Small Apollo Program for the GVCS
Ball park figure for a small Apollo program of essential bits for a replicable Open Source Microfactory would be recruiting 20 full time technical staff on critical subject areas: CNC torch (including oxyhydrogen generator), laser cutter, 3d scanner, scalable 3D printer, materials (open source plastic), materials (continuous charcoal production), engine designer, induction furnace, metal rolling, CNC heavy machining, hydraulics, CAD platform development, house design, community manager, tech lead, + admin assistant, press forge, 4 engineers on agricultural machine design. The recruiting could take 4-6 months to vet candidates properly with at least a dozen serious applicants for each spot, so initial pool of at least 100 applicants each. $1.8M ($100k/year for top talent) for the staff per year for 2 years until first minimum viable product is achieved, so $3.6M. This does not include materials, which should be $20k per month, or another $0.5M for the 2 years. Additional infrastructure requirement would be $100k for housing to carry the program out at our facility. 2 tear time scale for minimum replicable product. $4.2M for transforming Manufacturing.
This addresses the supply chain - closed loop on materials if there is scrap metal available. Plastics and fuel are addressed. Flexibility is included, in that all of these are done from a Construction Set approach of modular design.
We have 16 prototype machines build. Modularity concepts are proven with our interchangeable power units, drive units, etc. But there is a big difference between prototypes and viable products - that's where the thousands of hours of field testing come in. And major gap is precision machining and hot metal processing. We have done the charcoal power proof of concept.
Disclaimer: the most challenging part of recruitment is culture fit. For this reason, slow on boarding and gradual establishment of rapport are key. To this must be added training on key development skills: (1) collaborative literacy, (2) Economic Time Binding, (3) design guides, part libraries, and FreeCAD or open source 3D CAD training, (4) basic OSPD protocols.