[ebarker]

A few comments that I remembered from Dave's talk back in 2006:

a) a very limited opportunity to do the mission - physics of celestial mechanics imposing some tight deadlines. (sounds like an FRC deadline)

b) very limited weight, and parts list availability due to mission requirements (sounds like the FRC rulebook)

c) a 'challenge too tough', time 'too little' - sounds like some of the GDC requirements

d) software not finished at ship time - anyone in FRC have that problem ? There is a pretty interesting story about how the software was finished enroute, plus the drama of some really bad software problems later on.

e) basic requirement - 90 days. A year later it was all gravy. A few years after that I read somewhere NASA had to chase funding (correct me if wrong) to keep the program going because the rovers kept going and going and going and going......

f) driving the robot involves deciding on a course of action, transmitting or signaling the robot to do the course of action autonomously. Remember 2 years ago Dave talked at kickoff about maybe moving FRC in that direction, signaling the robot to do autonomous or semi-auto things. hmmm.. morse code anyone ?