Notes from the NSS's 2006 ISDC
by guest blogger Ken
Interesting comments about Gaia capitalism from the Virgin Galactic presentation. It essentially recognizes that the moral-neutral, or amoral nature of capitalism has to exist in a social dimension where people have to be worried about things like population sustainability in a dynamic universe. I guess you could say that Virgin Galactic does not want their success in space to be at the expense of Mother Earth.
I did manage to get a few books signed for the Lunar Library. Marianne Dyson's spectacular "Home on the Moon" in particular. This is a really great tool for youngsters to learn more about our Moon. Steve Durst of the Lunar Enterprise Daily was there to sign a copy of the "Proceedings of the International Lunar Conference 2003/International Lunar Exploration Working Group 5 - ILC2003/ILEWG 5" that he edited. Picked that one up from the Univelt table across the way from ours, as well as a copy of "NASA SP-509: Space Resources" for the Lunar Library.
I missed my chance to have Buzz sign a copy of "Reaching for the Moon" while at the Apogee Books table to sign a copy of "Kids to Space", as I didn't have it with me. Confound it. I did manage to be the first to autograph the handbound copy of "Kids to Space" that they had at the conference, as I'm particularly proud of the Moon section that I helped out with, and which is one of the longer sections in the book. Any errors are mine, so mea culpa. More on that later, and a review will be posted over at Out of the Cradle. I did manage to get Buzz to sign his book at the Texas Space Authority meeting in Austin the following week.
Rick Tumlinson was on hand to sign "Return to the Moon". What can I say, shots of Texas vodka at 3am with Rick and a bunch of Canadians in the hospitality party that didn't get busted. Spacers party hard, because this stuff is darned hard work (ISU students and alums are a notorious lot). I'm also proud to say we went through over ten pounds of genuine Texas handmade chili con queso (2 ingredients and everyone loved it, even the muy picante batch), over a case of authentic Texas beers, a bottle of Texas mead (who'd a thunk it?), and more.
A key value of Texans is hospitality, and we love it when folks come to visit our great state. There are always the occasional un-naturalized Texans who are a bit less than nice, but those who have Texas in their blood are always going to be some of the friendliest, courteous, and most hospitable folks you will ever meet, and you'll hear more sirs, ma'ams, pleases and thank yous than darn near anywhere else. That's why y'all want to come to Texas in 2007 for the next ISDC.
It was really cool seeing Rusty Schweickart walking around the Lunar surface in a 3-D virtual reality unit with Lunar Explorer, and I made sure to be at the Sunday luncheon with newly-minted Ames Director Dr. Gen. Worden. His comments have been extensively reported elsewhere, but the feeling of energy in the room was palpable. A kind of tense expectation excitement, versus the fun energy of Dr. Degrasse-Tyson's talk. Unfortunately I missed a good chunk of the latter because of all the last minute preparations for the hospitality suite.
Got a stack of business cards 3/4s of an inch thick. It's amazing the number of friends the space field has that one would never expect. Everyone is excited about some of the plans I have in the works, and a lot of folks really want to help out with next year's conference. It's really heart-warming.
I don't think Dr. Diamandis has anything to apologize for regarding his comments Friday night at the ISDC. While he may have been politically incorrect in not mentioning that the economies of scale involved in the production of V-2 rockets during the fascist terror of World War II involved slave labor, and thereby offending some of the more sensitive in attendance by his less than completely thorough analogy (and perhaps clumsy follow-up), he is nevertheless entirely correct that the economies of scale of mass production bring down launch costs. This is something that Jon and I flog again and again here in the Selenian Boondocks because it is fundamentally economically true in a free market. That the point should be lost in the wailings of political incorrectness is a sad thing.
I am disappointed that I didn't hear much about Space Day on Thursday or Astronomy Day on Sunday. Seems like such missed opportunity.
Yours truly of course had to spend time staffing the display booth we had to promote NSS-NT's hosting of the ISDC in 2007. What's amazing is the people one meets there, like the local high school teacher who had brought his son to the conference. He was astounded that he hadn't heard anything about the conference through educational channels, and bemoaned the missed opportunity to have local school kids in attendance to learn more about space. I'm definitely going to have to work on that for next year's conference, especially if I hope to get Dr. Degrasse-Tyson to come on down to Texas for a visit.
Lots of schmoozing and great input on next year's conference in Dallas. Teammates helped, but they knew that was primarily my burden so that they could enjoy the content, which I almost entirely missed. The Moon stuff was kind of hidden in the details and easily missed. I did however pop in to see part of Shana Dale's presentation, right about the time she started staring at the big view screen at the side of the stage while the slick CEV marketing graphics were playing to musical background.
See, right here I would have been up on stage pointing out the different aspects of the mission being shown (here's where the upper stage kicks in. We're looking at using X engine, which would have Y fuel and oxider tanks here, while using my super-cool green laser pointer. However Ms. Dale is politically savvy enough to recognize that the more details one offers, the more one opens up oneself to questions from that one guy in the audience that asks the really whacked out question). So I got to watch the vid and listen to some grand sounding music for a good while.
She then made some comments that have gotten me to thinking, always a dangerous thing. She started giving background and comparing it to the trans-continental railroad efforts of the 1800s, where ESAS provides an architecture to provide continuous access to destinations. My thinking on the matter is that if -all- of your infrastructure is on the surface of planet Earth you really aren't making much progress. Remember, the current proposed launch architecture involves lifting everything up from Earth pretty much in one go, and then throwing away most of it. Except for a small capsule. Which is refurbishable.
Um, I think where the analogy falls flat is that fact that they didn't have to rebuild the entire railroad each time they wanted to send a train to NY or San Fran (or round-trip for the analogy purists out there). Stuff was put in place along the way so that boilers could be topped off, stuff switched out, engines serviced, and all kinds of other useful things. That's the sort of stuff that Jon and I talk about, and I know neither of us are talking about ESAS in that context.
This then begs the question of whether the ESAS is then solely the exploratory phase, and one which doesn't seem to provide much follow on applicabilty. If it's a Lewis & Clark sort of thing, well, those guys didn't spend a huge chunk of change designing and building special ships for the trip. They spent money on transport, but as what total of the overall budget?
The black cowboy hat was a stroke of genius of huckster marketing. I think I'll use it at the Discovery Fest this Saturday with my Zero-G flightsuit. (and the girls, wow. I shoulda been wearing a cowboy hat all along...)
I've decided that I am not going to let next year's conference give me a heart attack. I would much rather that my death be something romantic like in bed with a beautiful woman or running out of oxygen on the Moon (hey, like the first guy to die on the Moon isn't going to live forever in history?). This means figuring out the best way to delegate responsibilities to the volunteers. Item #1,428 on my ISDC 2007 to-do list.
The encounter I found most intriguing was with a blind gentleman, whose name I can't recall, who took a Zero-G flight with some artists. His dog was misbehaving a bit, insisting on coming over and saying hi. I recognize that working dogs aren't to be distracted while doing their job, but the beautiful lab kept wanting to pay attention to me (it's this weird thing I have with animals). I ended up helping him to the Arts track he was supposed to be at, which gave me a chance to ponder how I'm going to deal with access for those with special requirements in 2007. Only afterwards did I start pondering what might have been the experience of a blind man in microgravity. He has the benefit of not having confusing signals from the eyes that contradict the signals from the ear, but how then does he find reference in three dimensional space when it's time to lay back down for the climb up to the next parabola? I wish I could have stuck around to hear about it, but had other obligations. I did manage to sneak in a few affirming pets of the dog.
Got to meet with Jon's boss, and it looks like Masten Space Systems may have a display at ISDC 2007. When I told Mr. Mealling that I wanted hardware to display he got an interesting grin on his face and said he'd see what he could do, though no promises.
A strong part of my philosophy for 2007 is the display of the tools and equipment that Americans are building for space. I believe that powerpoints can only go so far, and I want to show off what we are actually making to put people in space. In a lot of cases that means a very low-fidelity mock-up (and I told Mr. Bigelow that that would be entirely okay by me because the point is to show what we're doing moreso than the technical fidelity of the display) because of security concerns. But having real rocket motors on display is a great way to show the kind of things that kids could do in the future, and the ISDC is a great way of doing that. So mark your calendars for the Big D on Memorial Day weekend in 2007.
Who says there are no great space adventures any more?
Interesting comments about Gaia capitalism from the Virgin Galactic presentation. It essentially recognizes that the moral-neutral, or amoral nature of capitalism has to exist in a social dimension where people have to be worried about things like population sustainability in a dynamic universe. I guess you could say that Virgin Galactic does not want their success in space to be at the expense of Mother Earth.
I did manage to get a few books signed for the Lunar Library. Marianne Dyson's spectacular "Home on the Moon" in particular. This is a really great tool for youngsters to learn more about our Moon. Steve Durst of the Lunar Enterprise Daily was there to sign a copy of the "Proceedings of the International Lunar Conference 2003/International Lunar Exploration Working Group 5 - ILC2003/ILEWG 5" that he edited. Picked that one up from the Univelt table across the way from ours, as well as a copy of "NASA SP-509: Space Resources" for the Lunar Library.
I missed my chance to have Buzz sign a copy of "Reaching for the Moon" while at the Apogee Books table to sign a copy of "Kids to Space", as I didn't have it with me. Confound it. I did manage to be the first to autograph the handbound copy of "Kids to Space" that they had at the conference, as I'm particularly proud of the Moon section that I helped out with, and which is one of the longer sections in the book. Any errors are mine, so mea culpa. More on that later, and a review will be posted over at Out of the Cradle. I did manage to get Buzz to sign his book at the Texas Space Authority meeting in Austin the following week.
Rick Tumlinson was on hand to sign "Return to the Moon". What can I say, shots of Texas vodka at 3am with Rick and a bunch of Canadians in the hospitality party that didn't get busted. Spacers party hard, because this stuff is darned hard work (ISU students and alums are a notorious lot). I'm also proud to say we went through over ten pounds of genuine Texas handmade chili con queso (2 ingredients and everyone loved it, even the muy picante batch), over a case of authentic Texas beers, a bottle of Texas mead (who'd a thunk it?), and more.
A key value of Texans is hospitality, and we love it when folks come to visit our great state. There are always the occasional un-naturalized Texans who are a bit less than nice, but those who have Texas in their blood are always going to be some of the friendliest, courteous, and most hospitable folks you will ever meet, and you'll hear more sirs, ma'ams, pleases and thank yous than darn near anywhere else. That's why y'all want to come to Texas in 2007 for the next ISDC.
It was really cool seeing Rusty Schweickart walking around the Lunar surface in a 3-D virtual reality unit with Lunar Explorer, and I made sure to be at the Sunday luncheon with newly-minted Ames Director Dr. Gen. Worden. His comments have been extensively reported elsewhere, but the feeling of energy in the room was palpable. A kind of tense expectation excitement, versus the fun energy of Dr. Degrasse-Tyson's talk. Unfortunately I missed a good chunk of the latter because of all the last minute preparations for the hospitality suite.
Got a stack of business cards 3/4s of an inch thick. It's amazing the number of friends the space field has that one would never expect. Everyone is excited about some of the plans I have in the works, and a lot of folks really want to help out with next year's conference. It's really heart-warming.
I don't think Dr. Diamandis has anything to apologize for regarding his comments Friday night at the ISDC. While he may have been politically incorrect in not mentioning that the economies of scale involved in the production of V-2 rockets during the fascist terror of World War II involved slave labor, and thereby offending some of the more sensitive in attendance by his less than completely thorough analogy (and perhaps clumsy follow-up), he is nevertheless entirely correct that the economies of scale of mass production bring down launch costs. This is something that Jon and I flog again and again here in the Selenian Boondocks because it is fundamentally economically true in a free market. That the point should be lost in the wailings of political incorrectness is a sad thing.
I am disappointed that I didn't hear much about Space Day on Thursday or Astronomy Day on Sunday. Seems like such missed opportunity.
Yours truly of course had to spend time staffing the display booth we had to promote NSS-NT's hosting of the ISDC in 2007. What's amazing is the people one meets there, like the local high school teacher who had brought his son to the conference. He was astounded that he hadn't heard anything about the conference through educational channels, and bemoaned the missed opportunity to have local school kids in attendance to learn more about space. I'm definitely going to have to work on that for next year's conference, especially if I hope to get Dr. Degrasse-Tyson to come on down to Texas for a visit.
Lots of schmoozing and great input on next year's conference in Dallas. Teammates helped, but they knew that was primarily my burden so that they could enjoy the content, which I almost entirely missed. The Moon stuff was kind of hidden in the details and easily missed. I did however pop in to see part of Shana Dale's presentation, right about the time she started staring at the big view screen at the side of the stage while the slick CEV marketing graphics were playing to musical background.
See, right here I would have been up on stage pointing out the different aspects of the mission being shown (here's where the upper stage kicks in. We're looking at using X engine, which would have Y fuel and oxider tanks here, while using my super-cool green laser pointer. However Ms. Dale is politically savvy enough to recognize that the more details one offers, the more one opens up oneself to questions from that one guy in the audience that asks the really whacked out question). So I got to watch the vid and listen to some grand sounding music for a good while.
She then made some comments that have gotten me to thinking, always a dangerous thing. She started giving background and comparing it to the trans-continental railroad efforts of the 1800s, where ESAS provides an architecture to provide continuous access to destinations. My thinking on the matter is that if -all- of your infrastructure is on the surface of planet Earth you really aren't making much progress. Remember, the current proposed launch architecture involves lifting everything up from Earth pretty much in one go, and then throwing away most of it. Except for a small capsule. Which is refurbishable.
Um, I think where the analogy falls flat is that fact that they didn't have to rebuild the entire railroad each time they wanted to send a train to NY or San Fran (or round-trip for the analogy purists out there). Stuff was put in place along the way so that boilers could be topped off, stuff switched out, engines serviced, and all kinds of other useful things. That's the sort of stuff that Jon and I talk about, and I know neither of us are talking about ESAS in that context.
This then begs the question of whether the ESAS is then solely the exploratory phase, and one which doesn't seem to provide much follow on applicabilty. If it's a Lewis & Clark sort of thing, well, those guys didn't spend a huge chunk of change designing and building special ships for the trip. They spent money on transport, but as what total of the overall budget?
The black cowboy hat was a stroke of genius of huckster marketing. I think I'll use it at the Discovery Fest this Saturday with my Zero-G flightsuit. (and the girls, wow. I shoulda been wearing a cowboy hat all along...)
I've decided that I am not going to let next year's conference give me a heart attack. I would much rather that my death be something romantic like in bed with a beautiful woman or running out of oxygen on the Moon (hey, like the first guy to die on the Moon isn't going to live forever in history?). This means figuring out the best way to delegate responsibilities to the volunteers. Item #1,428 on my ISDC 2007 to-do list.
The encounter I found most intriguing was with a blind gentleman, whose name I can't recall, who took a Zero-G flight with some artists. His dog was misbehaving a bit, insisting on coming over and saying hi. I recognize that working dogs aren't to be distracted while doing their job, but the beautiful lab kept wanting to pay attention to me (it's this weird thing I have with animals). I ended up helping him to the Arts track he was supposed to be at, which gave me a chance to ponder how I'm going to deal with access for those with special requirements in 2007. Only afterwards did I start pondering what might have been the experience of a blind man in microgravity. He has the benefit of not having confusing signals from the eyes that contradict the signals from the ear, but how then does he find reference in three dimensional space when it's time to lay back down for the climb up to the next parabola? I wish I could have stuck around to hear about it, but had other obligations. I did manage to sneak in a few affirming pets of the dog.
Got to meet with Jon's boss, and it looks like Masten Space Systems may have a display at ISDC 2007. When I told Mr. Mealling that I wanted hardware to display he got an interesting grin on his face and said he'd see what he could do, though no promises.
A strong part of my philosophy for 2007 is the display of the tools and equipment that Americans are building for space. I believe that powerpoints can only go so far, and I want to show off what we are actually making to put people in space. In a lot of cases that means a very low-fidelity mock-up (and I told Mr. Bigelow that that would be entirely okay by me because the point is to show what we're doing moreso than the technical fidelity of the display) because of security concerns. But having real rocket motors on display is a great way to show the kind of things that kids could do in the future, and the ISDC is a great way of doing that. So mark your calendars for the Big D on Memorial Day weekend in 2007.
Who says there are no great space adventures any more?
posted by murphydyne at 8:30 PM
3 Comments:
Ken - it was great to see you there, and the black hats were definitely a stand-out! Too bad your table was so out of the way, but it sounds like a few people found it anyway...
Good luck preparing for next year!
Ken - You have got to be kidding. Girls were actually attracted to that corny black cowboy hat?
Good luck with ISDC 2007 -
We can use slave labour, they're called interns.
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