Lunar Numbat Build Team

Lunar Numbat has at it's core a driven volunteer Build Team assisted by the Contributors Team and interested people. The Build Team is:

Andy Gelme (Hacker At Large)

My interest in space travel was inspired by watching the first moon landing on T.V when at primary school ... and later on, the Viking and Voyager space programs. As an impressionable teenager, popular films such as 2001: A Space Odyssey, Star Wars (et al) and the Cosmos T.V series have all left their mark. Now, the opportunity to participate in a GLXP space mission, utilizing and creating open-source software and hardware ... is too good to resist.

As a software engineer with experience in automation systems, the Lunar Numbat mission subsystems of interest are avionics (ACS), data handling (CDH) and communications (COMS).

My personal web-site, blog and twitter.

Lee Begg

Lee has been interested in space travel for a long time, and an Open Source Developer since 1998. His main Open Source project is Thousand Parsec, a turn based space strategy game. His blog is old and out of date. Lee lives in Wellington, New Zealand.

Lee will be focusing on video, stills, compression and communication subsystems.

-- LeeBegg

Luke Weston

Luke is a jack-of-all-trades hardware hacker with an interest in Open Hardware and Open Software, electronic engineering, space exploration, space science and technology. He has mostly completed Bachelor's degrees underway in physics and computer engineering.

-- LukeWeston

Jonathan Oxer

Like most people, as a kid I wanted to live in the future with flying cars and robots that walk around. Unlike most people, that dream didn't go away when I grew up. As a result I've spent most of my life tinkering, inventing, and generally pushing the boundaries of technology in an attempt to help the future arrive sooner. I'm:

• Founder and CTO of Internet Vision Technologies, a web-application development businesses that has its origins way back in 1994
• Past President of Linux Australia, one of the largest FOSS community organisations in the world
• Slightly notorious for implanting an RFID tag in my own arm in early 2006
• Author of a variety of technology-related books including "Ubuntu Hacks", one of the top selling books ever about a Linux distribution
• Interested in the intersection of hardware and software and what it means to embed intelligence into everyday objects
• Co-founder of the Geek My Ride project
• Co-host of the upcoming TV show SuperHouse

My blog, Wikipedia page, and Twitter updates.

John Scott

Currently studying mechanical and aerospace engineering at the university of Queensland in my 4th Year. I am interested in aerospace propulsion systems, and anything that can make make space more accessible. Unfortunately in the aerospace industry I see a lot of talk but not manny people actually building hardware. I like a efficient hands on approach with an emphasis on practicality. The step from design to working hardware is a huge leap in which which not manny things go to plan (and you learn the most). I would much prefer a running engine any day over a "perfect" but untested design.

-- JohnScott

Marco Ostini (Project Leader)

While I was born into a world where people had already walked on the moon, I'm frequently frustrated by the lack of ongoing developments since. Granted I understand the geo-political and economic dynamic, but we do as nations make our choices, and at times choose badly. $114m on Work Choices advertising instead of infrastructure or research, for example.

Passion for Science, Technology and Aerospace have had a significant presence from my formative years. From the third grade I was writing about Space. Later I dabbled in electronics, started to code badly at 15 and read great slabs of material on anything that flew - especially things that flew fast! (I <3 SR71) One of my favourite reads at this time was a shuttle flight manual issued to the STS flight crew. By the time I was 18 I "accidentally" got a private pilot's license when a friend suggested that I take a trial flight, and I got hooked on the freedom of being in the sky.

After some Tertiary study I switched from IT as a hobby to a career in the early 90's, and have done so ever since. I certainly value the sanity and sustainability of Open Source technologies.

Genuine Research and Teaching are very important to me, which is why I've remained working at a University for over a decade now.

The lack of Genuine "device in microgravity vacuum" Space Science happening in Australia since Wresat has been quite perplexing to me, and slowly I've worked out the difference between promises made and what in fact happens. Australia needs a Space Agency, just as a city needs a Fire Brigade. Without one we leech off neighbours, and are unable to assist when requested, and all the while ignorance of Space Science abounds, which is not good. I believe that Australia and New Zealand together should form a modest Space Agency that cooperates with other's globally.