Welcome to the next edition of EVA Interviews: The Business of the New Space Age™ with our guest Paul Eckert Ph.D. - Coordinator of the Space Investment Summit Coalition, and International & Commercial Strategist for the Space Exploration division of The Boeing Company. Paul and his colleagues at the Space Investment Summit coalition have created an exceptional series of events focused exclusively on Space and business (my favourite subjects!). Starting in 2005 as Roundtables which explored the potential for Lunar Commerce, they now bring Space entrepreneurs together with investment capital of many sorts – seed, venture capital, Angel investors and corporate finance – and with those who are interested in developments within the emerging new commercial Space industry. Space Investment Summit 6 (SIS-6), the next event, is happening soon! It will be held on Wednesday May 27th, 2009, just prior to, and in conjunction with, the International Space Development Conference (ISDC2009) in Orlando, Florida.
EVA: Hi Paul! Thank you very much for joining us at EVA Interviews and Out of the Cradle. I’m delighted to have you here to talk about the Space Investment Summits. Since 2005, you have created a unique series of events, designed to promote Space commerce and bring together investors and Space entrepreneurs.
Before we discuss the next event, SIS-6, which is quickly approaching, can you tell us how the idea for the Roundtables and Summits came about and how they have evolved since the first Lunar Commerce Roundtable in 2005?
Richard Branson, as you might guess, is on my list of people who I would love to interview for EVA Interviews: The Business of the new Space Age™. I haven’t yet asked him to be my guest as I have a few glitches in the process of conducting these interviews that I need to work out. Until then, I thought you might be interested in a taste of what such an interview might be like with a review of his latest book Business Stripped Bare: Adventures of a Global Entrepreneur.
Welcome to the third edition of EVA Interviews: The Business of the new Space Age! Our next guest is Rex Ridenoure, Space entrepreneur and CEO of Ecliptic Enterprises Corp. - a successful small Space startup famous for its RocketCam™ equipment and images.
EVA: Hi Rex! It’s great to have you join us at EVA Interviews and Out of the Cradle. Welcome! As a successful Space entrepreneur, you have had a lot of experience with the issues and challenges facing Space Startups today. We’ve discussed some of these in the previous editions of EVA Interviews. I’m very much looking forward to hearing your actual experience with these, how you have built Ecliptic from scratch and what insights you have to offer us!
Since these interviews are about Space as well as the business and entrepreneurial aspects of our exodus Out of the Cradle, I always like to start by asking about Space. I know you do have a personal interest in Space. Can you tell us how your interest started and how it has evolved?
There are an increasing number of entrepreneurial space-related events and conferences happening, and here are a few that I’ve gotten notice of recently:
On short notice is the half-day symposium on THE SPACE ECONOMY, occurring next Friday morning, March 13th in D.C. The agenda can be found here. There are some interesting names supporting the event, from Cisco to Phillips & Co., in addition to the usual suspects like AAS, AIAA, CSE, GMU, ISU and SEC.
[Update: Robert Hoskins of Phillips & Co. uses some of the output of the event in an editorial in Florida Today in response to short-sighted political maneuvers, found here. Hoyt Davidson of Near Earth LLC also provides a nice summary in the June issue of From the Ground Up (pdf)]
Near Earth LLC, a capital advisory firm, has their March newsletter (pdf) out, From the Ground Up. This month they put the markets in the context of space developments, and are optimistic for the future.
Later this month, also in D.C., is the Satellite 2009 conference, from March 24-27. This is for industry, which means there’s quite a list of exhibitors. Eva and I bandied about the idea of her attending to get some interviews, but no one is buying any books, so there’s no capital to underwrite the trip. Plus, it’s unclear if we’d qualify for a media pass. And I’m going to be at the LPSC down in Houston that week.
Filling out the week in early April, from the 2nd to the 4th, is the Space Access ‘09 conference in Phoenix, AZ. This is the conference where all the rocket guys get together to talk about access to space. There’s a strong entrepreneurial spirit to this one, making it a great place to scout for talent.
Back when I was co-chair of the 2007 ISDC, I campaigned hard to get as many pre-conferences as possible held just before the ISDC, so that the results could be presented at our citizen space conference. So in addition to the Aerospace Technology Working Group (ATWG), we also had the Space Venture Finance Symposium (often considered the 2nd Space Investment Summit), and folks from both groups stuck around for our conference. That was repeated again in 2008 in D.C., and will be repeated again this year in conjunction with the 2009 ISDC in Orlando, FL. The 6th Space Investment Summit will be on Wednesday, May 27th. From the website:
Presentations will focus on the latest developments in the rapidly growing space tourism industry (vehicles, funding, destinations, timeframes, numbers of customers and more), as well as new cross-industry business.
Be sure to stick around for the International Space Development Conference, the largest citizen space conference in the world. From May 28-31, it will feature luminaries from all aspects of our space endeavours. I know from experience that the program will keep evolving right up to the last minute, so be sure to check regularly for updates.
Further out in the year is the NewSpace 2009 conference from the Space Frontier Foundation, from July 18-20 at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Mountainview, California. Waitaminit…that’s what I thought - the ISU Summer Session Program is going to be at NASA Ames from June 29 to August 28. OMG, I so have to be there for that party. I may need to bring lots of beer and Texas vodka to the festivities. Rick always appreciates a nice ice-cold Shiner Bock.
Still further out, September 14-17, is the AIAA SPACE 2009 conference & exposition in Pasadena CA. This one is a more technically oriented, and may not be as much fun as the NewSpace 2009 conference.
I’m sure there are a few that I missed, but this should give you a start on getting the lowdown on the business of space.
“Who Owns the Moon” by Virgiliu Pop. Published in 2009 by Springer as Vol. 4 in their Space Regulations Library, it weighs in at 175 pages all in. A handful of editing errors, mainly in the last half.
While this could be considered a follow-up to Virg’s earlier work “Unreal Estate”, which was as thorough a Title Search on who owns the Moon as you’ll find, really it stands alone by taking a different approach. While the prior book looked backwards at who was trying to do a land grab of Lunar real estate over the years, this one instead looks at how we can move forward by taking a look at how the law stands now, its context, including historical, and how it is interpreted.
Back in the good ol’ days when I went to ISU, it was just the year-long Master of Space Studies and 10-week Summer Session Program. Now they’ve got an Executive MBA (pdf), and it’s the kind of program that only ISU can put together.
It’s divided into six modules over an 18 month period. Over the first year, three modules are covered, each of which requires a two-week period in-residence at several interesting locations:
4) Project Management module with varying sites depending on the class. As an example, during my MSS program, we visited ESOC in Darmstadt, Astrium & CNES in Toulouse, and Snecma Moteurs, Arianespace and the Paris Air Show near Paris over the course of the year.
5) Thesis Project module (wherever)
6) Project Sales Presentation at SES and Thesis presentation at ISU
ISU is really a unique institution, and its huge network of graduates spans the globe. My classmates were from China, Israel, Libya, Nigeria, Ireland, the Netherlands, France, Canada, Japan, Brazil, and more countries. We’re everywhere, and always popping up in unusual places. The teaching program draws on a global network of instructors. When it was time to talk about the Hubble, it was Dr. Jeff Hoffman who was doing the lecturing. When it was time to talk about space medicine, it was Dr. Oleg Atkov who did the lecturing. When it was time to talk about pulsars, well, it was Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell who was twirling a kitchen timer at the end of a long string over our heads. Who will be lecturing at the ISU EMBA? Who knows - but you can be sure it’ll be the top folks in the field.
It’s an investment, as much for business people to learn about space as for space people to learn about business. The two fields have long been interwoven, as the recent EVA Interview with James Dunstan here at OotC amply demonstrates, but now more than ever the bonds need to be strengthened to ensure that more realms of space endeavour enter the private sector to the benefit of everyone as we venture Out of the Cradle.
Welcome to the first edition of EVA Interviews: The Business of the new Space Age!
I’m delighted to welcome our first guest, James E. Dunstan, partner and lawyer with Garvey, Schubert and Barer in Washington D.C. who focuses on Space, business and the technologies of the future.
Great businesses start with ideas, especially ideas that can solve problems for potential customers. They next build the structure necessary to take those ideas from concept to reality and then (hopefully) on to prosperous endeavour. The first outside professional advisor that a new business hires, to formally get the business off the ground, is a lawyer. It is therefore fitting that this is where we will start. Jim Dunstan has been actively involved in the formation of many new Space ventures as well as those involving other exciting new technologies.
EVA: Jim, thank you very much for joining us at EVA Interviews and Out of the Cradle! Welcome! I look very forward to our conversation!
Since these interviews are about Space as well as the economic aspects of our exodus Out of the Cradle, I like to start by asking you about Space. I know you do have a personal interest in Space. Can you tell us how your interest started and how it has evolved?
The Out of the Cradle team wishes Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) the warmest congratulations on their successful attainment of orbit with the Falcon I. May all their launches be this smooth.
Librarian’s Note: This is a reprint of a blog post that I wrote for Selenian Boondocks, where I guest blog. I haven’t really needed to change the text, but I have updated it with some pictures and weblinks.
Howdy everyone! Welcome to this week’s spectacular Carnival of Space!
I’m your host Ken, the Lunar Librarian here at Out of the Cradle.
We don’t have to go far this week to find space. This last weekend in Washington, D.C., the National Space Society held their 27th annual International Space Development Conference. As the largest citizen space conference in the world it is open to all, even internet bloggers. And blog they did, extensively, over the three day period. The conference was even on C-SPAN! I’ve rounded up most of the links for the Lunar Library, which can be found here:
The Space Cynics want you to be sure to get a dash of cold-water reality in the face, because, well, that’s their job. Several of them were at the conference and they did some recruiting in A Gathering of Cynics, which led to a very interesting discussion and an upcoming radio show on The Space Show.
Everyone’s favorite Babe…in the Universe was there for the Space Investment Summit as well as the main conference. She’s put up a number of blog posts on the event, starting with “ISDC”. Her latest post, Convergence, has her in slightly more traditional garb. As she summarized the event:
Aloha Carnival!
Thursday saw Elon Musk and announcement of the first Space Solar Power demonstration. At Friday’s dinner, a lifetime award was given to Burt Rutan. Saturday an enthusiastic crowd saw a documentary on Apollo and live coverage of Discovery’s launch to ISS. We end at the Air and Space Museum, seeing humanity converge on a future in Space.
Thank you for hosting this week’s Carnival.
Well you’re certainly welcome Ms. Riofrio, we’re always happy to see you here at the Carnival of Space.
Spring is in full bloom here in the metroplex, so I had to dig the rollerblades out of the closet. This will be my fifteenth year rollerblading, and I think the main reason that I continue to do so is that it is absolute joy. There’s a small park here in Addison Circle with a nice loop over by the airport that I like to blade around, in part because it reminds me of the ‘roller rink’ in Central Park, NYC.
In our quest to answer the question of whether plants can grow in Lunar regolith, the main obstacle to a definitive answer seems to be that we are limited in our research by the availability of actual Moon dirt to work with. This time around we’re going to look through NASA’s Lunar e-Library to see if we can find anything of interest, and also do a little speculating on what some of the possibilities might be for Lunar agriculture (cynthiculture?).
or: Let’s consult the most comprehensive text to date.
Henninger et al’s “Lunar Base Agriculture: Soils for Lunar Plant Growth”, published in 1989 by the American Society of Agronomy, the Crop Science Society of America, and the Soil Science Society of America, weighing in at 255 pages. I’m not qualified enough to determine if there were factual errors hidden in the text, but no typographical errors were noted.
or: How are we going to grow plants in sterile rock dust?
One of the key questions for early Lunar selenologists was whether or not the regolith of the Moon could support life. The results were pretty conclusively no, as most of the elements that we consider important for life such as carbon and nitrogen are scarce to be found. This would seem to make the Moon a pretty rotten place to try to grow plants, but there’s a strong likelihood that the Moon could turn out to be a fantastic place to grow the plants of Earth.
Librarian’s Note: Not a fancy website, these are guys who are working on making sure we have frequent and regular access to low-Earth orbit outside of NASA. They’re focused on rockets, not pretty graphics.
Howdy Everyone! Welcome back to The Carnival of Space, which stops again here at Out of the Cradle with an all new show, its 31st ever!
[Update: Thanks to Alan Boyle at Cosmic Log for the heads-up on the broken links. They should all work now]
I’m Ken Murphy, the Lunar Librarian here at Out of the Cradle and your guest Ringmaster for this week. We’ve got an exciting show lined up, so let’s get started and blast off to Cislunar Space.
Image by Clifford Geary from
‘The REAL BOOK about Space Travel’
Attention all readers!
Now that the Lunar Library is one year old, I’ve decided that it needs a logo for its first birthday present.
Since your friendly Lunar Librarian is sorely lacking in the Art arts (but appreciates them greatly), this is not a task I can easily or wisely undertake myself. I therefore call upon the space community at large to show me what you’ve got, and give me a logo that will eventually take the Lunar Library to the Moon! (I think this is what’s called a ‘bleg’)
In return I am willing to offer to the winner of the open competition the following duplicate copies from the Library:
This quintet represents some of the finest titles in the Lunar Library, and they’re for whomever comes up with the best logo that can be used on business cards and marketing materials.
Let’s say October 31st for the deadline. Submissions will be shared with Out of the Cradle readers for feedback. The winner would transfer all rights except for creator rights to the Lunar Library (i.e. you could still use it on your own website and portfolio materials, but couldn’t license or sell its use to anyone else. I could).
Caveats
All books are in fair condition or better. The first three are paperback, the last two are hardcover. Some wear and tear. Some markings from previous owners. Nothing major. I might throw in a poster or extra swag for a particularly pleasing result. No representations or warranties are express or implied in this solicitation. The Lunar Librarian indemnifies himself from all liability for any injury incurred or arising, physical or mental, as a result of this solicitation. If the Winning Logo is created using traditional media and rendered digitally for the competition, the original media will be submitted to the Lunar Library for future use. If there are any squawks about this solicitation being in violation of some statute or regulation then it will be terminated and all agreements shall be considered as rendered void (and I’d want my books back). Seriously, I’m just trying to have some fun with this. Hopefully everyone else will have fun as a result of this as well.
Submissions should be sent to my lunadyne address at gmail.com. I don’t want big honkin’ 10 meg files. It should be of a size where several of them in a blog post could be pulled up relatively quickly (by dial-up), but also look good on a business or post card.
Thanks in advance,and I look forward to the results.
Image by R.A. Smith from
“The Exploration of the Moon”
Hear ye! Hear ye!
Step right up ladies and gentlemen and prepare to be shocked and amazed at the wonders of the universe that await you here at the Carnival of Space. I’m Ken Murphy, custodian of the Lunar Library here at Out of the Cradle, and I’ll be your Ringmaster for this week. We have a full slate of submissions, so let’s dive right into the action. Our first attraction - Cislunar Space!
Details are sketchy, but it looks like the explosion centered around nitrous oxide storage tanks, leading to two fatalities and four serious injuries. A Scaled Composites truck was sighted near the blast. Scaled, maker of the first private craft to reach space, SpaceShipOne, is based at Mojave, and currently developing a larger spacecraft system for Virgin Galactic, the space tourism company owned by Richard Branson. Nitrous oxide is the liquid component of the rocket propellants used by SpaceShipOne’s hybrid rocket motor.
“The Modern Moon: A Personal View” by Charles A. Wood
Published in 2003 by Sky Publishing Corp, it weighs in at 209 pages all in. No errors noted.
This was a recent acquisition to the Lunar Library, the result of a chance encounter at Half-Price Books. Flipping through it, I was immediately impressed with the variety of the information being displayed, and moved it up to the top of my to-read list. I’m glad I did. Mr. Wood has a long and distinguished background in Lunar science, and has contributed to many notable projects over the last several decades. He is best known now for his interview with Out of the Cradle, and also a little something known as the Lunar Photo of the Day (LPOD). He therefore brings a wealth of knowledge to this work, and what a work it is.
Bigelow Aerospace Confirms Space Module has Successfully Expanded and Functioning Well
Las Vegas, NV 06/28/07 – Bigelow Aerospace has established contact with its second pathfinder spacecraft, Genesis II. Launched earlier Thursday from Yasny, Russia, Mission Control in North Las Vegas, Nev., made first contact at 2:20 p.m. PDT.
Initial data suggests sufficient voltage powering up Genesis II’s batteries as well as expected air pressure. While the actual confirmation of solar panel deployment and spacecraft expansion are expected later, the data suggests that deployment and expansion have been successful.
Before contact, successful communication was considered a long shot on Genesis II’s first pass over the ground station in Fairfax, Va. Elevation for the pass was considered low for a successful contact.
“We don’t even talk to Genesis I that low,” Program Manager Eric Haakonstad said.
This just arrived from Bigelow Aerospace. Congratulations, guys!
Genesis II Successfully Launched
Bigelow Aerospace Still Awaits Confirmation of Spacecraft Health and Expansion
Las Vegas, NV 06/28/07 – Genesis II, the second experimental pathfinder spacecraft by Bigelow Aerospace, has been successfully launched and inserted into orbit. The privately-funded space station module was launched atop a Dnepr rocket at 8:02 a.m. PDT from the ISC Kosmotras Yasny Cosmodrome located in the Orenburg region of Russia.
Howdy everyone, and welcome to the Best of the Moon 2007!
Each year we stop and take a look at the best additions to the Lunar Library over the course of the year. 2007 has been an unusual one for the Lunar Library, not least because your friendly Librarian was co-chair of the […]
