FIRST Nationals

[Starwhip]

Well, I, for one, know that our team is not going to Nationals yet. But we have another competition this Thursday. So I'll find out soon enough.

If you're into robotics, I suggest you look into this. It's quite the program. And you don't have to be part of the program to watch the competitions. Find one near you and go to it.

By the way, my team is 3410: LIFE

[NASAFanboy]

I suggested to my Robotics team captain that instead of making a robot, we send a satellite to the Moon by having it hitch a ride on a SpaceX rocket then deploy a solar sail in space. The probe would then flyby the Moon (Taking pictures and measurements) and study the sun from an heliocentric orbit. It would be an intended 20-day mission lifetime, and the probe would measure cosmic rays and provide video feed of its flyby and solar orbit everyday from a video camera.

The cost would've been around $15,000.

Well, guess who just got kicked out of the robotics team?

My friends aren't exactly the biggest a space fan.

[Starwhip]

Wow. Our robot usually costs between $5,000 and $10,000, so you're not shooting too high, are you?

[NASAFanboy]

Wow. Our robot usually costs between $5,000 and $10,000, so you're not shooting too high, are you?

Shooting too high?

The plan was to send a robot to the Moon!

[vger]

So... no idea of all the details behind how all of this went down. Did you even get to present a plan before you got the boot?

Guess what I'm curious about now is, do you still want to do it? Could you manage a team? Have you done all the research to a point that you could show it to someone and convince them that this can work?

Because if so... Kickstarter. If your presentation is good enough, you could probably get all the funding necessary from the KSP community alone. Heck, if you're cool with putting the KSP brand on the mission, you might even be able to get some support from Squad.

An amateur lunar probe? It's almost worth the $15,000 price tag just to say that it happened.

[Chrisd857]

Shooting too high?

The plan was to send a robot to the Moon!

Aim High? I wasn't in FIRST yet.

[insert obligatory "but what about Canada, Brazil, Israel, etc. *cough* Worlds *cough*]

Anyway, 857 (note the username) will be attending MSC soon, and we're the closest ever to earning a spot at Champs instead of through the lottery.