I hate it when I’m wrong, and I think I might have been wrong about the Space Elevator and Solar Power Satellites (SPS).  I’ve had some ‘really smart people’ look over the calculations I put on my blog last year, and I think they’ve found a significant mistake.  I’ve got some more checking to do, and, if I was wrong, it means that SPS could indeed have a major role to play in solving the earth’s energy / pollution issues.

It also means I may have to redo my presentation to the conference, and THAT’s due tomorrow afternoon.  Hence I have to spend the rest of the evening working on it and will have no time to put up conference posts tonight.

But, as I said in my earlier post on the subject, I would LOVE to be wrong on this and it looks like I may have been.  I certainly hope so.

Stay tuned…

It’s now nearly 5:00pm here in Redmond, Washington and this is the first real break I’ve had all day (I’m not complaining).  There was just a couple of presentations this morning, concentrating on the legal issues perhaps facing a future space elevator.  Then we began the Four Pillar workshops.  There will be much more about these Pillars a little later – they may be (hope to be) the most important outcome of this conference.

So, please forgive me for not keeping you more up-to-date; I’ll be putting up some posts later this evening…

We have a large Japanese presence at the conference this year, and they have made a tremendous contribution to the proceedings.  In addition, to making several presentations (and some very exciting announcements), they have brought an exhibit, a DVD we all watched during the “Mixer” hour this evening and probably a few other things I’m forgetting to mention.  They even brought some gifts for yours truly, some Pocky for my kids and a copy of the Edwards-Westing book translated into Japanese (a book I blogged about earlier).  I’ll cover the individual Japanese presentations later, but wanted to put up some pictures and notes about them now.

The Japan Space Elevator Association (JSEA) was created last year.  According to Akira Tsuchida, one of the directors of JSEA (and the team leader of the Earth-Track-Controllers (E-T-C), an entrant in last year’s (and hopefully) this year’s Space Elevator Games), JSEA now has over 40 members and is growing.  It has been created to promote the idea of developing a Space Elevator and to educate the Japanese public about the advantages it can bring.  In many ways, the Japanese public is much more educated about and receptive to the idea of a Space Elevator than we Americans are.  It has been part of their literature / fiction for many years.

The first JSEA Conference is scheduled for November 15-16 this year (an event I will make every effort to attend).  We’ve been invited to stay at the “Tube Hotel” and to take a guided tour of Akihabara (the electronic bazaar in Tokyo, a place I’ve already visited) as part of the conference.  We might even get the chance to hear Akira demonstrate his Karaoke skills 🙂

JSEA also plans on creating the first annual JSEA Space Elevator games in 2009 and is working on hosting an International Space Elevator Conference in the Sultanate of Brunei, also in 2009.

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Here are a couple of pictures of a Space Elevator and climber and station, built entirely out of Legos.  My own house is full of Legos – before my son grew out of them, he put together Lego kits of various Harry Potter characters and locales, Star Wars characters (including a big Yoda) and who knows what else.  But this Space Elevator representation is something special…

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Finally, here are some of the books that the Japanese contingent brought, books that contain a Space Elevator and/or Space Elevator theme in them.

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Yes, the Japanese contingent has made its presence felt.  How much this will contribute to the building of a real Space Elevator only time will tell.  But they seem sincere and dedicated (and even have come up with some (Japanese) government funding, so they must be taken seriously.  I, for one, am glad to have them on board, and I’m sure that everyone else here at the conference feels the same way…

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.

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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? 🙂

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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.