{"id":1579,"date":"2013-08-25T00:36:15","date_gmt":"2013-08-25T05:36:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/?p=1579"},"modified":"2013-08-25T00:36:15","modified_gmt":"2013-08-25T05:36:15","slug":"2013-space-elevator-conference-day-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/?p=1579","title":{"rendered":"2013 Space Elevator Conference – Day 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>Well, the second day of this year’s Space Elevator Conference<\/a> has come and gone.\u00a0 As with Day 1, it was filled with very interesting presentations and a useful and thought-provoking workshop.\u00a0 And, as happens at these conferences, people have had a chance to get to know each other now and the personal interaction is increasing greatly – there are a lot of really interesting people here!<\/p>\n

Today was very full too – beginning with a presentation from Bryan Laubscher, the CEO of Odysseus Technologies, Inc. (OTI).\u00a0 OTI is in the business of creating strong CNT tethers.\u00a0 It has had entries in a couple of the NASA\/Spaceward Strong Tether challenges and has been trying some very novel approaches in the search for macro-level strong tethers (full disclosure: I am an investor in OTI).\u00a0 Bryan’s presentation was on OTI’s PANG (Proximate Atom Nanotube Growth) Technology<\/strong><\/em>, an attempt to counter the phenomena that slow and halt the growth of CNTs when grown using chemical vapor deposition (CVD) techniques.\u00a0 As we all know, creating a tether that is strong enough remains the single most difficult problem to deal with in building an earth-based space elevator.\u00a0 As an investor in OTI and as a space elevator enthusiast, I hope that PANG bears fruit!<\/p>\n

The next presentation was an overview of the just-completed International Academy of Astronautics (IAA)<\/a> study on the Space Elevator.\u00a0 In the study, entitled Space Elevators: an Assessment of the Technological Feasibility and the Way Forward<\/strong><\/em>, the 40 contributing authors (some from ISEC) and five editors expand on innovative ideas that increase the probability of a Space Elevator being built.\u00a0 This study is to be released near the end of this year and its release will, of course, be announced on the blog.<\/p>\n

The last presentation of the morning was on the 2013-2014 ISEC<\/a> Theme.\u00a0 Each year (and we’re talking about an “ISEC year” here – beginning and ending with the Space Elevator Conference), ISEC chooses a Theme to focus many of its activities around.\u00a0 Past year’s themes include the study of Space Debris, the study of a possible Operations scenario for an earth-based elevator and the just-completed year’s theme, Tether Climbers.\u00a0 For the first two Themes, ISEC prepared and published an in-depth report.\u00a0 This same process is occurring for the just-completed year’s Theme, Tether Climbers.\u00a0 The Theme that ISEC chose for the 2013-2014 ISEC year is Architecture and Roadmaps<\/strong><\/em>.\u00a0 Dr. Peter Swan, the new President of ISEC and Michael Fitzgerald, a newcomer to ISEC, gave the presentation. \u00a0 The 2013-2014 ISEC study will focus on comparing and contrasting the multiple approaches to\u00a0 building and operating a Space Elevator that have been proposed over the past 10 or so years.\u00a0 A preliminary report will be presented at next year’s Space Elevator conference with the final report to be produced and distributed some months after that.<\/p>\n

<\/a>After a lunch break, the entire afternoon session was devoted to the Lunar Elevator workshop<\/strong><\/em>, orchestrated by LiftPort president, Michael Laine.\u00a0 Long time space elevator fans know that Michael has been involved in the Space Elevator effort since the early days.\u00a0 Michael grew frustrated with the slow pace of carbon nanotube (CNT) development and decided to try and find something to kick-start the development of a Space Elevator.\u00a0 The project he chose was to build a Space Elevator on the moon, something that can theoretically done with materials available today.\u00a0 Michael and Liftport and the many allies & partners he’s gathered are making a serious attempt at this – something that all of us in the space elevator community should enthusiastically support. Michael and several of his key partners gave short presentations on the advantages of a Lunar Space Elevator and how something like this should be built.\u00a0 It was serendipitous that Jerome Pearson was at this conference – after all, he was THE inventor of the idea of a Lunar Space Elevator and I don’t think anything would please him more than to see this idea actually get off the ground (to coin a phrase)…<\/p>\n

If you want to find out anything more about this project, check out the LiftPort website<\/a>.\u00a0 Many of you might also know that simultaneously with last year’s Space Elevator Conference, Michael and Liftport raised money on Kickstarter to jump-start this project.\u00a0 His initial goal was to raise $8,000.\u00a0 By the time it was all said and done, he had raised well over $100,000 – the power of group funding!<\/p>\n

<\/a>After the workshop, it was time to watch the finals of the Space Elevator robotic competition that was being held at the Museum of Flight<\/a>.\u00a0 This is always a fun time, watching teams of children (up to and including high-school age) build robotic climbers to compete with one another for prizes donated by one of the Space Elevator Conference’s sponsors, Microsoft.\u00a0 Jerome Pearson was asked, and graciously agreed, to announce the winners and hand out the prizes.\u00a0 Many people in the audience, including competitors and their parents, were thrilled to be able to meet Jerome and get their picture taken with him.\u00a0 It has been absolutely wonderful to have him at this year’s conference.<\/p>\n

The day wound up with the annual Space Elevator Conference banquet.\u00a0 This year it was held at the Charles Simonyi Space Gallery.\u00a0 This Gallery hosts the Space Shuttle Trainer<\/a> that was built to train the various Shuttle crews.\u00a0 Every one of the crews from all 135 Shuttle missions were trained on this trainer.\u00a0 It’s hard to imagine how big it is until you actually walk inside it.\u00a0 While the front section was the subject of a guided tour (which I was unable to make), the back section, including the cargo bay, can be freely entered.\u00a0 It’s an awesome sight.\u00a0 And above the Trainer was a 50%-sized model of the Hubble Telescope<\/a> hanging from the ceiling.\u00a0 The Gallery is \u00fcber-cool and it made it hard to concentrate on the excellent dinner we enjoyed.<\/p>\n

So ends Day 2 – I eagerly await Day 3!<\/p>\n

(The top picture thumbnail is of a train carrying several airplane fuselages from, presumably, one construction plant to another, a site we saw outside of the Conference windows while we were on break..\u00a0 The Museum of Flight is located amidst much of the Boeing manufacturing plants.\u00a0 The middle thumbnail is of Michael Laine and the Lunar Space Elevator project’s mascot, LSEI (Lunar Space Elevator Initiative) – it’s pronounced “Elsie”.\u00a0 She even has her own Facebook Page<\/a>!\u00a0 The bottom thumbnail is of Jerome Pearson posing with one of the winning Robotic Team members.\u00a0 You can view a full-size picture of any of the thumbnails just by clicking on them.)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Well, the second day of this year’s Space Elevator Conference has come and gone.\u00a0 As with Day 1, it was filled with very interesting presentations and a useful and thought-provoking workshop.\u00a0 And, as happens at these conferences, people have had a chance to get to know each other now and the personal interaction is increasing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1579","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-announcements"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1579","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1579"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1579\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1579"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1579"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1579"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}