What follows below is a "mind map" I put together 2 weeks ago to think about how to get to orbit.

Not every leaf of every branch needs to be evaluated. On some branches I only need one leaf to work the other can be abandoned.

The currently Active leaf's are Red

Decision Tree

Tank Technology:

Welded Aluminum

Irrigation Tube

HP 6061

Rolled Sheet

Electroformed Sphere

Composite

Wellmate Stock (Acquired samples)

Wellmate Re-wound

PET Stock/Reblown (acquired large PET bottles)

Pet Reblown inside Shell

Rotomolded

RotoMolded in shell

Poly Bag Liner Test hardware has been fabricated

Motors

3D printed Regen

Aluminm A motor design was quickly done and sent out for quote. 3D printed price was acceptable. More than 3:1 variance in differnt vendors.

Stainless

Inconel

Fabricated Regen

Plated close

Saddle Jacket

Poly Heat Shring

Poly Cast

AL Tube?

HP Solid for Last stage Asked one of my solid friends to look at this.

GNC

GPS Selection

None

Piksi If we have a GPS it will likely be this.

Nortel

IMU

Mems

Fiber  (ordered surplus fiber gyro from ebay wil use to evaluate different mems sensors.)

Sensors

Sun

Horizion

Presurization System

Blowdown

Blowdown with one intermediate valve

Liquid nitrous

       Presurized bottle and regulator.(If our composite tank ideas work as well as they seem to then this is not really a win as the blowdown tank tech from a mass standpoint is almost as good as hightech carbon wound presurant bottle.

        

Autogenious

PayLoad  (Cubesats have used CC1100 based radios to communicate so its a reasonable choice)

CC1100 based Custom

SteinSat

BigRedBee I have one of their 70cm tranmitters in hand, payload < 50gms possible.

Simulation

Architecture trades

Excel 

Custom C++

Trajectory Design

Custom C++

JSBSim (I think I've secured some help here that is very familiar with JSBSim) 

Control Laws higher fidelity sim

JSBSim

Hardware in Loop Testing

JSBSim

Mission Design

Trajectory

Ortag

Conventional

Wild Ideas

Balloon

  Jet Lifter

Propellant Selection

H2O2

Lox

Acid

h2O2

kero

Propane

ethane

DME

Gasoline

Pressurant Burining?

Licensing

Launch Location (Within in a month when the archetectures starts to shake out its time to go to FAA and start discussing this)

Kodiak

On a Boat?

On a Plane?

Traditional Range?

NM Space Port?

Space Fl?

International

Intermediate Testing

Limits to what can be tested at FAR?