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Once again, all together now;<\/p>\nOnce again, all together now;<\/p>\n
\nHappy birthday to you!
\nHappy birthday to you!
\nHappy birthday dear Space Elevator Blog!
\nHappy birthday to you! <\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\nKind of hard to believe that I’ve been writing this blog for the past five years.\u00a0 The number of posts I’ve put up has declined somewhat, but, conversely my involvement with the Space Elevator effort has been increasing.\u00a0 Being President of the International Space Elevator Consortium (ISEC)<\/a> has taken up more and more of my time…\u00a0 In keeping with my tradition of writing an ‘anniversary post’ (first year summary<\/a>, second year summary<\/a>, third year summary<\/a> and fourth year summary<\/a>), the following is a list of, IMHO, the more significant happenings in the past 12 months that I was privileged to cover:<\/p>\n
Easily the number one highlight in the past 12 mohths was meeting Yuri Arsutanov<\/a> at the 2010 Space Elevator Conference in Redmond, Washington.\u00a0 I’m very proud that ISEC<\/a> played the lead role in getting him (and Jerome Pearson) to attend the Conference.\u00a0 We’ve also been given permission to name our annual prizes after Yuri and Jerome and for that we are very proud and grateful.\u00a0 Hopefully we’ll be able to award one or both of them this year.<\/p>\n
I would put the Space Elevator Conference<\/a> and the EuroSpaceward Conference<\/a> as a tie for “number two” on my highlight list for the past 12 months.\u00a0 The Space Elevator Conference had, for the first time I can remember, ONLY Space Elevator content – nothing about other launch systems or other non-related topics.\u00a0 I have nothing against “Loftstrum Loops” and other non-rocket alternatives, but I continue to think that the only one which could be viable someday is the Elevator system.\u00a0 The EuroSpaceward Conference was also outstanding – with the first day being targeted towards developments in the carbon nanotube arena.\u00a0 At this year’s Space Elevator conference we’re hopefully going to go one-better by having one day (Friday, August 12th) targeted solely towards developments in carbon nanotubes as related to strong tethers.\u00a0 There are many other research efforts going on with carbon nanotubes, but of course the potential strength of this material is what we’re all waiting for as fast as we can.<\/p>\n
Third on my list would be ISEC’s release of its first ISEC Report<\/a> – this one headed up by Dr. Peter Swan and focusing on Space Elevator Survivability – Space Debris Mitigation.\u00a0 It’s our first report and one we’re very proud of.\u00a0 Dr. Swan and his team did a great job with this.<\/p>\n
Fourth on my list would be the Strong Tether competition<\/a>, held last year at the Space Elevator Conference.\u00a0 There were two carbon nanotube entries and one carbon nanotube “hybrid” entry, the first time that entries made out of this material have been the only competitors.\u00a0 This competition would have rated higher on my “highlight list” had the Tethers performed any better.\u00a0 I’m hopeful we’ll see much stronger competition this year at the Space Elevator Conference (the competition is being held on Friday, August 12th, as part of the “Strong Tether” day).<\/p>\n
Other highlights for the past 12 months include ISEC’s new website<\/a>, the Japanese Space Elevator Association’s JSETEC<\/a> and LASER ’10<\/a> competitions and third annual conference<\/a>, the awarding of two “Honorable Mentions” for the 2010 Artsutanov prize (here<\/a> and here<\/a>), the “Closure Party”<\/a> for the Kansas City Space Pirates (as sad as that was), the release of the 2009<\/a> and 2010 ISEC Posters, the release of a Space Elevator app<\/a> for the iPad, the strengthening of the ISEC team with Ben Jarrell<\/a> (Legal Pillar lead), Matt Gjertsen (Public Outreach Pillar lead) and Skip Penny<\/a> (Board of Directors) joining us and, finally, the continual amusement provided to all of us by the guys over at Elevator2Space.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n
What will the next 12 months bring?\u00a0 Well, ISEC should be releasing its first Journal in the next month or so.\u00a0 In addition, we should see the release of the 2011 ISEC Poster, the second ISEC Report (this one on strong tethers) and the first Space Elevator Concept of Operations report.\u00a0 Also upcoming are the 2011 Space Elevator Conference<\/a> and Strong Tether Challenge, the 2011 EuroSpaceward<\/a> and JSEA<\/a> conferences, the first European Space Elevator Challenge (EuSEC)<\/a>, the 2011-2012 JSETEC and LASER competitions hosted by JSEA<\/a> and some other stuff which I probably can’t even imagine right now.<\/p>\n