Tech Prop Development

Contributors List
Y axis - all the problems you must address, the things that will eat your lunch
X axis - all the potential contributors, organizations, maybe tools? that have expertise
In data cell plave an X where applicable. Get fancy with scores one a scale of 1 to 5

Shovel Eater Progress - June 2004

Miles Drake, Richard Hand and I returned to Shovel Eater this past Saturday and continued the dig. After last month, when Jo Smith and I dug alone, we knew it was time to bring a more substantial crew into the cave. The haul path extended from the dig face, back up the crawl we had dug, to the pit, up the pit we had widened and into the dome at the top. That dome was now full. With no one to haul buckets up the pit for us last month Jo and I were forced to spread our digging spoils out on the floor of the crawl, thereby defeating a lot of the purpose of our previous dig efforts.

Our plan was to begin moving dig spoils from the top of the pit back along the passage toward the two entrance domes. There we had plenty of room for piling dig spoils. In order to do this however we needed to improve the passage from the pit back to the entrance dome.

Miles, Richard and I spent about 5 hours doing just that, and we now have a very comfortable passage, floored with fine gravel, that trays of debris can be slid back and forth along with ease. The next effort to make progress on the cave will require an extra body (it's now a 5 person dig) but it will be pretty easy work.

As Richard and I were moving out the last few rocks from our passage widening, Miles went down to look at our dig face. With a gad-pry bar he was able to get in to the dig and clean out a lot of loose rock that Jo and I had left last month. By the time he was finished he had completely cleared our dig lead and had tripled the airflow in the cave.

I later went down to see what Miles had revealed and found a very exciting sight. The lead was it's usual 3 inches wide, but now the floor dropped out and the overall height of the crevice was about 5 feet, not the previous 2. I carefully angled my headlamp and got a look at the floor of the slot and could see that it was smooth rock. Still better, the walls going forward were begining to curve left and right indicating the waterflow began to pick up speed in this zone. I could still see about 4 feet ahead to where the crevice bent out of sight.

This is just how Memorial Day Cave looked before it broke through. I was able to get a minor echo back from my "bork". So once again I'm pretty excited about this dig. Hopefully next month will provide enough people that we can really get in there and work on that crevice. At a minimum I would like to get the walls of that crevice wide enough that someone could step down into the crevice and turn around to come back out.

KVMAPR

Proposal Language...

Pick a subject

Describe what it is and why it's important

Brag about your qualifications to do it

Describe your approach to doing it

Try to relate it to other subjects that you're responding to

Systems Engineering Management Plan Template

Develop outline of technical subjects to address, derived from SOW or mapping to major task areas makes it easier.

For each subject write a definition paragraph, to explain what the task really is.
Then write a few paragraphs laying out the process, methodology, or approach used to accomplish the task. You decide the level of detail you need, but remember that less is more. Super detail should be done in a whitepaper dedicated to a single subject.
Finally, describe the inputs and outputs to the process, also any interfaces to other task areas that receive or send inputs/outputs.

Naturally a couple pages of overview to explain how the task areas relate to each other provides a useful illustration before jumping into the whats and wherefores.