ISDC 96 Report
Thirty-five years after President Kennedy made his famous speech calling for a manned lunar mission by the end of the 1960s, space activists, entrepreneurs, and others met in New York City to examine ways of reinvigorating government and private space efforts with the same level of enthusiasm.
Over three hundred fifty people from around the U.S. and elsewhere met at the Grand Hyatt in New York for the fifteenth International Space Development Conference over Memorial Day weekend to discuss these and other space-related topics.
The scope of the conference makes it impossible to cover all the aspects of it in this issue, so we will provide highlights from some of the key sessions at the conference. Some topics summarized below may be covered in greater detail in future issues of SpaceViews.
Kennedy's Speech, 35 Years Later
A special session Saturday night, May 25, commemorated the 35th anniversary of a speech given before a joint session of Congress by President Kennedy that called for a manned lunar landing within the decade.
The momentum created by that speech is long since gone, according to Greg Zsidisin, conference chair and one of the speakers at the event. The problems today are more complex and institutional, and require less knowledge of technological solutions and more knowledge of the worlds of high finance and marketing.
After Frederick Ordway described the events leading up to Kennedy's speech, former astronaut Charlie Walker gave his impressions of the speech from the vantage point of a ten-year-old who had been interested in space for some time. The speech to him was no big deal. "So what, I knew we were going to the Moon," he said.
"What I did with my life was certainly guided and inspired" by Kennedy's speech, Walker said. "But what I did I did for personal reasons."
Dr. Peter Diamandis, founder of the X Prize and winner of the NSS's Space Pioneer award for special merit, note that America's space efforts in the 1960s succeeded because Kennedy laid out difficult but clearly-defined goal with a series of concrete, identifiable steps that led towards the goal.
He said that we need a similar concrete vision today. The details of the goal are not important, he said, so long as there exists a set of clear milestones leading to that goal.
John F. Kennedy's nephew, Patrick Kennedy, now a congressman from Rhode Island, sent a written message supporting the space program that was read at the event. "I believe America must reassert itself in the exploration of the stars," the younger Kennedy wrote. "Space is about our future here on Earth. Exploration is about ourselves."
Perhaps the boldest sentiment expressed during the commemoration was by Diamandis. "I'd like to ask us to stop celebrating the past and start celebrating the future," he said.
ISE Unveils New Rover
After the Kennedy speech commemoration Saturday night, a team from International Space Enterprises unveiled its newest rover designed for lunar exploration, appropriately named Camelot II.
The six-wheel, 11-kg (25-lb.) rover is the prototype for a design that will be used on missions to the Moon in the near future. The prototype, shown for the first time publicly at the conference, uses digital compression techniques to provide high-quality video with limited bandwidth.
The robotic rover has software with "executive controllers" which prevent human controllers on Earth from ordering it to perform maneuvers that would potentially damage or destroy the rover, such as going into a deep ravine.
While the prototype did experience some difficulties moving around a simulated rock-strewn lunar surface, Mark Simon of ISE expressed optimism that future versions of the robot would soon be traversing the lunar surface.
Space Tourism and the X Prize
A panel of experts discussed the X Prize and its impact on the prospects for space tourism at a conference session Saturday afternoon.
Peter Diamandis, founder of the X Prize, noted that space tourism is the type of economic engine needed to open the space frontier. He compared the prospects of space tourism with the current airline industry, which flies 1.6 billion passengers a year.
The X Prize is an award of $5 to 10 million to be given to the first group that can fly a reusable suborbital spacecraft that can carry at least three people twice within a two-week period.
Diamandis and Colette Bevis, vice president of the X Prize Foundation, compared the X Prize to the Orteig Prize, a $25,000 award for the first non-stop crossing of the Atlantic Ocean. The award was won in 1927 by Charles Lindbergh after a number of teams spent a combined total of $400,000 on aircraft development in efforts to win the award.
Thomas Rogers, president of the Space Transport Association, gave several reasons why the time was now right for commercial space tourism. He noted that market studies showed a large number of people were interested in going, making for a potential market as large as comsats. While the X-33 will receive government funding, he said, most of the development in new launch vehicles will come from the private sector, who will seek a return on their investment, opening the possibility for their interest in space tourism. Small companies are also making an impact in the area, he noted. Finally, while there is some interest in space tourism in the United States, there is perhaps greater interest in Japan, where officials have thought about space tourism for several years and where the Japanese Rocket Society's highest priority has become space tourism.
For space tourism to succeed, however, we must make a transition from the current era where space tourism is discouraged to where it is welcome, Rand Simberg, president of Interglobal Space Lines, said. History and culture has, to date, discouraged space tourism by promoting a "mythic culture" in which on NASA can do work in space.
Simberg said that Hollywood can play a major role in shaping opinions in the "New Space Age" in much the same way that it did in the original Space Age, though the use of new television programs, movies, articles, and multimedia presentations.
Diamandis quoted aerospace pioneer Burt Rutan, who attended the X Prize kickoff dinner in St. Louis May 18. He said Rutan believes 20 or more teams will enter the competition, with a winner in about three years. Perhaps what is more telling is that Rutan announced his intention to compete for the X Prize.
The Future of Solar Power from Space
Although space-based solar power has yet to make an impact in the world's energy economy more than a quarter-century after being originally proposed, the technical problems can be overcome and must be dealt with to meet the needs of the growing world population.
Peter Glaser, inventor of the concept of solar power satellites, kicked off a session on solar power systems Sunday morning, May 26, by explaining why solar power beamed from space is critical to the needs of the rapidly-growing population. He gave the increased percentage of the world's population living in cities, the growing standard of living -- with resulting increase in energy use -- in countries around the world and the general growth of the global population as all reasons why new sources of energy must be developed.
At the same time, he said, humanity must meet up to the three interrelated challenges of ecology, energy uses, and energy sources, when choosing how to meet the energy needs of the population. The best way to meet those challenges is with space-based solar power generation, he said.
While no solar power satellites have been built, a great deal of development has been made in related areas. The efficiency of solar cells has increased, and microwave generators -- necessary for beaming the solar power to Earth -- have become essentially ubiquitous thanks to microwave ovens.
Geoffrey Landis of the Ohio Aerospace Institute examined ways to improve the efficiency and reduce the cost of solar power. Current designed, based on improvements to a 1980 SPS baseline study, would provide energy at $1500 per kilowatt, an "okay price," according to Landis. Future designs that incorporate more efficient cells, spherical satellite designs, and new orbits could help reduce the price and make SPSs more interesting for power companies.
Mission HOME Described
A multi-million dollar project by the National Space Society, U. S. Space Foundation, and aerospace companies to increase awareness and support of space exploration was described at the conference Saturday.
Andy Woods, of the St. Louis advertising firm Fleishman Hillard, gave a detailed description of the goals and plans for the Mission HOME (Harvesting Opportunity for Mother Earth) project to increase space awareness among the general public.
Woods described research conducted by polls and with consumer groups. The research showed a low awareness about space and a lack of excitement, but found a great deal of dormant natural interest.
The program will use an approach of "Romance and Relevance" to convert the dormant interest into active support for space. The romance aspect will sell the excitement of space while the relevance aspect will stress how space makes life better.
The objectives of the Mission HOME campaign, according to Woods, are to broaden support for space, boost awareness of the benefits of space, create public demand and increase investment.
The campaign has adopted a number of strategies to achieve those objectives, including the use of the Internet and high technology tools, a desire to leverage and synthesize with existing programs, and the use of marketing tools and mass media to bring the messages of the campaign home to a large audience.
Mission HOME plans to target ten cities in its first year. Five cities -- Chicago, Indianapolis, Los Angeles, Baltimore, and Boston -- are "primary" targets and will feature town halls about space. One was held in Chicago last month.
Five other cities -- San Francisco, Little Rock, Des Moines, Charlotte, and Nashville -- will be "secondary" targets as part of a space media tour.
Other projects as part of Mission HOME include a "Made in Space" certification for merchandise made using space-related technologies, entertainment partnerships in Hollywood for television and films, a "National Space Test" TV program to test viewers' "space IQ," a day or week-long National Space Observance, and plans for a venture with MTV to sell space to "Generation X."
Pluto Express Keeps Nimble to Stay Alive
Despite strong budget pressures on the program, the proposed Pluto Express mission is still alive with a planned launch of two spacecraft in 2001, pre-project manager Robert Staehle explained in a presentation Saturday afternoon.
Staehle explained that the project has taken a new, "sciencecraft" approach to the proposed spacecraft to reduce costs. Instead of designing the spacecraft first before considering the needs of scientists and mission operations, all aspects of the mission have been included from the very beginning, allowing for efficient design decisions that will save money throughout the life of the mission.
Although original plans called for the launch of the Pluto Express spacecraft on a Proton or Titan IV booster on a direct trajectory to Pluto, budget cutbacks have forced them to consider smaller, less powerful boosters such as the Delta II and Russian Molniya. A new trajectory, with several gravity assists, has been designed to get the spacecraft to Pluto about a dozen years after launch, instead of the seven to eight originally proposed.
The mission is incorporating a host of new technologies and operations techniques to reduce costs without affecting performance. For example, during the long cruise phase of the mission, the spacecraft will broadcast one of four simple tones in place of a complex stream of telemetry. The tones, easily received on the Earth without the use of the Deep Space Network, will inform listeners on the ground on the status of the spacecraft and whether more attention is required.
The program continues to aggressively seek the participation of students, who make up 15 percent of the staff of the projects. Students have performed a variety of tasks from building mockups of the spacecraft to designing data compression algorithms for the spacecraft. The project also has an active educational outreach program.
Other ISDC News
Two prominent former astronauts scheduled to speak at the conference were no-shows. Norm Thagard, the first American astronaut to stay aboard the Russian space station Mir, could not attend due to a missed flight. Buzz Aldrin was unable to attend due to the flu... Houston got the nod for the 1999 ISDC by the NSS board of directors during the conference. The 1997 conference will be held in Orlando and Milwaukee will host the 1998 ISDC... NSS unveiled a new slide presentation designed for members to use in presentations to local organizations. Robert Zubrin gave an energetic presentation of "Open the Space Frontier" to a packed conference room Saturday... Congratulations to Greg Zsidisin, ISDC 96 chair, and the rest of the conference staff for a job well done!
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