Taken from: Team FREDNET NEWSLETTER #1 juni 2008

Welcome to the new newsletter from FREDNET. Hope you find the news you're looking for. Since this is my first ever newsletter, there might be some glitches and missing information, but hopefully, you'll all help me keep it up to date!

Strasbourg:
We were among those fortunate enough to go to the summit, total for FREDNET was actually 7(!) which was pretty impressive, since most teams had only 2 or 3 attending.

We got a lot of work done, and had a few talks with some of the other key members of FREDNET. We did a summary of the mission plan and even had a long talk with Bogdan from Team ARCA, who (in a crash course) taught us some of the finer arts of Mission Management (1/3 of my vacation pictures are of white boards with his scribblings..)

The big plan:
So, we're sending something to the moon. And the big outline of the plan is as follows:
We're hoping to rent some space on an already scheduled launch, since its too expensive for our little rover to be sent up alone.
Our rover (and Lunar Bus + Lander) - we're designing and building these ourselves including the guidance and control software.
The bus will be ion-driven, so it'll take something like 1-3 months from launch till we actually get to the moon.
The rover is gonna be small, as in cellphone size. We're using a method called rapid-prototyping to build multiple iterations of the final rover. In the end, we may end up with 2 or 3 rovers, but that hasn't been decided yet, that will depend on the total mass of the final system.

For now it is mostly a lot of planning, and figuring out how to actually build these crafts. There were also a long discussion on the summit regarding the rule, which leads to the X Prize Foundation's rules committee are proposing some revised rules, which are due to be final the 1st of August. As an example, the new rule adding 500 grams of payload would be a huge burden for our little craft. It appears that may be modified, so that smaller craft won't have to carry more than 10% of their total mass. In the meantime, we are proceeding with our design: after all, we do have a race to win.

The man behind it all, FRED:
My name is Fred. I live near Santa Cruz, California, which is in the Central Coast section of California, halfway between the California borders with Oregon and Mexico.
I am a little older than my teeth, and not quite as old as my tongue.
I have worked on a little bit of everything: Computer Science, Teaching (University, and Commercial), Software Development, Programming Languages, Compilers, Software Tools, Cryptology, Networking, Computer Security, Internet Services (I built quite a few ISPs back when that was the thing to do in Silicon Valley), Software Development Consulting, and general "Hacquing". Note that the word "Hacque" was coined by me and a few friends back in the early 1980s to describe what we did (write eloquent software solutions) as opposed to what the way the media was misusing the term and mis-applying it to "crackers" (those who broke into computer systems for fun and profit). That is, we deemed ourselves "Hacquers" instead of "Crackers". Of course "Hacquer" is also the French spelling of "Hacker", which fits since my last name has French origins. If you happen to be driving around in Silicon Valley, you might also note that my car's license plate is "HACQUER".
Why did I join Team FREDNET? Well, somebody had to do it! I might as well be first.
My title on the project? Well I guess "Leader" will have to do.
My group's purpose: My group's purpose is to make sure we all get to the Moon!
And on that note: Keep the forums alive, they are the backbone of the project!
Thats all, and clear skies for you all!