Development Plan

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Approved Development Plan

Overview of Plan:
Our team will construct a working prototype of a rail gun, to test the validity of our product design. Afterwards we will contract a government or private space programs to launch and test our idea.

Total Cost of the Plan:
10000

Development Plan Details:
We will start off by building a full size rail gun. We will need to go to a material sciences lab and attempt to either find or develop a metal alloy that can withstand the amount of heat resulting from the rail gun launch. We will also need to try out a few different types of radiators and work with people who are developing radiators and see what combination of metal alloy and radiator works best together. We will also need to look into ways of conserving energy form the heat generated by the power going through the rail gun. Once we have figured out the materials, we will need to plan out how we are going to obtain and store power. We will need to look into the most current solar panel research and get the most efficient solar panels that we can find. We will also need to look into the most current capacitor research and find light and powerful capacitors. We can find information by contacting researchers at institutions like MIT or Cal Tech. Additionally we could attend a symposium such as “Solar Panel International” or “CARTS” (“capacitor and resister technology symposium”). To build the rail gun we will need to approach companies such as Mc-Master-Carr or Z-Manufacturing to see if they would like to assist us in obtaining materials and machining the parts for the rail gun. Lastly, once we have the rail gun successfully working, we will need to approach companies like Virgin Galactic and Lockheed Martin. We need to attempt to establish a partnership with them in which they take our rail gun to space and deliver payloads with it.

Itemized Budget:
$500- Materials for mounting to space craft $500- Welding $4,000- Metal with high heat tolerance $1,000- Capacitors $2,000- Solar Panels $1,000- radiator research and radiators $1,000- science symposiums

Timeline of Activities:
1 month after competition- We will begin to look for the materials needed to construct our rail gun. 2 months- We will start looking into the most recent material sciences research and also look into methods of dealing with the heat generated by the massive amount of electricity. 3 months- We will start approaching universities such as MIT and Cal Tech to get assistance in finding the proper solar panels and resistors. We may attempt to travel to the Technion in Israel to learn about the most recent solar panel research. 4 months- We will continue to look into materials, solar panels, radiators, and capacitors. 5 months- At this point we will begin to plan the building of our rail gun and approach companies like Mc-Master-Carr and Z-Manufacturing. 6-7 months- We will construct a working rail gun. 8-10 months- We will approach Virgin Galactic and the likes to start a partnership with them. Afterwards we will begin to test the rail gun. 11-12 months- We will try to get contracts from places like NASA and the Google Lunar X-Prize to conduct moon launches.

Deliverables:
By the end of this period we hope to have successfully created a working rail gun. If all goes to plan we will have a cheap and reusable method for launching payloads to the moon. A method like this is imperative to any permanent human presence on the moon. Once we have a working rail gun we will have created a monopoly for moon launches.

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