Why Six Weeks?

[Rich Wong]

Originally Posted by Gabriel

A mentor on my team asked this question today and I couldn't answer them. Why do we only have six weeks to build the robot? The first regional isn't until 3/4, but we have to ship on 2/24. Wouldn't it make more sense to give us more time in the future? I know that part of the challenge is the time limit, but wouldn't we be able to accomplish a lot more with more time? Especially rookies who have to learn everything as we go. I'm not criticizing, I'm just curious what FIRST's rationale is because I've never seen it explained.

Besides the alignment of the moon, sun, and Mars…
I believe the formula is quite complicated. Like Ken mentioned, it has to do with the holidays, the college breaks, the football season, the baseball season, availability and cost of stadium facilities, college finals, spring break, volunteers, vacation period, seasonal travel cost etc. You name it!

When it comes to engineering, most experienced engineers will tell you, “more time means more opportunity for more complexity and more problems.” One of the goals of the FIRST competition is to put the students in a real life engineering situation- a project is given with a fixed due date. Customer requires a finished product and delivered on time or else this affects your company’s (the team) bottomline (ability to compete).

Rookies obviously have the hardest time with the short building period, that’s why there are awards specifically for rookies only. So don't depend on a robot to represent your team only, show the judges your efforts doing the whole building process and what you have learned from the experience.
(The journey is the reward- the FIRST regionals are just a celebration of your achievements)
All this has been documented in the past by FIRST. It’s just a matter of finding it.