Today was the first “real” day of this year’s 2007 SESI conference.  Yesterday evening, there were some talks given to the public about astronomy, and all that was cool, but today is when we start getting into the scientific presentations…

Bryan Laubscher, one of the driving forces in the Space Elevator “movement” gave one of the keynote addresses this morning.  He brought the audience (most are not here for the Space Elevator portion of this conference, rather for “The Second International Conference and Exposition on Science, Engineering, and Habitation in Space”) up to speed on the current concept of the Space Elevator, the “Brad Edwards version”.  This will be one of only two Space Elevator related presentations made today (lots more are made tomorrow).

My presentation; “Who will build the first, earth-based Space Elevator?” is scheduled for this afternoon.  I was glad to see that nothing Bryan said in his presentation this morning contradicted anything I’ve written 🙂

Also attending the conference is Patrick Boake, of the Space Elevator Journal.  He’s the “official press guy” for this event.  Here is a picture of him trying to combine relaxation and work…

Much more on this conference over the next 2&1/2 days.

Click on the thumbnails for larger versions of the pictures.