2008SEC – Day 1 – Conference notes

I’ve given up trying to chronicle everything as it is happening at the conference – there’s just too much going on.  If you’re a fan of the Space Elevator, this conference is truly “red meat” (unless you’re a vegetarian, of course, in which this conference is truly “red beans” 🙂 )…

Seriously, the quantity and quality of the content today was very high, exceeding even my lofty expectations.  The conference venue is also superb – the Microsoft Conference center is one of the best I’ve ever been at.  Every place to sit has desk space, outlets, access to excellent wireless network, etc.  It allows you to concentrate on the conferece proceedings, which is the way it should be…

Earlier today, I tried to chronicle things as they were happening, but it was causing me to miss too much of the Conference’s content.  So, I’m going to put up a few more posts now of some of the days highlights.  It’s probably all I will be able to manage tomorrow, too.  However, I now have lots of blogging material for the next week or two, so expect a barrage of Conference reports in the near future.

So, some miscellaneous notes from today before I return to covering some of the presentations…

One of the great things about being involved in the Space Elevator effort is all of the wonderful people I’ve been able to meet.  Three of them are in this picture.  From left to right, they are Bryan Laubscher, Martin Lades and Alan Boyle.  Bryan and Martin are the conference chairs and organizers (along with a few others who I will mention later on).  Bryan and Martin were also on the Space Show a few days ago, discussing the then upcoming conference (an event I chronicled here).  Alan, of course, is the Science Editor at MSNBC.com and the editor/owner of the Cosmic Log.  He’s a great journalist, the owner of numerous awards, is wonderful to work with and already has an excellent post up on his Cosmic Log about the conference.

This is another picture of Alan along with Peter Swan (on the right), my co-chair of the Social/PR pillar.  More about the pillars tomorrow, when we actually start the Pillar sessions.

.

.

And here is a picture of Ben Shelef of the Spaceward foundation (on the left) and Andy Price.  Andy sends out “email nuggets” regarding carbon nanotube developments – interesting stuff that I often blog about.  Can you tell that they have slightly different heights? 🙂

.

Finally, here is a picture of Peter Swan and, on the left, Jerome Pearson, one of the inventors of the Space Elevator (along with Yuri Artsutanov) and a presenter in a couple of sessions today (more on these later).  It was a real thrill for me to be able to meet Mr. Pearson today.  If we can ever get a Space Elevator to work, humanity will owe a great debt to him and Mr. Artsutanov.