Paypal Drive

I am asking for a bit of help here. The Team Phoenicia work has been progressing at a brisk clip and I'm by and large happy with it. That's the technical side and, even, honestly, the documentation side.

Note: need team member just to do documentation for second half of the mischief. Holy Molie!

I would have said we'd make it and participate in the LLC come October with some bumps along the way, but that's to be expected. However, as of Monday, there's a whole new slew of things we have to do that has come down from the FAA. This compresses our schedule, well, honestly, a lot more. WE're not a big team and when we have to generate even more documentation, it hurts. BAD. It takes people away from testing and coding. That means we need more time out on our testing locale to do things that we could have done on a small scale.

Our testing locale requires us to have insurance ($$) and pay for reserving the whole place for a whole day ($$$$). Then there's the RP-1/LOX needs, etc, but those are small compared to the cost of the insurance and locale requirements. The problem is that our budget is way stretched as it is. If we don't find a way to deal with this, now we are sunk. I'll be pounding the pavement, but companies and sponsors take time and it detracts from the work on The Wind at Dawn.

Hence, I am making an appeal. I am asking for people that read the blog to chip in. Ten dollars is fine. If I had two days worth of visitors to the front page pay ten dollars ($10) each, then I would have enough for a test. If you feel like more, by all means, do so! For those rare and probably mythical people that would want to do a lot more than that, email me. I want to make sure you get something out of this beyond acknowledgment.

To donate, go to the Team Phoenicia webpage and click on donate.

As good online friends, I have already asked and received help from Brian of Laelaps, Julia of The Ethical Paleontologist, James Nicoll at his Live Journal, Amanda of the Self-Design Student, Tom of NotDefined , Rachael at her Live Journal and Suzanne of Suziwon. Each of them have put up a post asking for help for the team. If anyone else wants to put up a supportive post asking for donations, please do. Time is crucial.

Everybody that does donate will be acknowledged on the team blog. People that put up a blog post asking for donations will get a link off the team blog as a 'Friend of the Team.' People that donate large sums will have special recognition. Those that do really large sums, I'll personally paint their names on the side of one of the fuel tanks.

BTW, don't think I am not putting my own money into this. I have already dumping thousands of dollars into this project. Probably far more than what we'll raise through this paypal drive. However, I can hope, right?

Thank you for your time to read this and consider putting up dinero. It really, truly is appreciated.