Page Created: 02/11/14. Last Updated: 02/11/14.
2011 INTERNATIONAL SPACE DEVELOPMENT CONFERENCE
The following commentary is reprinted with permission from
THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
06/10/11 -- Vol. 29, No. 50, Whole Number 1653
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International Space Development Conference 2011 (Huntsville, May 18-May 22) (report by Dale L. Skran, Jr.)
International Space Development Conference 2011 Copyright 2011 Dale L. Skran Jr.
I've gone to the last three International Space Development Conferences (ISDCs) and I have yet to issue a report, despite good intentions. So here I go again on yet another attempt! This year I was accompanied by my son Sam, who was "dragged along" on the theory that he might learn something, and by my wife, who was there on business. However, I'll focus on what I did by myself (actually what Sam and I did since we hung out together for pretty much the entire conference).
On Wednesday we skipped the Space Investment Summit so that Sam and I could take a tour of NASA Marshall Space Flight Center. This tour was well organized but a lot shorter and less interesting than the JPL tour we took last summer. It really only went to two places--the Payload Control Center and a bus tour of some large test stands. The Payload Center was interesting--we all think of Johnson Spaceflight Center as being where mission control and CapCom are, but PayCom sits at Marshall. There is a room (and a backup room) of people who manage the space station and space shuttle payloads 24x7. PayCom has a VoIP line so that a scientist on the ground can talk to an astronaut about a payload if needed. All the data from the space station/space shuttle is delivered to the Payload center and then distributed to both a European and a Japanese center, and also to 150 different scientific teams.
Next, the bus drove around a series of large test stands, mostly from the Saturn program, mainly looking like props from the Dharma project on LOST. It was both glorious as you could see that this was a hopping place when Wernher Von Braun was in charge, but a bit sad as it sits in its rusty splendor. Unfortunately, it is fairly obvious that big test stands are only needed for big rockets, and that a cheaper, reusable rocket will simply not require these kinds of facilities, since if it did, by definition it would not be cheaper. With the cancellation of Ares V/Constellation by Obama,
Marshall Space Flight Center is ground zero for folks unhappy with the new order of commercial space flight, low-cost rockets, and California space billionaires.
After lunch, we took another bus to the US Space and Rocket Center, which is co-located with Space Camp. This museum is well worth the trip. They have a Saturn I and a Saturn IB vertical in a rocket garden, and a Saturn V suspended horizontally in a large building so you can walk under it--way cool!!! They also have the Apollo 16 Command Module, a Blackbird, a whole lot of rockets in a big rocket garden, and a very nice display of artifacts and information on the moon landing, including real moon rocks. They also have a set of models for the Ares/Constellation program, now, of course, cancelled, but no doubt they are waiting to see if funding is restored before making any changes. Normally I skip the tours offered at ISDC, but I was glad I went this time--it provides valuable perspective on today's debates.
On Thursday it was time to hit the panels. For those of you who have never been to an ISDC, it is a lot like an SF con with only the science track. There is a slight overlap--this ISDC had a couple of author events, including a book signing, and you sometimes see an SF author or two, but the rock stars here are astronauts and rocket entrepreneurs. Actually, there are several "science" tracks, including [1] US and International Policy and
Law, [2] Space Solar Power, [3] Business of Space, [4] Launch System Forum, [5] Launch Vehicle, Spacecraft & In-Space Propulsion, [6] Education, Outreach, and History, [7] Space Settlement, and [8] Military Space. There is a show floor that is focused on company/group tables and a student space colony contest and not on book sales, but which in many ways resembles a more dignified version of the traditional huckster room.
One big difference from a SF Con is that the major speakers appear at sit-down pay-extra lunches and dinners. I like this because I don't have to worry about going out and finding food, and it tends to be a great networking opportunity. One big difference from an SF Con is that lots of people are wearing suits, and the dressed- down ones are business casual. Like at an SF Con, most panels are in small rooms, some very uncomfortable, but the more important speakers get bigger halls, and the plenary hall is reserved for the most important speakers of all. However, just like at SF cons, the organizers' judgment is sometimes wildly off, resulting in the largest hall populated by twenty people but with a hundred people trying to sit in fifty chairs in a tiny, over-heated room with terrible acoustics.
I went to a lot of ISDCs "back in the day," so the differences time has brought are salient. In the old days this was an activist conference with some scientists and engineers. Now it feels like a business conference with many scientists and some activists and quite a few students. The quality of the speakers is higher--you see senior NASA and military folks speaking, leading scientists, and high-level business leaders that never would have come in the old days. Another difference is that although we used to dream about putting the "I" in International, it was in fact an American
conference. Mainly as a result of the organization of a space settlements contest for high school students, hundreds of international students, mainly from India and Romania, descend each year on the ISDC. Sam and I walked by a group of at least 100-- maybe 150--getting their picture taken. The photographer was asking them to say "Space Settlements" instead of "Cheese"--something I never anticipated I would ever see. The winning teams get to make short presentation here and there, and you can also see the students' projects at booths on the show floor. Their work,
although not always to professional standards, is often of very high quality and of considerable interest.
Another surprising situation is that--in a fashion I never really dreamed was possible--"the inmates have taken over the asylum." Lori Garver, "in the day" the Executive Director of the National Space Society (NSS) [NSS started the ISDCs and sponsors them annually], is now #2 at NASA. George Whitesides, another former NSS Executive Director, is now CEO of Virgin Galactic, Richard Branson's space tourism company. Scott Pace, a long-time NSS member, has now taken John Logsdon's chair as Director of the Space Policy Institute at the Elliott School of International Affairs,
The George Washington University. Aleta Jackson, a long-time L5 activist "in the day" is a founder and manager at XCOR, one of the leading "New Space" companies building rockets for sub-orbital tourism.
So this is all wonderful--the millennium has dawned--literally--and we're on the rocket to orbit--right? Sadly, there is war in heaven: in effect NASA, the New Space Companies (SpaceX, XCOR, etc.), and a part of the thought leadership, including Buzz Aldrin, and last but not least the Obama administration, have implemented a policy L5/NSS has long sought--fixed price commercial delivery to cargo and people to the space station. A side effect of this is the cancellation of Constellation, Bush's "Apollo on steroids" return to the moon project. Sides have been chosen, with folks
like Scott Pace and Neil Armstrong supporting Constellation, along with the old-line aerospace contractors like Lockheed, ATK, etc., and the Senators/Representatives from Utah, Texas, and Florida who find jobs in their district to be threatened. The "New Space" companies hail from other states--California, Washington, and Colorado--all states that--shocking, shocking--voted for Obama.
Although I don't fully trust Obama in matters of space policy, the canard that he has "ended the space program" and that "no American rockets will ever go to space again" is a bizarre distortion that makes sense only if you think the space program consists of building Shuttle SRBs in Utah and launching every rocket using them. If I had to choose--and maybe with the deficit we do have to choose--I'd pick Commercial Orbital Transportation Services [COTS] and the space station over everything else NASA does because in the end Constellation was just another stunt, and we need a sustainable space program based on lower costs to orbit. Government programs have been proved over the last 25 years to not work well at cutting costs, so it is time to try something new and let the chips fall where they may. So I applaud President Obama, NASA Administrator Bolden, and Deputy NASA Administrator Lori Garver for their courage in taking this daring course, which has aroused so much opposition, much of it misinformed and/or cynical.
There is one silver lining here--for the first time the argument is not between those who want a space program and those who don't--but between two different visions of our future in space. Space--in the form of GPS navigation satellites, TV satellites, satellite phones, weather satellites, and so on, has become so woven into our lives that it is impossible to imagine life without these technologies. It is time to take the next step--the really hard
step--of giving up our childhood memories of daring American astronauts walking on the moon--and embracing a free enterprise future in space--grungy, commercial, tawdry--but vibrant, human, and above all--quintessentially American. It is this future, and only this future, that will take us to space to stay, and spread us out among the stars.
For a growing number of young engineers and scientists taking jobs at New Space companies like SpaceX, Virgin Galactic, Bigelow Aerospace, XCOR Aerospace, Sierra Nevada, and Blue Origin, the future is now--they are working in small teams building innovative rockets that promise to really open the high frontier. For the first time space companies are being run by Silicon Valley rules and Silicon Valley managers rather than long time government employees and cost-plus military contractors--it may not work out, but it seems a lot better than twenty-five more years of the same old, same old.
Another bright spot at the convention is the Google Lunar X Prize which provides $30M [yes, you read that right--thirty Million!] to the first team that can land a privately built rover on the moon and return pictures. So far there are twenty-nine teams competing, and eight of them made presentations at the ISDC. The teams are both American and international, and some are mixed. Some are based at universities and others are corporate in their origins. The brilliant side-effect of this project has been to make space real to a whole generation of college students who are working on and in some cases leading these teams. The teams are raising money, reaching out to the public to make their pitch, recruiting help,
and building their lunar landers--in effect each team has become a small version of the NSS, or a super NSS chapter on some level-- doing the work of NSS even if not always in the name of the NSS. Regardless of who wins, the pro-space movement will get a large and permanent boost from this program, and we should all thank Google for their support and vision.
That turned out to be a lot longer general statement than I planned! So, back to the panels on Thursday! We started out with the 11 AM "Launch System Forum" featuring all the major leaders of the NASA SLS [Space Launch System] program from MSFC and NASA HQ. I had high hopes for this panel, but it proved a complete waste of time. I watched three guys dissemble for an hour--striving to the best of their ability to avoid saying ANYTHING concrete about the SLS. I pity their position--torn between the NASA leadership and Congressional pressure to save Constellation at any price--but it is hard to imagine that they will build anything useful or innovative or on time or on budget.
The noon luncheon featured the father and son team of Owen Garriott [Skylab astronaut] and Richard Garriott [space tourist] speaking about their experiences as astronauts--always interesting on their own, and especially touching to see the world's first father/son astronaut pair in action.
At 1 PM we switch-hit between Stephen Covey on "Technologies for Asteroid Capture into Earth Orbit," and Paul Jaffe [Naval Research Laboratory] on "Naval Research Laboratory Sandwich Panel R&D Status Update." Jaffe is about one year into a program to demonstrate a single panel of a solar power satellite with cells on one side, microwave transmitters on the other, and DC to AC rectifiers in the middle. This relatively recent idea removes the need for any high power elements in orbit and offers the hope of substantial cost savings. Also, cheap mirrors can be used to concentrate more light on the cells, raising output per square inch of surface. Making all this work well becomes a heat dissipation problem, making economic feasibility unclear, but the project is certainly a very interesting one. The military interest comes from a desire to provide electricity to remote military outposts without the need for convoys of fuel trucks.
At 3 PM we checked out "Precision Time Protocol Trilateration for Planetary Navigation," which at first seems quite obscure, but is pretty important. The speaker described how some Apollo astronauts got within thirty meters or so of a crater they were looking for, but couldn't see it and gave up, demonstrating the need for more accurate lunar navigation. The system described would allow, via the installation of a small number of beacons on the moon, very precise navigation over large areas of lunar or planetary surface. This talk was of great interest since Sam has a project in his
computer science class using multilateration for navigation, and the speaker compared the two systems and discussed their pros/cons. We ran on so much longer talking about trilateration that the next thing we did was the 6 PM dinner, with Rick Tumlinson giving a rousing overview of his company, Orbital Outfitters, which makes space suits for orbital tourists.
Friday morning we started bright and early with a career fair, but this proved to be of small size and very limited interest to a high school student. I note that the only booth that seemed really busy was the SpaceX table--not a surprise. At 10:30 AM we listened to Jesco von Puttakmer from NASA HQ review a history of plans to explore Mars, going all the way back to Von Braun's original ideas from the 1950s. The talk was fascinating, full of tidbits from the days when Puttakmer worked on Von Braun's team in Huntsville, and also with good insights from the Russian side of things, where
Puttakmer has spent time recently as part of his job supporting the space station.
Puttakmer's talk ran right into the 12 noon lunch talk by Paul Spudis, from the Lunar and Planetary Institute. Spudis was great, but rather than regurgitating his talk, you can check it out yourself at <http://www.spudislunarresources.com/Papers/Spudis_ISDC_2011.pdf>.
At 2 PM we started with "Global Space Surveillance" on the military track, but it was not that interesting so we moved on to "ISS and Mars: A Discussion of How ISS can be used to Advance Beyond LEO Travel," which proved mildly interesting but not earth-shattering (no pun intended). We started "Planetary Defense" at 3:30 PM, a panel led by Peter Worden, the Director of NASA Ames, but with a number of other speakers who appeared to be ex-military. The series of talks introduced very well the issues related to possible future asteroid/comet impacts on the Earth and options for mitigating their effects or preventing the impacts.
Soon it was time for the Friday evening "Gala" dinner--buses took us to the US Space and Rocket Center for a dinner underneath the hanging Saturn V--way way cool! The featured speaker was Robert Bigelow, a hotel magnate who has licensed from NASA the technology for inflatable space stations, and has flown two test stations on Russian rockets. I don't have the URL for the slides but you can see what they are doing at <http://bigelowaerospace.com>. Bigelow was an impressive, self-assured speaker clearly committed to an ambitious project.
Our final day at the conference [Saturday] started with a double- dose of Lunar X prize talks. These were in a kind of town meeting format, with the speakers sitting on the stage making short speeches and then answering questions. This was one of the more interesting parts of the conference, although as each team is a competitor, technical details were in short supply. One team, the "Part-time Scientists" had brought their test rover and Sam had fun driving it in the hallway.
The Saturday lunch featured Adam Harris of SpaceX, who received the Space Pioneer Award on behalf of SpaceX. Adam played a few videos and spent most of his time answering questions from the audience. Adam was very smooth but the talk did not contain much new information, possibly because at this point SpaceX is getting a lot of publicity.
Right after lunch we saw George Whitesides, CEO of Virgin Galactic, make his presentation. George, who is a former director of NSS, showed a few nice videos, including one showing the "feathering" test of Space Ship Two, and proceeded to spend most of the time answering audience questions. Again, at this point most people are pretty aware of what Virgin Galactic is doing.
At 3 PM we listened to Aurora Aerospace. This is a company that provides "astronaut training" to adventure tourists. This includes flying a T-38 jet and experiencing zero-gee using parabolic arcs. They have formed an alliance with an underwater hotel company, and are offering combined packages at a discount. The next step in their plans is to buy an XCOR Lynx rocketplane on the shared ownership model, and use it in their business. They are seeking investors for this purpose. You can check them out at <http://www.aurora-aerospace.com/>.
We started 4 PM with "Life Support Systems and Structural Design for Space Colony," which appeared to be a presentation by a graduate student at the State University of New York, and was only marginally better than the high school space settlement presentations. This was followed by "Low Earth Orbit Evolution as an Economic Zone," which proved to be of limited interest, so we switched over to "Sweating the Small Stuff: The Risks Posed by Meteors and Meteoroids to Ground Dwellers and Space Craft," given by Bill Cooke of NASA MSFC. Cooke gave an excellent presentation on a network of inexpensive [$800] ground stations that he has set up which allow for a nightly report on the orbits of all visible objects striking the Earth's atmosphere. The most impressive part of this talk was how much can be accomplished with a small team, a little money, and modern computer/electronic technology. The videos of spiders and birds interfering with the cameras were also humorous.
Our ISDC participation concluded with the Saturday night awards banquet, with keynote speaker Jeff Greason, CEO of XCOR, presenting a proposal for basing space policy on the construction of fuel depots in LEO, lunar orbit and Phobos. You can check out what he had to say by watching the video at the XCOR web site-- <http://www.xcor.com/video/isdc.html>. The fuel depot approach can be debated, but overall I found his step by step approach refreshing, humorous, and worthy of careful consideration.
As they say, "that's all folks." I found this ISDC a bit less overfull with revelations, partially because I am starting to catch up on what is going on after my many years of "space hibernation" while doing startups. It is also possible that some combination of the location and the battle over Constellation resulted in a dearth of interesting speakers. Last year's ISDC was joint with the AIAA solar power meeting on Thursday and Friday, so it would not be reasonable to expect the same quality of speakers this year as last. Still, all in all, a big success. This is a very exciting
time to be following the space enterprise, and it is unfortunate that the national press has not really conveyed the import of new developments to the general public. [-dls]