On the first advent weekend (1st & 2nd December) in 2007 the second PolAres Suit Workshop was held in Nussdorf am Attersee (Upper Austria). Lovely situated at the Attersee lake a small group of the PolAres Suit Team members discussed about textile materials, watt usage of fridges & fans, budgets and names of Jules Vernes females figures.
On a cloudy Saturday morning, strengthened with coffee & breakfast a first overview was given about the PolAres status, the Passepartout launch and other activities like the “Contamination Vector Experiment”. Organizational developments were on the agenda as well as first technical discussions about textiles and radio communication. Just before lunch time, the workshop participants discussed the internal PolAres online-tool which shall improve the PolAres team communication in future.
The afternoon was focused on technical matters concerning the suit reference model. Power consumption of different components had to be discussed as well as the question of which cooling system should be implemented. The cooling subject seems to be one of the hardest challenges for the suit design. Not surprisingly, the participants worked late into the evening and dinner
time was combined with final discussions about the suit reference model.
After dinner Jules Verne’s book "Around the World in 80 Days" was skimmed through to find a name for the suit. Since the rover is named "Phileas" after Phileas Fogg and the ballon “Passepartout” also bears a name used in this book, the workshop participants agreed to choose "Aouda" as suitable name since she was an Indian princess who was rescued by the main character.
The next Sunday morning was sunny & clear. Full of beans and looking forward to create a princess, the suit team had a very productive morning which led to a master plan for 2008. Action items and work packages were defined and the “System Requirement Document” which was reviewed and commented by the STAB was finalized. To ameliorate the communication monthly Skype telecons were agreed and the first three dates for these sessions were defined. These two days at Nussdorf were highly productive, focused and creative. Within the next six months the concept development will take important steps forward and result in a final reference suit model.
