Among other things, our team is working on an operating system that will drive the information flow, instrumentation, and safety measures in the pod(s) and connect the system to the operations center. The system will: - interface with sensors throughout the pod(s) - present sensor data, external readings, weather, geographical, trip/station information - record data (for later retrieval/analysis/review) - interface with a blackbox device - send data to personnel at the operations center - allow administrative control of the pod(s) by personnel at the operations center - allow measures, such as throttling, halting, or shutdown, in response to external conditions, such as vibration due to heavy winds or hurricanes, or reported damage to the track - provide a communication pipeline between personnel in the forward pod with the personnel at the operations center. We'd also be open to writing the software that the operations center would use to monitor, message, control, etc.. the pod systems. The problem is that we heavily depend on collaboration. If we can't otherwise get requirements from a higher-level authority at this point, we'd love to talk to as many other teams as possible in order to work with what we have. We are also obviously lacking even a remotely concise idea of what other teams are involved and who can provide what information or needs certain types of information. For example, we'd like to be able to decelerate but it's doubtful that we'd be in control of the actual acceleration. There will probably be a *real* lever or pedal connected to physical hardware. We'd also like to be able to read whatever information can be provided by those systems and/or calculate it ourselves from that information in whatever raw units it's delivered in. We also recognize that there might be other teams involved in similar ideas. We can find a way to cooperate in a way that will benefit us both. Technically this is a competition, but without more information or organization on the part of SpaceX (or whomever), at this point, I think competition would just hurt rather than benefit the technology. How can we compete when there are so few players and such a low chance of a competitor for whichever component each of our teams are working on? Thanks. I love this stuff. How awesome would it be if we could start connecting the various subsystems' buses? Dustin Oprea dustin@randomingenuity.com