[SpaceBiz]

This is a great Idea.

The Idea of an arbitrary limit dosn't make sense to me.

You should have all existing sponsors who want to participate place bids on how much they are willing to spend on the project. They must match this amount in a donation to FIRST for the entry fee. The 6th highest bid becomes the limit and fee for all 6 teams. (placing budget limit deprives teams of seeing actual professional robots built for competition. The more sponsors are willing to spend, the more publicity gained, plus shipping costs are going to almost double production cost with tight timeline)

The first, and most important restriction would be the time given to build. This could be anywhere between 3 days (robot in 3 days) or two weeks. I don't think people who are employed full time to build a robot would need any more than that.

The second major restriction would be build team size. I would say put some limit on the number of former and or active mentors per team. Also maybe limit number of people who can participate two years in a row.

Lastly, the the randomly selected alliance that wins in Einstein will get priority to compete following year.