Ken Murphy / 2:36 am May 27th, 2010

Beatty, Scott. Illus. by Carlos Rafael
“Buck Rogers #11: Moonstruck Pt. 1 - Tumbling Down”
Dynamite Entertainment
05/2010
Publisher’s Web Site

Ken Murphy / 4:11 am May 21st, 2010

Howdy everyone! I’m just taking a break here from my current project, the cobbling together of some kind of coherent program for this year’s Moon Day celebration on July 18th from 1-5 pm at the Frontiers of Flight Museum at Love Field in Dallas. That’s right, folks from elsewhere can fly in on Southwest Airlines, spend a couple bucks on a cab to take them around the corner (literally, the museum is at the south end of the runway), bask in all of the space goodness for a few hours, and then fly home in time for dinner.

The planning is marching ahead nicely for this year’s event, so I thought I’d share a bit of what I guess could be considered something of a systems engineering exercise. These are notes, and I tend to be overly optimistic in my planning with the expectation of many, many fails in the mix. In fact, I’ve already accumulated a few this year.

Last year, the museum’s Program Director, Bruce Bleakley, complained that I was throwing so much stuff at him for the event that it was like a three ring circus. I riposted that no, it was more like a three-ring-squared circus, which would be nine rings of space activity. This actually gave me an idea for organizing this year’s Moon Day on July 18th. I broke down the layout of the museum into zones (or rings) and then laid out the plan for each zone, being careful to avoid overlaps of thematic content.

Zone 1 is Bruce’s favorite, the auditorium. Seating 200 and with state-of-the-art A/V equipment, this is where we host our big names, to the extent that we can dig up big space names for a non-NASA locale. The first person I approached was Anousheh Ansari, who did a book signing for “My Dream of Stars” at the local independent bookstore Legacy Books up in Plano. I asked her if she would be interested in speaking at our event, to which she answered in the affirmative, and I also suggested that she might consider offering a special award at the annual Science Fair. I didn’t know if either suggestion will work out, but I hoped they both would.

The next person I approached was Richard Garriott, at the Space Economy Leadership Summit (SELS) earlier this month. He gave me a “maybe, let me check my calendar” response. I sent an e-mail, but haven’t heard back, so the museum is going to take over this one as they can offer perquisites that I don’t have a budget for. In fact, my budget for this event is $0.

It turns out that inviting two relatively local private space travellers to the ISS wasn’t necessarily a good idea. My thinking was that having the two of them would make the event more newsworthy, and offer a unique opportunity for the two of them to interact with the audience. The museum, though, is looking for balance in the content, and having both of them would, in their opinion, not be as good an idea as I thought. The museum is going to sort that little mess out. Oops.

The last speaker for the day will hopefully be local Starman Ron DiIulio, one of the local Solar System Ambassadors. Last year’s presentation was really well received, as was the asteroid door prize, and so the museum has him as a priority for the event. Unfortunately, this year I have to now ask everyone I approach about the event for a door prize. Sucks for me, but should be really, really good for the attendees. I’ve already got autographed copies of Brian Fies’ “Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow” and Robert Black’s “Lunar Pioneers“.

So that’s the glamorous stuff. Not quite so glamorous is Zone 2, the upstairs conference rooms. We make these into a single classroom, and get some folks to talk about grown-up space stuff that would bore the bejeesus out of younger attendees. Figure a junior college/university level type of talk. Last year we had Dr. James Carter talk about his formulation of regolith simulant used in abundant quantities by NASA, as well as Dr. John Hoffman, who had instruments on Mars, and was involved in the Lunar atmosphere experiments during Apollo.

This year I’ve blocked for three classes. For the first talk I’m trying to get a local meteorite hunter to talk about his experiences and how to look for meteorites. I met McCartney Taylor at a Mensa conference where we both gave space presentations, and he runs the Texas Meteorite Laboratory down in Austin. His talk will book-end nicely with Starman’s talk on meteorites in the auditorium at the end of the afternoon. Ron’s talk is going to be geared more towards how meteorites came to be and why we find them, compared with McCartney’s talk on how to hunt meteorites. McCartney will then spend the rest of the afternoon at a table on the main floor where he’ll have meteorites for sale. He’s just got to check his calendar.

The middle class will hopefully be someone that the museum knows, a cardiologist at UT Southwestern Medical Center and space medicine enthusiast. I had been trying to find someone in the area who could talk about Space Medicine, and it turns out the museum may have had it covered. This is an area that doesn’t get as much coverage as it should, and so I really wanted the ISS-themed content in the classroom to be on that topic.

For the last class of the day I want to cover rocket motors. We’re going to have a rocket building class, so it would be cool to have a lecture on real rockets they could attend afterwards. I’ve got my fingers crossed that I can work something out with Armadillo or SpaceX.

Zone 3 is the hallway and the mezzanine it leads to that overlooks the main floor. For the hallway we’re actually going to get an early start. The museum has asked me to have my Lunar art show ready the beginning of June, because they intend to leverage that for publicity for Moon Day. All of a sudden I have to finish getting stuff framed, and the local frame shop has gotten backed up. Plus I’m going to be out of town for the next two weeks to head up to the Space Investment Summit and International Space Development Conference in Chicago next week. That means the soonest I can hope to have it up is the first weekend in June, and I still need to catalogue everything.

The collection is from the Lunar Library, and will be about 20-25 pieces all told, breaking down into three broad themes:

-the Lunar surface
-Lunar tourism
-Lunar Industry

The Lunar surface will be pieces like the framed Lunar Quadrant Maps, “The Dark Side of the Moon“, and a poster of the program cover from “Dans les champs des etoiles“. Then there will be some showing rockets headed for the Moon, and some showing landings and folks getting out and exploring. This section will be things like “Lunar Adventures” and the cover from “Thrilling Wonder Stories”. Eventually you move to industry, and so I have a Lunar greenhouse, and some action shots of Moonbases. Some items are geared more towards kids, and will be hung at a lower level. Things like “The Ultimate Sandbox” and “One Small Step“. The last two items are Plinius Cemetary and one whose name I have to track down showing an image of footprints leading to the Lunar horizon, with a backdrop bespeckled with the stars twinkling in infinity. I think it was from “In the Stream of Stars”. I’ve also got a secret piece that I’m working on to add to the event.

So that art show is going to be put on the local online art calendars and on the FoF website, which will draw people who can then be told about the Moon Day event. The big problem I’m having right now is coming up with a name for the show. It’s going to be “Something Something: Art from the Lunar Library”. I get stuff like Ars Selenica and Explorer’s Moon and so on bouncing around in my brain and none of it quite fits and falls into place. Any suggestions would be welcome in the comments, and should I select one I’ll send something from the Lunar Library like an extra copy of “Jour J: Les Russes sur La Lune“. I do have English language books as well.

For the open mezzanine area in Zone 3 I’ve suggested that the museum contact NASA about getting some exhibit panels on things like space food, ISS and meteorites. This is another relatively simple away to fill floorspace with space stuff.

Zone 4 is the downstairs classrooms where we’ll hold the kids classes. Local astronomy professor Chaz Hafey is going to hold a couple of classes. Last year he did the Lunar Sample Disks from JSC, and I’m hoping he’ll do the same again this year, but he does have a long pedigree in space education and outreach so I don’t want to limit him. I am going to have to pin him down on something at some point in the not too distant future.

The other classroom is being turned over to local Civil Air Patrol/Solar System Ambassador/NSS-NT member Cynthia Whisennand for her Toys in Space program. Last year she held it at a table, which was a bit awkward when a crowd built up in the through traffic of the displays. Having a classroom will let her stretch her wings a bit and focus on the kids.

Zone 5 is the kids area. I was hoping to use the play area, but the museum hosts birthday parties, and they pay for priority access to the play area. Looks like this one is going to get pushed off closer to the SR-71 cockpit trainer. What I envision for this area is picture book readings, arts & crafts, and things like crater-making and balloon rockets. My plan is to line up two or three NSS-NT chapter members to run this area.

Zone 6 is the workshop, where the local Dallas Area Rocket Society (DARS) has already agreed to conduct a rocket building class in the area where the museum builds its models. There is an extra fee for this class, but it’s structured so that participants get a rocket and one year membership in DARS. Plus, if they want to launch their brand new rockets they have to go to one of DARS’ monthly launches up in Frisco unless they find other accommodations. The workshop is like a fishbowl with windowed sides so that all of the attendees will get a chance to check out the young rocketeers.

Zone 7 is the main floor with all of the displays and booths, and really my main responsibility. Already lined up for displays are:

-NSS of North Texas - 6 tables, two each on ISS/Tech Transfer, Asteroids, and the Moon.
-DARS - at least two tables
-Dallas Mars Society - at least one table, probably more, because they’re hoping to make a bid to host the 2011 Mars Society annual conference in Dallas. NSS-NT is going to be supporting them in this, just as they supported NSS-NT during the 2007 ISDC in Dallas.
-Astronaut Training Center - at least one table, plus possibly a floater chair that rides on compressed air to illustrate Newton’s Laws. There aren’t just indemnification issues, but also acoustic issues from running an air compressor motor inside a big hangar.
-UTA Planetarium will once again have a table to sign folks up for their monthly Starry Messenger newsletter.

There are a lot of other feelers out as well, and some yet to be sent out. I have gotten one rejection, from the Monnig Meteorite Gallery, but they always have something else going on during my events so this wasn’t unexpected, but you still have to go through the motions.

The Noble Planetarium over in Fort Worth re-opened recently after an upgrade, so I want to invite them. The Planetarium at Fair Park is a venerable institution, and they do have a portable StarLab in which I’m definitely interested. UNT also has a planetarium, as does the town of Garland for their schools, and the St. Mark’s Academy in Dallas for their students. Richland College is in the process of giving their long closed planetarium a makeover as the new Buzz Aldrin Planetarium. So this is a rich field to mine here in the metroplex in regards to planetariums.

We’re also trying to line up vendors for the event. I’ve already mentioned that the Texas Meteorite Laboratory down in Austin is interested in a table to sell meteorites. I’m talking to someone about having math & science t-shirts for sale, and the museum is going to be talking to Dallas-headquartered Half-Price Books (HPB) to see about having them bring a whole bunch of space books to the event to sell. I’m also going to try to contact the local The Observatory to see if they want to have a booth again. Their participation last year wasn’t particularly fruitful for them, so this one is 50/50.

I’ve sent out a lot of requests for materials, but have many more to go. These will take two forms - general distribution handouts for the main floor, and special stuff for the ‘Lunar Sample Bag’ that each youngster gets for attending the event. It will be stuffed with things geared toward a younger audience - stickers, bookmarks, posters, and so on. Last year, since we had no budget, the sample bags were white kitchen garbage bags, because they were ultra cheap per unit and large enough to contain even the posters. I want to do better this year, so I am making some special requests to see if I can get some funding to print up some tote bags with ‘Lunar Sample Bag’ and the corporate logo on them. Wish I could do it myself, but most folks won’t take $0 (my budget) for their goods or services.

On the corporate side, I’ve got a “let us think about it and we’ll get back to you” from Armadillo Aerospace, who just had a really nice write-up in the local Dallas Observer (a fine free alternative to the local daily). I managed to corner Ken Bowersox of SpaceX at the SELS conference, who indicated that it was totally unlikely that SpaceX would be willing to throw a rocket motor in the back of a pick-up and haul it all the way from McGregor to Dallas to show off. The stuff down there is all operational equipment, slated for actual use and so not available for gallivanting around North Texas. I’m still hoping to get a speaker about rocket motors from them. There are a couple of other space companies in Texas I’ve approached, but they’re a little farther afield.

The museum already has a bunch of space stuff, so they’ll have their ‘Dr. Apollo’ giving explanations about the inside of the Apollo 7 capsule, there’s a Moon Walk exhibit to wander through, as well as display cases of artifacts, some Beal Aerospace relics, and even a model of the Sputnik hanging from the rafters.

Zone 8 is outside. I’d like to plant a Moon Tree at the museum for the event, but I’m also thinking that the middle of summer in Texas might not be the best time to plant a sapling. When the Texas Astronomical Society comes on board they will probably have telescopes with Solar filters out front. Unfortunately the last quarter Moon will have set before the festivities kick off at 1pm.

My big wish is that we can get the NASA ISS trailers, which would actually be parked there for a couple of weeks. Having that at the Moon Day event would just thoroughly overrun my personal goal of 1,000 attendees this year.

So there you have it, eight zones of chaotic space goodness. What’s amazing is that if you trust that everyone knows what they’re doing, and don’t get in the way of them doing it, then most of the time you’re right. There will be flubs. It happens and can’t be avoided no matter how much forethought and planning one puts into an event.

Planning and forethought, like wait, where’s the Moon stuff?

Zone:
1: ISS, ?, Asteroids
2: Asteroids, ISS, Rockets
3: Lunar art, Asteroids, ISS
4: Moon, ISS
5: Moon, Rockets
6: Rockets
7: ISS, Asteroids, Moon, Mars, Rockets, Apollo, Astronomy
8: Moon?, Sun, ISS?

So if it’s Moon Day, shouldn’t there be a lot more Moon stuff? The big blank is the question mark in the middle session in the auditorium. We’re unlikely to find a big name Moon person up here in the non-NASA hinterlands of North Texas. Unless Alan Bean decides to pop out of the studio, though frankly this isn’t an Apollo decadal anniversary so I’d like to focus on forward looking stuff like space commercialization.

I do see where there could be concerns about being overbalanced towards ISS subject matter, but I’m okay with that because I like the ISS and I think it will become a useful tool before it’s done. I also know that the delta-V to EML-1 from an ISS orbit is the same as for a station in a lower inclination orbit, which allows for some degree of transport standardization, even if one uses a free-return cycler, and so the ISS isn’t necessarily an albatross tied around the neck of NASA, even if there are plenty of people willing to proclaim it as such.

I could give a talk on cislunar space and the Moon, but no one knows who I am or why they should listen to me, so the museum is concerned that approximately 99% (or more) of the 200 seats in the auditorium would go unfilled were I to do so. Probably a valid concern, though I’d like to think it would be closer to 95% vacant.

The NASA Lunar Science Institute has just joined up with a couple boxes of materials, although they are concerned about getting materials specifically to educators. I had to tell them that if someone self-identifies as an educator at one of our displays then we can hook them up, but unless they say something then we have no idea. The McDonald Observatory is also going to be sending some nice postcards for the Lunar Sample Bags.

Marketing of the event is going to kick off in early June once the art show is up, and will be a splash on the museum’s website. I then have to go around to all of the major online event calendars and post the event, with a pointer to the museum’s website. We’re going to print up a bunch of 8.5×11 mini-posters and try to get all of the members of the participating organizations to each post one at a library or used bookstore or record shop or anywhere else they can find a community bulletin board. Libraries are the big one here, as that’s the kind of self-motivated audience we’re looking for.

I may to try to see about getting announcements on local radio stations. Back in the early 90s when I was a volunteer DJ (DJ Ken) on WBER 90.5 FM (The Only Station That Matters) in upstate New York we used to have to read announcements and community calendar stuff every twenty minutes. I guess I’ll have to check around the bottom end of the dial here in the metroplex to see if anyone still does that kind of public service stuff.

My big secret wish is to get a show on KERA’s Think with Krys Boyd. Back in 2007 when we had the ISDC here I kind of forced the issue with NSS HQ to get George Whitesides on the show to talk about the conference. Which he did, sort of. My intent was to have him mention that the ISDC was open to the public and that Day Passes were available, though that message didn’t get conveyed. They also got a show immediately after the conference with Rusty Schweickart to talk about his B612 Foundation. So there is some precedent. My guess is that they’ll have Bruce on, and perhaps myself (I do have a face for radio), though I’ve already asked Starman if he would be the standby in case they want someone actually important in the local space community to be on the show.

And that, in a nutshell, is how I put together a public outreach space event that’s fun for everyone. It’s not entirely a flawless process, but the end result should work out well. I am seeing a certain receptiveness to sending outreach materials that I haven’t seen much before, and a lot more folks seem much more approachable about helping out. My hope is that this is in part a recognition that this is a local community grassroots effort. I suppose that makes me something of a ‘community organizer’, although that’s not an appellation I would use myself. I just like to think of myself as a Moon guy who wants his community to know a lot more about space and how important it can be for our economy, and Moon Day is a good way to do it.

Rob Wilson / 11:22 am May 14th, 2010

Space Shuttle Atlantis is poised to launch to the International Space Station, and NASA is hosting a Twitter meet-up, or tweet-up, at the launch.

If you’re one of the 150 lucky invitees attending the shuttle launch as guests of NASA, I can tell you from personal experience that you are in for a huge treat. This is only the second time that NASA has opened the gates of Kennedy Space Center to space tweeps for a shuttle launch. By very good fortune, I was there for the first.

The confirmation email arrived while I was at work. I could hardly believe it; in fact I briefly entertained the thought that it was a prank on the part of some of my colleagues. But it was official: I was invited to attend the launch of STS-129. In no time at all I went from “hmmm, it’s a long way to go” (I live in Christchurch, New Zealand) to arranging leave and airline tickets. It was the chance of a lifetime, and as my very understanding partner explained it, “Don’t be an idiot, of course you have to go!”

100 New Friends

On the first day of the Tweet-Up we all met in the parking lot outside the Kennedy Space Center Visitor’s complex. I spotted the first of the other space tweeps while walking from my rental car to the registration table, and we quickly fell into conversation. One of the neatest things about the whole two day event was that whoever you talked to, you made a friend. The space tweeps were some of the most genuinely friendly people I have had occasion to meet. They came from all walks of life – teachers, IT people, an astrophysicist or two, a film-maker, even a couple of NASA employees. But no matter who you talked to, you had an instant common interest. By the end of the first day, when some 30 or 40 of us descended en masse on an unsuspecting Titusville restaurant, I felt like I had made 100 new friends.

One thing I didn’t do that I later regretted was to make up some contact detail cards to give out to the people I met. I had thought about it, but ran out of time before I traveled. Others had not only thought about it, but done it, and it proved to be a great way to swap contact details. Photographing people’s NASA-issued ID badges (with their permission, of course) was another good way of remembering faces, names and twitter handles.

Once we were registered on that first day, we had about half an hour to kill before the official kickoff at the Kurt H Debus Conference Facility. That was just as well, because the first thing you see as you walk toward the visitor complex is a tantalizing view of the rocket garden. After a quick reconnoiter of Titans and Atlases and a Saturn 1B, I discovered that the conference facility itself hosts the Early Space Exploration exhibit, which is well worth taking some time over. Not only does it have Neil Armstrong’s Apollo space-suit, but Gemini and Mercury capsules, and a lot more, including the original Mercury mission control consoles. Standing next to the space capsules, you really get an appreciation of how small and cramped they are. Frank Borman and Jim Lovell spent two weeks in orbit wedged shoulder to shoulder in a Gemini capsule, to prove that people could survive in space for the length of time it would take to get to the Moon and back. How they did it and stayed sane, I will never know. It’s a cliché to talk about the courage and endurance of astronauts, but it’s become a cliché because it’s the truth. I could have spent a lot longer looking through the exhibits (and did a couple of days later after the tweetup), but it was time for the day’s main event.

A piece of ‘frozen smoke’ - Part of the aerogel particle collector from the Stardust mission

We were all ushered into the conference room, which was set up with a number of round tables, so that we all sat in groups, and a small stage at the front for the speakers. Each table had an unusual object on it, some stranger than others, and we were invited to guess what they were. My table’s object was pretty easy – a Space Shuttle thermal protection tile. We all passed it round and felt how light it was. I’m still amazed at the thought that I got to hold a piece of the shuttle in my hand. Another table had one of the hold-down bolts that pins each shuttle solid rocket booster to the pad before lift-off. Probably the coolest one was a piece of aerogel, a small blue-ish cube of quite literally the lightest solid material imaginable. Aerogel is often referred to as ‘frozen smoke’, as it is 99 percent empty space. What made this particular sample so cool is that it was part of the particle collector from the Stardust space mission – it had traveled several million miles away from the Earth, collected samples of interstellar dust, and returned in its unmanned probe, and NASA was letting us hold a piece of it!

The ‘twitter-fall’ of of real-time tweets from #NASATweetUp

Next up was a series of talks from NASA officials, including astronaut Mike Massimino, and Wayne Hale, a former shuttle flight director, then shuttle program manager, now deputy associate administrator for strategic partnerships. When these guys spoke, everyone listened, and the stories they told were fascinating. Of course, this was a room full of twitter users, so the way everyone listened was heads down, keyboards out, and typing furiously. A twitter-fall of all the tweets in real time was projected onto large screens at the front of the room. Occasionally, the real-time feedback to the speakers was hilarious. “Oh- ok, so I know you’re all listening, even though no-one’s looking at me, because I just saw what I was saying on the wall!” With 100 people tweeting solidly all morning, the #NASATweetUp certainly got noticed in the Twitterverse - at one point we rose to number three on the trending topics.

The lunchtime break was a great time to explore the KSC visitor complex, and many of us tried out the Shuttle Launch Experience ride. Some of us more than once And I suspect that the hundred of us put a noticeable blip into the gift shop’s sales figures for that day.

Tour to the Launch Pad

In the afternoon we boarded buses for a tour of the space center. Where I was really hit home for me as the bus turned a corner and the iconic towering bulk of the Vertical Assembly Building came into view in the distance. The bus continued on, and the VAB grew larger - and larger - and larger. That building is huge! I’d seen it so many times in pictures and on NASA TV, and now I was actually there. I could just imagine a giant Saturn V rocket emerging slowly from one of those massively tall hangar doors. Now, it houses the shuttles as they are stacked in preparation for flight.

Nestled at the base of the VAB is the launch control center, containing the firing rooms from which the complex process of launching a shuttle is directed. The bus continued on past that, to the dock where barges bring the big orange External Tanks from their assembly facility in Michoud. From there we went past the crawler park, where the tracked crawler transporters live when they are not taking a shuttle stack out to the launch pad (or in days gone by, a Saturn V moon rocket). Just past the crawlers, we saw several as-yet-unstacked sections of the launch gantry being assesmbled for the new Ares rocket, then we were on a road running parallel to the crawlerway, out toward the launch pads. We were on our way to meet shuttle Atlantis. About half-way to the pad, we passed a gantry-like building on our right, and our tour guide explained that that was the viewing platform from which members of the public were allowed to see the shuttle at the launch pad. But our bus kept on going right past it.

Shuttle Atlantis on the launch pad, mostly obscured by the rotating service structure

We got out of our buses, into a roped-off grassy viewing area, just across the road from the space shuttle on its launch pad. I stood and gaped for a while. Even mostly hidden within its rotating service structure, the shuttle stack was a thing of awe. Today it sat silent, waiting, being prepared and checked out for flight. Tomorrow its engines would roar for eight short minutes, and then it would be in space, traveling round the world at eighteen thousand miles per hour.

Launch Day

For launch day, we were all to assemble at KARS park, from which we would be bused to KSC proper and the press site where our tweet-up marquee was. We all thought the traffic would be terrible, and no one wanted to miss the buses. Consequently, we were all there far too early – some of us well over an hour – and a bit of an impromptu tailgate party ensued while we waited. Eventually the buses came, and we were taken to the press area just behind the VAB, with the grassy area in front of the countdown clock that you often see on NASA TV, and a view of the shuttle on the pad in the distance out beyond that.

Twitter Central with the Vertical Assembly Building in the background

We were once again well catered for, in a marquee with full wireless connectivity and streaming NASA TV on two large flatscreen displays at the front of the room. Outside, we got to mingle with all the press representatives who had come to cover the launch. Once again there were a series of talks, this time from the guys who prepare the shuttle for launch. You could tell these folks loved their jobs (and who wouldn’t). We learned all about the shuttle systems, right down to how the hatch is sealed when closing the astronauts in for the flight.

At the beginning of the day, conditions were looking iffy for launch - there was a layer of cloud, the likes of which had caused launch postponements in the past. We all told each other that it would burn off before the mid-afternoon launch time. We all hoped that we were right. Luckily, we were.

The launch of a space shuttle is a true spectacle. We were as close as you can get to the launch, without being in one of the rescue armored personnel carriers parked a little further up the crawlerway. That’s still four miles from the pad. They keep you that far away for a good reason: the energies released are gargantuan. First there is bright light, and the distant shuttle rises noiselessly and slowly into the air. It picks up speed, trailing a magnesium-bright flare of white-hot rocket exhaust atop a pillar of white smoke. Then the sound finally hits you, a rumbling, crackling roar that seems to intensify as the shuttle climbs higher and arcs over away from you, till it seems that its mighty engines are pointed right at you. Then the sound fades, you can just make out the solid rocket boosters separating, and the rapidly receding shuttle is just a bright point, well on its way to space. Then everyone is quiet, and contemplative, and you take a moment to reflect on the fact that what you just saw was a machine made by people, harnessing tamed energies equivalent to a small nuclear bomb, with courageous astronauts riding inside it, and while you’ve been thinking about that, they are already floating weightless in space. It’s a profound and amazing experience, and there aren’t really words to do it justice.

Unless you’re seriously into cameras, don’t spend the launch hiding behind a viewfinder. Put all your gadgets down at t-10 or so, and just watch, and listen, and drink in the experience. If, as the shuttle arcs skyward, you find yourself swallowing a lump in your throat, or blinking away a tear, don’t worry about it, you’ll be in good company.

Freedom star and the return of the solid rocket boosters

I’m not normally a pessimist, but I’ve followed the Shuttle long enough to know that there is no guarantee of an on-time launch. Because I was coming from so far away, I was determined that I would see the thing launch even if it were delayed, and so I planned my trip to stay in Cocoa for several days after the nominal launch date.
Perhaps because I was so well prepared for delays, it was a flawless countdown and on-time launch. Not only did it give me a chance to visit the Orlando theme parks, but it had one unexpected side benefit: On the Thursday morning after the Monday launch, the booster recovery ships returned to port, towing the two white solid rocket boosters that had lofted Atlantis for the first two minutes of her journey to orbit. To get back to the processing facility, they have to come through the lock at Port Canaveral, which is a perfect time to catch them for a photo:

The Freedom Star and a Shuttle Solid Rocket Booster

It meant an early start on a cold morning, but sure enough, the booster recovery ship Freedom Star came gliding past, with Atlantis’ right hand solid rocket booster in tow.

[Update 5/15 - Somehow, I managed to get my wires crossed. STS-129 was Atlantis, not Discovery. Corrected]

Ken Murphy / 9:59 pm May 8th, 2010

Howdy everyone! I took a couple of vacation days this week, so that of course means Space Conference!

This time around it was the Space Economy Leadership Summit just down the road in Austin at the Stephen F. Austin Hotel on Congress Avenue. Put together by Phillips & Co., it aimed to look at “job creation and entrepreneurship for the next economic frontier.”

Things got started with a brief intro from the Texas Secretary of State, Esperanza Andrade, who extolled the virtues of doing business in the great state of Texas. One point she didn’t make (but I like to) is that Texas used to be considered worthless scrub land by pretty much everyone. It’s a harsh, stark, austere state with much danger awaiting the unwary,and those who do thrive here tend to be of a stouter stock than in most places. The harshness of the land also makes for a very pragmatic mindset. It is very difficult to wrest prosperity from the lands of Texas, and once wrested folks tend to be very possessive of it. That’s part of why we only let our legislature meet every other year. There’s work to be done and we don’t need political tomfoolery distracting folks from the tasks at hand.

Texas is, in my view, a perfect of analogy for the development of the near space frontier. If we can make Texas of all places a pleasant place to live (heaven on Earth for some of us), then we can make pretty much anywhere a pleasant place to live and that definitely includes the Moon.

One point she did make was that Texas has 30+ universities and 20 high schools that offer aeronautical courses.

Next up was Wayne Hale from NASA, a well-regarded commenter on the state of the organization. The essence of his talk was the question “Do we want to be China or do we want to be Portugal?” In this case we’re talking the 15th Century, when China was in the process of shutting down its huge Imperial fleet at the same time that Portugal was ramping up its exploration and trading efforts. One point that Wayne made regarded the mindset of the decision-makers in China, who were seeing the results of all the tradestuffs streaming back to Beijing and decided that hey, China had the best of everything already, the highest culture, the most advanced sciences, the biggest armies, the best food; for what did they need the rest of the world?

Except that it was Portugal and its European competitors, and their offshoots, which led the world into the 21st century, and now China is doing a very effective job of catch-up. So which do we want to be? The monolithic empire that seems to think it is the best at everything? Or one of the competitors for the abundant resources and energy of space that will be leading the world into the 25th century?

The first panel looked at the impact of the space economy. One number that was bandied about quite a bit was the $261.7Bn that the space sector contributes to the world economy. That’s not chump change, and it’s set to get bigger. Patti Grace Smith, formerly with the FAA and now an advisor to Bigelow Aerospace, was joined by Ken Bowersox of SpaceX, Dr. George Sowers of ULA, and Carl Walz of Orbital Sciences.

I did get to ask a question during this panel, so I asked the group if any effort was being made to design to a common payload interface, such that if I, as an entrepreneur, developed some kind of Murphy Coupe with rich Corinthian leather seats and an Apple-designed ergonomic interface, would I be able to stick it on any of the launchers proposed with basically no adaptation. Kind of like how I can stick a USB flash drive into a Dell, or HP, or Apple, or Fujitsu, or whatever. The answer from Dr. Sowers was noteworthy, in that he indicated that the military had the same concern with swapping payloads between launchers (the whole point of having multiple launch vehicles in the stable), and so had a Standard Interface Spec that both rockets were designed to.

This is encouraging, as it means there is going to be more opportunity for space vehicles to be separated launch vehicles in the context of who manufactures them. SpaceX shouldn’t care what launch vehicle their Dragons launch on, so long as people are buying Dragons. In fact, during a stand-down of the Falcon-9 (and SpaceX will have them, just like everyone else), the ability to continue to generate cash flows from the continuing sale of Dragon capsules could be a key strategic consideration. This also means that someone like Murphydyne Industries could design and build space vehicles without also having to design and build launch vehicles. That’s how entrepreneurial opportunities arise.

The next panel was on Green Space - Economic Growth at the Intersection of the Environment, Energy and Space. It was led by the host of the proceedings, Richard Phillips,and featured Adm. Conrad Lautenbacher of CSC, Nancy Colleton of the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies, and Dan Thoma of Iridium. Adm. Lautenbacher was an engaging speaker, and spoke a bit about the biggest little company you’ve never heard of, CSC. Ms. Colleton noted the key role that Earth observation satellites play in the global economy, as well as the disconnect that people have regarding even the existence of such things. She was the first of many during the conference to note the quote offered up by some rube: “What do we need NOAA for? We’ve got the Weather Channel!”

I got to ask my second and last question of the day to Mr. Thoma, who had noted during his remarks that Iridium was in the process of working up the financing for their next round of satellites in a couple of years. I asked in general what kind of approach were they taking for the financing? Syndicated loan, debt instruments, or what? He said what. In this case Export Trade Credits, which can be financed. Sort of like accounts receivable financing, but not exactly. I can’t think of a better example at the moment since I haven’t looked at that sort of thing in a long while. He also noted that less that 10% of the Earth is served by terrestrial wireless, so definitely an ongoing market for satcomms.

During the lunch break we were treated to a canned pitch for the status quo from Congressman Pete Olsen, which was rather ambivalently received by the attendees, and a much livelier talk from Esther Dyson, who talked about her adventures in the space field.

The first set of presentations after lunch was on Universal Communications and the Promise of Global Connectivity. Greg Pelton of Cisco IRIS talked about the various ways that Cisco is looking at things like how to do IP (internet protocol IP, not intellectual property IP) in space. He noted that the latency of using GEO sats in the comm pipe is actually competitive with terrestrial wireless, and that expectations of consumers dropped once everyone started using cell phones. Also more advance stuff like machine to machine (M2M) and ‘cognition’ (in the sense of awareness of location in space (via GPS signals) and the ability of the sat to communicate.

James Hollopeter, of GIT Satellite Communications, talked about where the rubber meets the road, and how his company works as a middleman to work with consumers (individuals or, mostly, businesses) and satcomm suppliers to craft the best solution for both. Which is one of the best ways to build long-term business relationships.

Last up, Tiffany Montague from Google Space Initiatives gave an overview of Google’s activities spacewise. It was a well-received talk, and the guys were lining up afterwards to talk with her. Yours truly included, as I wanted to cover a couple of points:

1) I wanted to thank her because Google has been bery, bery good to Out of the Cradle (and she got the cultural reference). OotC is considered a “Low Priority” website by Google Webmaster, but it shows up on the front page of a lot of space-related search queries. She averred that that spoke to the quality of the content, because you can’t game their engine. Dang she’s good.

2) I wanted to develop a bit of a rapport, so I mentioned a couple of younger folks I know that she has worked with, including Amanda Stiles (one of my competitors for Lunar expert), as well as Robbie Schingler and Jessy Cowan out at NASA Ames, so we chatted a bit about efforts like CoLab.

3) The main point of my visit was to ask her if she could get on the different Google Lunar X-Prize teams to respond to the EVA Interview requests. Eva’s had two teams so far respond to the questions she sent out through the X-Prize Foundation (and one with Will Pomerantz), so I figured maybe if Google dropped them a note encouraging them to respond we would get even more interviews up for everyone to learn more about the competition. So I’ve got to send her a reminder, one of many e-mails I’ve got to put together this weekend.

This little endeavor kept me occupied during the first half of the next panel (since I did have to wait in line), and so I only saw the last bit of Hal Hagemeier’s presentation from the National Space Security Office, and then James Baker’s talk from MEI Technologies.

The last panel of the day was on Job Growth, Entrepreneurship and U.S. Competitiveness, led by Doug Comstock of NASA IPP. Micah Walter-Range from the Space Foundation gave an overview of their recent market survey report, which shed a bit more light on the mysterious $261.7Bn figure noted above. I haven’t seen the report yet, so I don’t know the methodology used to arrive at the figures (a key bit of information if one is to do analysis), but they break down roughly as follows:

Commercial Infrastructure: $83.6Bn
Infrastructure Support: $1.2Bn
Commercial Satellite Services: $90.6Bn (yowza!)
International Governmental: $21.8Bn
Government (pres. U.S.): $64.4Bn
Commercial Space Transportation: $0.1Bn (actually, $80.0Mn, which rounds to $0.1Bn)

As I said, I don’t know how they got these figures, so I won’t comment on them (other than the remarks above). Micah’s supposed to send me a copy for the Lunar Library, so yet another e-mail to compose this weekend.

Peggy Slye of Futron provided further details, as did Mary-Lynne Dittmar, whose Dittmar Associates has done extensive market research in different space-related areas. Jeff Krukin was, of course, Jeff Krukin, and if you haven’t seen him speak then make sure to sign up for the next Space Frontier Foundation conference.

Closing remarks were provided by Richard Garriott, who covered the perils and pitfalls of being a citizen astronaut. I approached him about possibly being a speaker at the Moon Day event I’m putting together for July 18th at the Frontiers of Flight Museum at Love Field in Dallas. He’s got to check his scheduled but he indicated he’s interested. If I can get both Richard and Anousheh Ansari to speak at the event that should certainly be newsworthy. Or at least should be.

Afterwards, everyone was bused up to the Texas State History Museum at MLK and Congress for cocktails and munchies, and a long address by Buzz Aldrin. Kudos to Buzz for getting out there and proselytizing, but I’m not getting the feeling that the younger folks are really buying into it. Sure, some are, and people will always cluster to get his autograph, but does that translate into a deeper appreciation for the subject? I appreciate his efforts, but younger voices are needed. Unfortunately, the youngest man to walk on the Moon so far was born in 1936, so there’s not a big pool of talent to work with except for a whole bunch of us wannabes. I do have to admit that I’ve seen him speak many times over the years, most recently at the inauguration of efforts at Richland College to restore the Buzz Aldrin Planetarium where he gave mostly the same talk, and so it may not hold the same magic as it does for others to be in the presence of living transcendental history.

Which brings us to the topic of demographics. There were between 50-70 folks there during the day. I couldn’t identify more than about a dozen of them as being of Gen X or less. 20% isn’t bad, but it should be higher. I should drop Mr. Phillips a note about advertising the next one at the MBA school up the road at UT.

Props go out to Paragon SDC, whose man Shawn was probably the youngest person there. I’ve got to drop him a line about the Houston office of Paragon maybe participating with a display or speaker on their activities at my Moon Day event. That the company paid to send someone up to Austin for an event like this speaks well of their desire to cultivate their assets, something that’s all too rare these days. Speaking of cultivating assets, Tiffany Montague was a terrific ambassador for Google, and she was out canvasing for prospects throughout the event.

The point is, there should have been at least 70 youngsters (Gen X and under) at the event. There should have been more corporate presence from the many support companies, like Oceaneering, that have an economic presence in the state. That there wasn’t certainly wasn’t the fault of the organizers, and I think this was a terrific start to something that I hope they will continue, perhaps traveling around the great state of Texas to allow different pools of participants to contribute their own flavor to the proceedings. Texas is ripe with the kind of pioneer stock we need to get a real human spaceflight enterprise going, the kind that does generate more value than it consumes, and thereby grows the wealth of its backers.

Overall, I think it was a good conference. I learned a few things, did some networking, enjoyed the pleasures of the capitol area of the city. This was supplemented by a rather successful haul of materials for the Lunar Library from a variety of Half-Price Books (HPB) and Austin Comics, both of which I’ve been shopping since I was a little punk-a@# junior high schooler living over by the old airport back in the late 70s, fresh back from England and culture shocked beyond belief. HPB has also been bery, bery good to the Lunar Library over the years, and this year was no exception. From the hard-core 1964 edition of “Rocket Propulsion Elements” (the equations! the graphs! the diagrams! Total geek pr0n!) to a Christian fiction book, “Zero-G”, where a space tourist finds G-d.

One thing that did surprise me was the amount of local press coverage, something we don’t usually see much of up here in the metroplex. Some examples:

Examiner.com - Buzz Aldrin lights up Austin Space Summit
Austin-American Statesman - Summit explored space as the next economic frontier
weareaustin.com - Buzz Aldrin visits Austin, talks about future space travel
News 8 Austin - Leaders discuss job creation for ‘next economic frontier’
KXAN -Future of space trips debated in Austin

Next up on the space business conference circuit is the 8th Space Investment Summit on May 26th up the road in Chicago. As in years past, it’s being held in conjunction with the NSS’s International Space Development Conference, which runs through Memorial Day. The programs for both events are still being finalized, but it looks like a powerhouse line-up.

Coming up later in the summer is the dynamic duo of the NASA Lunar Science Forum 2010 from July 20th through 22nd, and then the NewSpace 2010 conference from July 23rd through 25th, both out in Silicon Valley.

Some folks may be focused on building a particular rocket, or going to a particular destination, but there are also a lot of folks focused on growing the space industry into an even greater contributor to the country’s GDP. For the latter, there are many interesting opportunities coming up in the near future.

Ken Murphy / 12:13 am May 5th, 2010

Kou Yaginuma
“Twin Spica, Vol. 1″ (Futatsu no Supika)
Vertical, Inc.
2002 (2010)
ISBN13: 978-1-934-28784-2
Publisher’s Web Site

Librarian’s Note: Some fresh space manga for young American audiences. Young Asumi applies to the Tokyo Space School, and is accompanied by a lion-headed spirit that helps guide her through the trials of life. The protagonist is 13 years old, so I can easily envision readers as young as 9 or 10 enjoying this one.

Ken Murphy / 12:05 am May 1st, 2010

Long, Mark, Nick Sagan & Clinnette Minnis. Illus. by Concept Art House
“Shrapnel: Hubris #1″
Radical Publishing
05/2010
Publisher’s Web Site

Librarian’s Note: The Venusian Freedom Fighters are back, taking a stand against The Man.