UMSF @ 4 years old and 100,000 posts, Milestones and futures |
UMSF @ 4 years old and 100,000 posts, Milestones and futures |
Jan 24 2008, 07:26 PM
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#16
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Founder Group: Chairman Posts: 14434 Joined: 8-February 04 Member No.: 1 |
Well - an update.
Total donations - £1422.77. This includes £925.95 of regular donations, and the first £500 of the matched donations ( it came out as £496.83 dspite our best effort to precalculate the paypal fees). If you take our current total, plus the remaining matched donation to come - we're at £1,957.20 Now - if someone want to right an enormous cheque so we can live off the interest, then far be it from me to stop them BUt for now - that £1957 will see us run the forum for 12-16 months. We'll invest a little part of it in production of what we think will be a VERY popular DVD, and possibly a small pin badge, both of which should generate quite a nice profit. ( 50 dvd's at a cost of £114 with potential revenue of £600 or so ) That 12 month buffer will give us the time to investigate what does and doesn't make money, so that we can do more of it, and then limit the regularity and quantity with which we come back, cap in hand, to the members Doug |
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Guest_PhilCo126_* |
Jan 24 2008, 07:35 PM
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#17
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Guests |
As I said before this proves UMSF.com community can do wonderful things and we could certainly do this on a yearly basis (around Christmas -NewYear). Looking forward to the technical progress to be 'Ops' for the upcoming Phoenix Lander event...
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Jan 24 2008, 07:44 PM
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#18
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Member Group: Members Posts: 655 Joined: 22-January 06 Member No.: 655 |
With just a little more effort, I reckon we can afford to fund our own mission - I'm voting for a Neptune orbiter and Triton lander.
I reckon the knowledge, expertise and experience amongst members here would make that not beyond the bounds of possibility too!! Meanwhile (chink) there's my contribution |
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Jan 24 2008, 07:59 PM
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#19
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Founder Group: Chairman Posts: 14434 Joined: 8-February 04 Member No.: 1 |
Well - Joe is doing a legendary job investigating the current forum in a sandbox server ( we think the nasty post-pause issue is resolved there, and that will get deployed here in the not to distant future ) .
We've already paid to move the domain registration from the current hosting company to an independent name registrar. This gives us control of the domain for when we actually get a dedicated server. That handover should occur in the next few days (but should be transparent as the domain will continue to point to the same place ) We're looking at where to spend the most money in terms of the server performance to host the forum ( Ram, HDD, Network, CPU etc etc ) so that we spend the most where it makes the most difference, and cut short where it's not needed - basically getting the very most out of the cash. We have a hosting firm in mind, but if anyone has any specific dedicated ( managed or unmanaged ) server provider recommendations, let us know. Doug |
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Jan 24 2008, 08:08 PM
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#20
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Director of Galilean Photography Group: Members Posts: 896 Joined: 15-July 04 From: Austin, TX Member No.: 93 |
Doug,
I know before you said that the CafePress merchandise isn't worth the effort it takes to make it, in terms of money made. Right now the merchandise is only UMSF-labelled goods. Have you considered getting permission from posters to use their images in UMSF-branded items? Keep it simple, maybe limiting to just T-shirts with the current UMSF logo on the front, and a user-image or montage on the back? To limit the amount of effort, push it out on the community, all you do is upload the appropriately cropped image on CafePress, add the logo to the front, and let people order it. http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...amp;#entry63735 If not, would you have any objections to members using the UMSF logos on our own items? -------------------- Space Enthusiast Richard Hendricks
-- "The engineers, as usual, made a tremendous fuss. Again as usual, they did the job in half the time they had dismissed as being absolutely impossible." --Rescue Party, Arthur C Clarke Mother Nature is the final inspector of all quality. |
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Jan 24 2008, 08:09 PM
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#21
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Senior Member Group: Admin Posts: 4763 Joined: 15-March 05 From: Glendale, AZ Member No.: 197 |
Why not target enough of an endowment to keep UMSF around forever? I'd guess a 3% return in a bank account, so to get ~1500 pounds a year we'll need an endowment of about 50,000 pounds. Actually for a true perpetual endowment you have to work in a rate of inflation on the annual costs, so something greater than the 3% return -------------------- If Occam had heard my theory, things would be very different now.
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Jan 25 2008, 04:46 AM
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#22
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 3419 Joined: 9-February 04 From: Minneapolis, MN, USA Member No.: 15 |
Doug -- never tell people you've got enough money! Those who are planning to contribute in the near future may decide not to, since you say you don't really *need* any more at present.
To counter that potential sentiment, I'm going on record that, as soon as I can afford it (which ought to be within the next three weeks at most), I'm definitely going to send off whatever the pounds equivalent is of roughly a hundred bucks. This place is like a second home to me. I spend more time reading and posting here than I spend doing anything else with the exception of my job. I feel it's an *honor* to have the opportunity to help support it. -the other Doug -------------------- “The trouble ain't that there is too many fools, but that the lightning ain't distributed right.” -Mark Twain
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Jan 25 2008, 05:06 AM
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#23
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Member Group: Members Posts: 753 Joined: 23-October 04 From: Greensboro, NC USA Member No.: 103 |
To me, this site is like Public Radio in the US. No commercials, no hassle, just great content of the highest quality. This site is the top link in my bookmarks, and has been for 4 years.
Doug, my aspiration would be that you get enough donations that the forum could pay you a stipend for all your hard work in maintaining the content and atmosphere of this site! Jonathan PS - IIRC, the general rule with retirement plans is that you try to sock away an amount such that the income you plan to live on each year when you retire is about 1/12 the total value of the portfolio. That way, you can live on the income from the investments and never have to touch the principal. That probably includes tax consequences etc. The upshot is, if you can raise about 12-15 times as much money as you expect it costs to run the site for a year, you may never have to go back for contributions again. -------------------- Jonathan Ward
Manning the LCC at http://www.apollolaunchcontrol.com |
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Jan 25 2008, 05:43 AM
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#24
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Administrator Group: Admin Posts: 5172 Joined: 4-August 05 From: Pasadena, CA, USA, Earth Member No.: 454 |
Actually for a true perpetual endowment you have to work in a rate of inflation on the annual costs, so something greater than the 3% return An endowment would be a total waste of a lot of money for a site like UMSF. For an institution that expects to live for decades or centuries, and needs financial stability to weather lean economic times, it makes sense. For a place that is only as valuable as the active contribution of many members makes it, it makes no sense to harbor money against lean times. If UMSF gets lean, then its reason for existence will have expired. May that never happen on my watch! --Emily -------------------- My website - My Patreon - @elakdawalla on Twitter - Please support unmannedspaceflight.com by donating here.
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Jan 25 2008, 06:02 AM
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#25
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Senior Member Group: Admin Posts: 4763 Joined: 15-March 05 From: Glendale, AZ Member No.: 197 |
An endowment would be a total waste of a lot of money for a site like UMSF. Agreed. I was just doing the hypothetical math. We'd be better off buying Doug and Helen a nice car with that kind of money, and then they'd make car payments to the UMSF account. -------------------- If Occam had heard my theory, things would be very different now.
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Jan 25 2008, 10:42 AM
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#26
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Founder Group: Chairman Posts: 14434 Joined: 8-February 04 Member No.: 1 |
A Mazda RX8 PZ please. Always wanted an excuse to use the word 'wankel' on UMSF. (look it up)
We've got 'enough' (basically £2000) to see us thru for 16 months without any trouble. The experience of the last few days of Farking has perhaps pointed in a particular way for what a server needs to be responsive ( less than we thought ) - so I'm happy that we're good, basically, until MSL launches. That's another key exploration milestone for which UMSF will be a focus of attention again - and we'll get the cap out and come round asking for more, if we need it, at that time Doug |
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Jan 26 2008, 01:11 PM
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#27
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Member Group: Members Posts: 559 Joined: 1-May 06 From: Scotland (Ecosse, Escocia) Member No.: 759 |
No defintion of wankel in Google, except in Google Deutsch (the engine named after a German person). There is however a "wankle" in my Chambers 20th Century English Dictionary - meaning unstable, unsteady, not to be depended upon... from the Olde Englishe word "wancol".
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Jan 26 2008, 03:26 PM
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#28
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Senior Member Group: Admin Posts: 4763 Joined: 15-March 05 From: Glendale, AZ Member No.: 197 |
Look up 'rotary engine' with it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mazda_Wankel_engine When I was a kid I built a Wankel Rotary Engine model that I received as a kid. Gosh that thing was fun for an aspiring mechanical engineer. As I recall that model was quite popular, several of my friends had them as well. EDIT: It looks like they still make the model after 35 years! -------------------- If Occam had heard my theory, things would be very different now.
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Jan 30 2008, 07:45 PM
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#29
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Founder Group: Chairman Posts: 14434 Joined: 8-February 04 Member No.: 1 |
Current total - £2177 (including some cold hard cash, and a cheque ( whatever that is) )
The domain is now with a new registrar which is a great move, as we have control over it and where it points to. Helvick's now testing the forum on a sandbox server to see what needs to be done to get better performance out of it - at which stage we'll have a spec for our new server and go hunting for the right hosting package. Doug |
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Feb 28 2008, 11:40 AM
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#30
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Founder Group: Chairman Posts: 14434 Joined: 8-February 04 Member No.: 1 |
Update : Our new server is ordered.
It's a dual Opteron 254 machine, 4 Gb Ram, and a pair of 10k rpm SCSI 73Gb HDD's in a RAID 1 array. We think we've found a great deal, which means we're spending approx £100/month - so the cash raised so quickly by you ( the members of UMSF ) will keep us on that platform for 2 years. TWO YEARS. Amazing. We're hiring the services of a freelance dedicated hosting admin guru for the initial setup to ensure we're in the right place for security, performance and reliability. Thereafter, Joe and I will dump a backup of UMSF onto it, test it out. We may ask a few members to visit it and test ( privately ) before we will pick a weekend and close this site - transfer the domain pointing - transfer the DB and attachments folder across (having already had the forum running on the new server) - and then turn it on again. That's the grand plan - it may change. If things go really well, it might be before the end of March, but realistically, it'll be early April, leaving a clear month of usage to iron out any higher usage issues that may crop up before Phoenix. Doug |
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