[archiver]

Posted by Mike Sklar at 03/01/2001 8:23 PM EST


Engineer on team #21, ComBBAT , from Astronaut H.S. and Titusville H.S. and Brevard Community College and Boeing Company and NASA-KSC.



Here's some quick news from KSC for those of you stuck in school or at the office all day today.

There are 44 teams at KSC. The most well known probably being Baxter/Lakewood HS "Heatwave" #312, and Honeywell Navigators #79.

MY stats and data are not totally accurate but close since I was involved in a lot of VIP work, team mgmt etc. Only 3 robots have the ability to go under the bar and all do it fairly quickly. I only saw 1 team, Honeywell balance both goals (full) on the ramp. However it took quite a while to do this and seems unlikely it can be done under 2minutes and definitely not 1 1/2 minutes. Only a few teams (approximately 7-8) can handle the large ball and place it on a goal adequately. There were about 15 teams that could balance 1 goal fairly quickly and with consistency. Because of the time factor 10 minute practice rounds are very misleading. The name of the game this year, at least for ramp handling is traction. Very few machines have enough traction and torque to handle balancing 2 goals.

As for our team, Boeing ComBBAT #21 reliability was the word of the day. We ran perfectly out of the box and required virtually no repairs or major mods all day. We were able to balance 1 goal extremely well (full) and we can travel under the bar quickly. We also showed we can lower the ramp and traverse it about 4 times today. Thus we are confident, but this is a real crap shoot this year.

If these reports are desirable and satisfying to all you FIRST junkies out there say so and I'll continue each day if I haven't collapsed at home.