People looking for information on my background should check out my website.

For everyone who attended the strategy session we held on Sunday at the conference, thank you for your input.  We will consider it as we move forward.

As was stated at the strategy session, the first thing we need to do is form a core team of people who will take the project forward.  Based on Bob Zubrin's suggestion, I will start by splitting the effort into three parts:  Technical, Fundraising, and Outreach.  Here are the roles I see for each:

Technical – analysis and assembly efforts including spacecraft configuration tradeoff studies, hardware final definition and software spec generation, software development, system testing, and flight.  Subsets include: Hardware, Software, Dynamics, CubeSat interface

Fund Raising – work with The Mars Society's own fundraisers to gather the funds necessary for TEMPO's development and flight considering all sources:  corporate, private, and government.

Outreach – engage the public while keeping the Mars Society at large informed of our efforts.  Included areas are:  Web (both 'old' web and 'new web such as Facebook and Twitter), Traditional media, Graphics, Education, Other agency (Amateur Satellite or AMSAT) interface.  I want to base our outreach strategy on that followed by SpaceX, being frequent and honest with our updates.

If you are interested in helping in any of these areas, please email me to let me know. If you desire to lead one of the areas, please include a paragraph summary of your experience within the area.  Also, please include a contact phone number for a short interview.  Do not apply for a leadership position lightly.  We will all be volunteers, but we'll be doing something that for years was typically done by paid individuals.  I expect the work to be difficult at times, but rewarding in the long term.

I will also work with The Mars Society to codify our deliverables.  I believe I know what they are, but spelling them out formally will help everyone focus on the prize.  I'll post that information when I have it.

For anyone looking for a way to get busy now, we will need illustrative graphics (images as well as movies) for our web presence.  Surf the web for images of CubeSat satellites and be creative.

For hardware information, documentation can be found at the CubeSat websites (http://cubesat.org and http://cubesatkit.com) describing some of the specs and requirements for CubeSat-based satellites.  Keep in mind, that Bob Zubrin has asked that we not stay wed to the proposed architecture.  I haven't received details on what that means (finding out is high on my 'to do' list), but learning how other small satellites do their business would not hurt in any case.

Software information can be found at the CubeSat websites as well.  I believe the development environment has a free download to allow familiarization.  The same caveats that were mentioned in the hardware section apply.

Any background research on tether dynamics and previous efforts would not be wasted effort.  Please send me any links for publicly-available documentation, and we'll build a virtual library here.

I will update this web page when I have more information.  Thanks again for your interest, and let's get this project off on the right foot!