress on our various projects (but don’t forget about our Twitter feed or Facebook page as well!). Anybody can propose ideas for blog posts or even write entire candidate posts in the appropriate section of our forums. Posts which earn the general approval of the community and meet a few basic suitability criteria will be published to the blog by an administrator.

Less than two months after our spontaneous birth on Reddit, CSTART has expanded and clarified its goals and principles, establishing a strong sense of purpose and identity, with finalised versions of our Mission Statement, Social Contract and Design Philosophy now published to the Wiki.  We are now seeking to expand both awareness of CSTART and our active membership so that we can work faster and with more competence toward our goals. To this end, we have initiated contact with a number of other groups engaged in space exploration or research under an open source philosophy, as part of our Friends of CSTART program, and are waiting to hear back from them. Our preparation toward incorporating so that we can obtain tax exemption status is also continuing – you can follow the discussion on this topic in our forums.

Stay tuned!