In our first video we set out to explore what the man in the street thinks about the Puli and the Moon. So our team took to the streets of Budapest with Sámson (an original puli dog), a simple demonstration rover which shows the principle of moving a sphere from the inside, and a camera. We ended up with this video and some new supporters. If you cannot access the movie below, try this link: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xetts3_pulit-a-holdra_tech

August turned out to be so busy that by the time we got to sum up our monthly progress, its already September. And boy there's been a lot happening around the Puli lately. Check out some of the highlights here in our monthly progress report.

We're official

PULI Space Technologies Ltd has been inaugurated. We are an official and functioning company. Headquarters are currently being set up in Budapest, Hungary, which will probably become Puli central soon. Various other legal stuff has been taken care of, like bank accounts, tax IDs, non disclosure agreements, organizational and operational regulations and so on. These steps ensure that Team Puli is backed by a legal entity which can approprately handle funds, pay tax and generally represent the team in business.

Letter of Intent accepted by the X Prize foundation

"On behalf of the entire X PRIZE Foundation, please allow me to welcome you into the Google Lunar X PRIZE family!" - wrote William Pomerantz to us just a week ago in response to our Letter of Intent sent to GLXP. Although this does not yet mean that our team is fully registered, it is a positive acknowledgement of our intent to take part in the competition. As soon as we present the required entry fee of 50 000 USD and complete the registration process we can call ourselves a fully registered team. Hopefully this is not far away. Acceptance of the LoI is still a big step: this means we have managed to put together a plan which not only seems viable to us, but to the competition organizers themselves. The letter itself contains the outlines of our rover concept and the way it will travel to the Moon. This is backed by material which claims that we have what it takes to fulfill such a plan. Still, its all in a short letter with very basic ideas, but this is the first step toward the Moon. This success is so important that we have decided to enlist it as the first milestone of our project. You can keep up with the others in the top right on this webpage at the quickly filling progress bar.

Rover plans on the rise

Our engineers are already busy designing the Puli - our moonrover. We have more than one solution in mind but in our Letter of Intent we focused on the so called 'Sun chariot' model, which is our main line of research, and will present an innovative and somewhat irregular design. Her detalis will be presented soon. Apart from that 'Spider one' is also on the drawing board who is more of a classic rover type but is surprisingly detailed already, and yet an idea of a third model is forming - so far unnamed. Once the parameters of the different models are established we can choose the one which suits the project best and this one can hopefully complete the lunar mission in the end. Stay tuned for some sneak peaks of the different designs.

Team Puli on stage

We are stepping out into the spotlight this month as September brings our first press conference, public lectures and media appearances. Our calendar boasts quite a few seminars just for this month already, and hopefully more will follow soon. We consider it a top priority to promote scientific thinking and to encourage people to take a carreer in sciences, so giving lectures about our project at the Budapest Science Meetup or the Night of Sciences in Hungary seems like a perfect place to start. Our first press conference has also been held and turned out to be a mayor success. (check the next blog entry for details)

Do small, think big

Team Puli is an open organization. So join it! Or support it via our newly established Small Step Club. This club is open for the first 15 000 preople who support our cause by donating a minimum of 1000HUF (about 4EUR) to help the Puli get to the Moon. Every small step and every supporter counts because conquering the Moon is simply not cheap. So do your bit and send the Puli a step further up to the stars.

This all and much more has been happening around us lately. We still have a lot to do but are proceeding very fast, so join us, support us or just keep with us till our next monthly report on the activities of Team Puli.

I like to think of Team Puli as the smallest prince, an emblematic figure of Hungarian folk tales, who continuously embarks on an impossible mission to prove his right to the throne. His example shows that with intelligence, honesty, endurance, some luck and help coming from various unexpected sources, there is no insurmountable obstacle. The X Prize Foundation has established inspirational grand scale challenges, including the Google Lunar X Prize, which can be  easily looked at as real life counterparts of our fabular endeavor.  The GLXP, with its irresistible attraction and ability to capture the  imagination of the public, together with our belief that even the  smallest of the GLXP family can win the prize, encouraged us to enter the competition. Remembering the then unknown pilot Charles Lindbergh  who won the Orteig Prize and the hearts of many people with his  unprecedented flight in 1927 - which, after all, sparked the aviation industry as well as later the X Prizes -  we hope that our efforts to win the GLXP will be appreciated in Hungary and all over the world. With hard work, endurance, humility, perhaps a pinch of luck, we aim to go high, and we hope that many Hungarian people will look at the  Moon differently in the future.

Dr. Tibor Pacher, Team Leader

We're definitely barking! Our first month of activity has brought a mountain of things to do, and we have proudly succeeded in organizing it. This is a bigger archievement than it seems,as in June, starting from a small group of enthusiastic people, our team turned into a functioning organization within a month.

We now have a name: Puli Space Technologies. We also have a face, or at least a homepage in beta version, which will grow to be our main channel for giving information about our progress. And what is less obvious, but more important: we now have a sturdy backbone and a quickly developing body. We have managed to set up a functioning corporate structure consisting of departments with clearly defined tasks. Each task is handled through a ticketing system, ensuring the clear definition of required deliverables, milestones and deadlines. Also, our team has quadrupled and now has a total nearing 20 members (and counting) ranging from engineers and economists to dedicated volunteers. We still need a lot of helping hands so keep those CVs coming. New applicants are immediately assigned to the proper level in their respective department depending on their expertise and personal interests. This way everybody is quickly integrated into the team and has a clear idea about possible responsibilities.

Our knowledge base has also been established and is currently filling up with ideas on what the Puli should look like and how it will get to the Moon.

By mid August we should have an outline of a mission plan to send our self-built probe to the Moon, and various legal matters will be taken care of by then. Stay with us.