Category Archives: Space

Wrap Up

Tumlinson thanking people who put the conference together, and expressing his honor at being part of a conference of “doers.” Seeking feedback on future conferences. There is a dream in this room that we all hold–an incredible future for humanity, that we can all participate in, and paint that future in the stars. There’s a dream outside, and they want it too, but they don’t know that they don’t know. They would rather have that future than one in which Israel and Hezbollah are bombing each other. Sees a future of space colonies, in which we can have a Hezbollah space colony. Horizon narrows if we stay on earth, and widens if we move into space.

Back to regular blogging now. Well, after I drive back to LA…

[Update, back in LA]

If I don’t put quote marks around words, one shouldn’t assume that they are literal quotes. When I type these things, I’m typing as fast as I can, and doing as much gist gathering as possible. Sometimes I’m mistaken (I often don’t even know what I’ve typed until I go back and read it later–there seems to be a direct short between my ears and the keyboard, with little time for processing in the brain (not that my feeble brain would be able to do much with it anyway)).

In addition, it’s quite churlish to jump on extemporaneous speeches. But then, one has to consider the source.

S3x In Space

OK, this is what you’ve obviously all been waiting for. The last session of the conference, after which I get back to the usual blather…

The panelists are Laura Woodmansee, a science writer who has apparently just written a book about the subject of extraterrestrial copulatory activity (ECA), Vanna Bonta (a writer and poet, according to her placard, not to mention voice actress–not sure why voice only, the camera is certainly not unfriendly to her) and Dr. James Logan, former Chief of Flight Medicine (and other similar titles) from NASA.

Bonta led off by presenting Woodmansee with a Fisher Space Pen in congratulations for her book. Pens and sex are toosl that bring new things into being. Also praising Bob Bigelow for converting missiles to launchers.

“What happens in space, does not stay in space.” People are closely monitored. “[ECA] is not just a good idea, it’s survival.” We’re going to settle space, and we need whole brains (science and poetry) to succeed. S3x does not take rocket science. Life is creation and structure, and even poetry is engineered. Burt Rutan is one of the greatest poets today. Continual symbiosis between engineering and poetry (seeking of beauty is a human purpose). ECA is ultimate in poetry and science. S3x is about recreation, companionship, progeny. [Really tough to convey this talk with a real-time blog post. Talking and showing slides] Another benefit of weightlessness (which is an aesthetic) is great hair, but don’t accept substitutes (shows a spray-on weightless hairstyle.

Physiological issues: deyhydration, possible 3r3ctile dysfunction due to loss of blood in lower body. More sweating, and coupling will spew various fluids that will be hard to manage. However, love will find a way, for long missions, compatibility should be predetermined.

Ideal foreplay might be hydroroom, with fluid orbs to play with in enclosed space, with varying size, speeds and fragrances of water drops. Stabilization will require hand and footholds in cubicles. Space Adaptation Syndrome may be a problem. Bring mouthwash, and don’t get too wild until afterwards. Really hard to keep mass of bodies together (based on her experiment with a kiss on a Zero-G aircraft ride). Suggests a “two suit” with nylon or velcro zippers to connect at the top, with diaphanous interior clothes that spread out in weightlessness, to just chill and float and stay together. Varoius fabrics should be available, with “sensible underwear’ attachable to wall spaces.

Talking about “the higher purpose.” Creating children in space. We’ve been having sex in space for thousands of years, just under one gravity. Our dreams and powers of creation distinguish them. ECA has its up sides, some of which we know, and some of which are unknown. In-vitro fertilization may work in weightlessness. This is the most important thing we can explore for the future of our species [Hey, I’m just typing what she says]. It’s our birth right. May the continuum be unbroken.

Jim Logan up now. Notes that this audience is part of the hard core. His mother will be very pleased when she hears that he’s on this panel.

“Aside from the thrill, what’s the big deal?” Disclaimer: not representing the agency–came here on his own dime. NASA has been by, of, and for engineers. That has to change. What comes after ECA is very important. Thinks that fantasy may be superior to reality about weightless s3x will be. But thinks that simulating choreographed action in weightlessness will be very stimulating to view (if not choreographed, will just be a flail).

We come up with countermeasures for weightlessness, and the ultimate countermeasure is returning to gravity. Existing countermeasures are inadequate. Been spending about thirty million dollars a year on critical-path roadmap items, and not a single one has been retired–this is one. Weight of the fetus up to eighteen weeks is small on earth and in an essentially weightless environment, but after twenty-one weeks or so starts to experience gravitational loading. Can’t use countermeasures on fetus, and bone development in a weightless environment will be major issue. Gross developmental milestones (sitting, standing walking) could be delayed. Could be impossible to ever make critical brain connections in weightlessness. In mice we mimic immune-system problems due to weightlessness with simple hind-limb suspension, so gravity is very, very important to development. There’s been a lot of changes in the earth over three billion years, but one thing has been constant in evolution–gravity.

Considers it extremely naive to imagine a weightless civilization. We take or make, our own air, we take or make our own food. We will have to take our own gravity. We still have no idea what the gravity prescription is. After forty-five years, we don’t know the dose, the frequency or the side effects. We have to lobby for more research to understand this. We have to decide whether space is a sortie or stay destination. It is possible that one-sixth gee won’t be enough, which means the moon is out as a frontier destination, until we make some serious medical progress. Same argument applies to Mars–we may need more than one-third gee. Whatever gravity prescription is, it probably won’t be one size fits all. All we know is that one gee works.

If not now, when? In the long term, the tall pole in the tent is life sciences, not rockets. The future of space will not be pioneering, it will be bioneering. Historically, if humans couldn’t adapt to their environment, they didn’t survive.

Laura Woodmansee talking about her book on the subject. Not a scientist, but has a deep interest in science and space. Subject makes everyone giggle. But humans take their sexuality everywhere they go. It’s going to happen, there will be weddings and honeymoons in orbit, and we have to start taking it seriously. Book is about both the fund part and the serious part. Looking at the future as a mother, and the concerns about gestating and raising children in that environment.

First chapter is about the question everyone wants to know. Many rumors exist. There was controversy about Mark Lee and Jan Davis, a married couple went into space, and declined interviews. Another issue is pr0n in space. There was an attempt to do a film on Mir, but it didn’t work out. She wishes that it had happened, because it might have generated interest in space. Quote from Gene Roddenberry–“I guarantee you it happened, for no reasons other than common sense.”

Talking about “docking maneuvers,” and need for restraints. Rooms will have to be designed. No convection, so cooling will be a problem. Will need fans, and privacy. “Initial awkardness will detract from the romance, so it will take practice to make perfect.”

Third topic is about new life in space (subject of Jim Logan’s talk). She is very concerned about the subject, from conception, through gestation, to delivery (which could be disastrous). Drugs work differently. Unanswered question: do oral contraceptives work in weightlessness? Are they testing to ensure suppression of ovulation? Is conception even possible? Animals indicate yes, but can’t necessarily extrapolate. Biggest issues are gravity and radiation. Our descendants in space will adapt to space, and become aliens.

NASA and other agencies have an archaic view of this subject, viewing it as something separate from life, rather than a part of it. What kind of crews would be good for long journeys, what would he sexual and relationship issues be like? How will it affect off-planet cultures? Might there be laws against reproduction in areas in which resources are limited? PAO at NASA was very frustrating. They were in denial. Book was based on people willing to talk to her outside of NASA, with many disclaimers. Interested to see reaction to book when it comes out. Agency has a “deep cultural discomfort zone.”

She thinks that this is the “killer app” for space tourism. Talking about “heavenly bedroom,” with stars and privacy.

Question for Dr. Logan: will going into space restart the evolution process that we’ve slowed with our technological adaptations? A: Evolution never stopped, and it will continue in space.

Question: will NASA, or who, take on a settlement-based investigation of these issues (as opposed to NASA’s Mars-mission-based approach). Dr. Logan says that NASA doesn’t do frontiers. NASA does vehicles. Should look elsewhere.

Vanna telling anecdote about arriving at conference, and someone in hotel said, “are you going to that conference on s3x in space.” She answered that she was presenting on that subject, and the reply was “…but you don’t look like an engineer.” Reiterates earlier point that our humanity has to be integrated with the technology, and that NASA cannot continue to ignore this issue.

Now she’s raising the bioethical question about whether or not it would be ethical to conceive a child in such an unknown environment. In Logan’s opinion, seventeen-percent decrease in muscle mass of the fetus is over the line.

Logan is pointing out that water is dangerous to human beings. We had to develop technology to isolate ourselves from it. Earth shouldn’t be called earth. It should be called “Water.” Space should be called “Radiation.” We will have to learn to protect ourselves from it. He’s also pointing out that if we can live in reduced gravity environments, he’d love it, particularly as he gets older, because there’d be much less damage from falls. Also notes that there are major problems with artificial gravity as well, which is actually a good thing, because it will force us to large structures.

Ben Muniz pointing out that getting to orbit is simple engineering, whereas this is a critical research issue that NASA continues to ignore. Logan agrees that this is a critical issue, and one that someone must address. Asking this group to actively make connections to the life sciences community, because both the New Space people and that world have things to teach each other. Life Science at NASA is a cultural problem. Engineers don’t like gray areas, but in Life Science, the only on and off are life and death, and everything else in between is fuzzy. [I’ll not that this is another instance of Snow’s two cultures.] Logan says there’s also a political dimension to this. He speculates that some people who want to colonize Mars might not actually want to know the answer, because they might not like it.

Rick Tumlinson pointing out that there used to be conferences that talked about these kinds of issues, at Princeton (which are starting up again next spring). But in the early eighties, everyone thought that the Shuttle had solved the transportation problem so we shifted our thoughts to destinations. But as we discovered that was a mistaken notion, all of our energy has gone back into the transportation problem, and we’ve ignored this fundamental one. Thinks we need to add more sessions on this subject in future conferences.

Space And The Environment

Environment is very important to many people, and showing environmentalists about the potential benefits of space can build support for it. Jeff Krukin says that he asks people “where does space begin?” If you consider it only a hundred kilometers over our head, then it seems a lot closer than many perceive. Has two speakers on this subject.

Molly Macauley has done a lot of work on the economic aspects of environmental policy, and will be talking about the economics of space power. John Mankins formerly of NASA is now head of the Sunsat Energy Council.

Mankins: Talking about Sunsat, which was formed in 1978 by SPS inventor Peter Glaser. Only NGO set up to promote the provision of clean energy from space. Has long been an advocate of the types of New Space activities being highlighted at this conference. Notes that Peter Glaser doesn’t travel much any more, but is still energetic in research and promoting the idea. Also notes that Bill Brown, of Raytheon, who was a pioneer in wireless power transmission, is no longer with us (and that Tesla’s ideas came first, but they were omni-directional, whereas the Raytheon concept was pointable). Concept wasn’t treated well in the seventies for a variety of reasons, some political, and says that it has been politically incorrect to talk about this technology for years as a result of the seventies studies. Despite this, demand for energy is growing, and continues to grow, with the dilemmas of other solutions. Showing limits of terrestrial solar power given intermittent and geographical availability of sunlight. Hydropower is perfect, but also limited. Space solar power has a very complex trade space (including not just designs, but market demand, cost to orbit, energy density for safety, etc.) The reference design solution that resulted from all these trades in the seventies was a series of very large (gigawatt class) satellites in GEO, with large antenna (order of a kilometer) that must be flat to a centimeter or two (fraction of a wavelength). This architecture has a vey high pre-power cost (hundreds of billions of dollars). There were other technical problems but the up-front cost was the biggest issue.

In the mid-1990s, NASA revisited the concept (the “Fresh Look Study”) to see if tech advances through the eighties and nineties could result in new approaches. They came up with something called “intelligent modular systems). Uses skydivers as an example of such a system. Insects do it all the time. Self-assembling arrays of systems of systems could build very large structures that didn’t require the high up-front infrastructure investment. In 1980, the NRC panned SPS, and recommended no further work. In 2000, they were much more positive. “Technical roadmap feasible, costs reasonable through the first round.” But all work stopped within a year or two anyway.

Summary: we need energy, it’s more feasible to talk about this now, and we should consider this again.

Molly Macauley of Resources for the Future. Came to space economics by accident back when Comsat was still a quasi-government agency, and proposed a dissertation on the economic value of geostationary orbit, which was accepted. Then she discovered Resources for the Future, which has thought about space as a resource in itself. She went there for a postdoc, and stayed. Saying that she’s been doing work on the economic implications of third-party risk for the FAA regulation. We’re still living with the effects of the Three-Mile-Island effect, and only now is the nuclear power industry recovering from false perceptions of safety on the part of the public.

She has been doing work on SPS economics at the urging of John Mankins, and has some data. Her work was funded by NSF, NASA, and by Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) [note: I was unaware that EPRI was interested, and find this encouraging].

SSP is large scale, and unlikely to be a US-only system. Looking to the southwest, Midwest, Germany, and India general markets, and looking at the relative advantage of SSP compared to other energy technologies. Acknowledging difficulties of managing all the uncertainties in such studies, and are doing probabilistic analyses, and expertise in the energy industry. Can start to use known economic data like prices per ton of carbon as carbon trading markets develop.

To stack the case for SSP in an initial run, they imposed carbon penalties on other technologies as part of their studies. People think that wind power is ugly and noisy, and it kills birds and bats, precluding wind development. They looked at a host of other energy concerns for other energy technologies. They also considered the political and security implications of relying on the Middle East for hydrocarbons. Notes that electrical energy can be decoupled from these concerns (though an in-space source of power controlled by an international consortium can also have energy security concerns and notes that SSP itself may have environmental issues). Also, we will still be vulnerable to terrorism against the grid.

Their numbers show that if SSP can come on line by the 2020-2030 timeframe for on the order of $0.11/kW-hr, it can be competitive in the markets examined. However, cleaner power may come to have higher value in the future, (as long as it’s as reliable as current sources). Additional model runs are asking other what-if questions. She does think that SSP looks a lot better than it did in the past, but other technologies are advancing as well, so SSP has to look over its shoulders at the competition.

Howard Bloom says that everything in Gore’s film is wrong, and all of the implications of it are wrong. He’s been getting convinced by Paul Werbos that ethanol and methanol are viable fuels for automobiles. Howard had also been skeptical about SSP until Paul started to convince him. He’s also been convinced to some degree by Feng Shu (risk analyst at NASA, in the audience). He’s now come up with a simple plan–concentrate energies for the next ten to fifteen years on biofuels (many cars could be made biofuel capable, meaning that they can automatically run either biofuels or gasoline, with automatic detection, which has resulted in a forty-percent)

Our civilization doesn’t seem to see a future for itself and thinks that it deserves to die for its sins (which is what most of his friends believe). Citing Declaration of Independence, The Astonishing Rise of the Roman Empire Which Stayed On Top For About Twelve Hundred Years (he thinks the book was misnamed), and the Wealth of Nations. He thinks that the misnaming of Gibbon’s book resulted in a false paradigm that our nation must fall.

Need to tell people to look up, that the sun is shining, that we have an endless supply of energy in space. Also point out that there are lots of materials up there as well, so we don’t have to schlep everything up.

But none of this is what he came to talk to us about. (Getting back to Gore’s book).

He’s a Democrat, and voted for Gore. But he disagrees with the notion that nature is nice, or that we should buy into the Garden of Eden myth. Mother Nature has thrown eighty ice ages at her creatures, many mass extinctions, lots of space dust. There’s lots of strange galactic weather out there, and that will have a much larger effect on our environment than anything we could do. The notion that if we just cut back on carbons, Mother Nature will be good to us, and Bambi’s mom will live, is ludicrous.

Cell and DNA partnership is responsible for the vast majority of life. Life has been trying to find itself as many nooks and crannies as possible before the next catastrophe comes. Every pollutant turns out to be an energy source. Cyanobacteria are converting energy, excreting stuff, and one bacteria fart doesn’t make any difference, and trillions don’t make a difference, and trillions of trillions don’t make a difference, but when you make enough, it’s a massive pollutant, which resulted in a huge die off. The cells that could process this oxygen thrived, and some of those that couldn’t were absorbed into larger organisms where they could survive. So stopping out industrial pollution is pointless when it comes to weather change.

What does this have to do with SSP and the Moon?

Every location that is now a coastal area will be beneath the sea or atop a mountain. We can’t count on the Midwest always being a grain belt. They’ll eventually be swamps, or deserts.

His notion is floating cities. Gerard O’Neill proposed this for space, but it can be applied to earth as well. Putting New York on a floating vessel will be almost impossible. But not completely impossible. Citing condominium cruise ships, and oil rigs, designed to survive almost any kind of weather that can be thrown at them. The reason we wouldn’t sign Kyoto was that it would cost a fortune, and did nothing to stop India or China. It would have been a huge mistake.
We want to find nooks and crannies where life can survive, and can’t afford to throw money at the wrong things, like Kyoto.

SSP is something that can grab the imagination of the public, because the public wants to be free of the constraints that the current energy system put on them. It can be a beacon in the sky, and it’s an excuse to get O’Neill’s colonies into space. The moon has the materials to do this as well, and to get us to Mars. A vessel the size of this hotel (the Flamingo, in Vegas) could be sent to Mars for very little propellant, with solar sails and ion drives.

We don’t want Big Brother providing us with our energy source, and India doesn’t want the DoD to turn off its power. Proposes decentralizing and having munipalities put up satellites on their own. Wants massively parallel processing, where everyone puts up their own system, and just like the internet, it’s robust and not subject to crash. John Mankings points out that decentralization is practical for localities, but not individual house. To get the kind of precision needed for households implies lasers and a high power density.

Howard proposes a conference on the four-step program he just laid out (space settlement, SSP, biofuels, and not sure what the last one is). [Sorry, this stuff is coming out like a firehose, so I’m not necessarily doing justice to it.]

Spaceflight And Personal Risk

Reda Anderson is talking about her turn-ons and turn-offs to be a space passenger. She wants an astronaut as a pilot, not an airline pilot. She doesn’t want to wear a space suit. She doesn’t want to be released from the seat–she’s not that into weightlessness or floating around. In fact she doesn’t want to wear anything that she perceives as increasing her risk. She’ll be training with the Civil Aerospace Mediacal Institute in Oklahoma. She reduces her risk by finding out as much as she can, by attending conferences and visiting Rocketplane, for whom she’s the number one customer. She doesn’t want a round-trip ticket. She wants to go up in one place and come down in another (e.g., Oklahoma to Mojave). She’s a repeat customer. Thanking us for our life-long interest in space so that she as an interloper can come along and enjoy the experience.

Ken Gosier is a member of the Suborbital Spaceflight Club, which is a high-end club (thousand dollars a year) that allows you to stay in touch with what’s going on (recently had a dinner at Dennis Tito’s house). Has suggestions about what to do to make people feel safe (in addition to actually being safe). Be open about testing and engineering process. Show failures as well as successes. Uses example of Masten blog as an example of openness while not scaring away investors (investor page describes only successes).

Randall Clague, government liaison and safety officer for XCOR.

It’s not “welcome to the revolution.” For safety, it’s “welcome to the evolution.” Pointing out that George Nield said things yesterday that made sense to libertarians, which is a revolution itself, that a government employee would do that. They don’t know how to regulate safety, other than to bring it up to Shuttle standards (which kills people, and XCOR doesn’t want to do that). Makes the familiar (at least to regular readers of this blog) point that reusable vehicles have to be safe, regardless of the payload, or they’re not economically viable. We should appreciate just how revolutionary the Congress and FAA approach is, that they’re willing to be hands off on passenger safety. XCOR plans incremental approach, with many flight tests prior to revenue service. They don’t like EZ-Rocket because it has operability issues. Their next vehicle will apply lessons learned, and be more reliable and safe.

They won’t be flying “passengers” (they won’t be taking passage from point A to point B). They use the term participant. Passenger has too many liability implications. Informed consent is the key to safety for spaceflight participants. He’s happy to hear a customer like Reda who is focused on safety, because he is as well. Talking about the D. D. Harriman story, when his board of directors got an injunction against him going to the moon. He violated it, went to the moon and died there. This was informed consent, but it presents an ethical problem: should XCOR fly someone who has a good chance of dying? His initial take was no, but Jeff Greason convinced him that informed consent is informed consent. The customer is always right. Different companies have different approaches to the experience. Reda doesn’t want to unstrap, but Virgin will allow this (though they are rethinking whether or not to let them float). XCOR and Xerus will stay in a pressure suit in their seat. There are different providers for different markets. Allowing someone to get out of seats requires a steward, which is one less seat for passengers. They will require a suit because they want redundancy in life support. There will be a number of different providers, with more experiences and more choices for the customer. This is fantastic [simberg aside, it’s also good because it will allow us to learn a lot more lessons a lot sooner]. Their saying is “boring is beautiful.” They want to make it boring, at least for the pilot.

Reda says “If anything happens to me, don’t stop. This industry must go on.” This is a new venture, and if you can’t accept risk, don’t fly. She agrees that she doesn’t like terms tourist or passenger–she likes being a participant. She is not a payload. She wants to come back equal or better than when she came up there, and to keep her in mind with all of the design activities. She notes that she’s gone to see the Titanic, and the crushing pressures outside were far worse than the space environment.

Space And Mass Media

A panel discussion with half a dozen people, introduced by Rick Tumlinson. Rick pointing out that Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Bob Bigelow are a legacy of Apollo, but they were also inspired by Star Trek, and he thinks it takes both.

First speaker and moderator David Beaver (Chairman of MindSpace Media). Says that how the media reports stories is critical to how investors, politicians and public understand industry. Surprising that the media is paying so little attention to a movement that promises to get them into space. Part is due to ups and downs of NASA, but part is due to the changing nature of the media itself, in its transition to new media. Thinks that role of special-effects movies and television is going to be unexpectedly powerful. He’s a virtual reality technologist. Creates 3D world on a live stage and immerses people in it interactively. Calls it the magic theatre project to tell unusual stories and new information. Says to check out World Space Center. “Paradigms don’t just rigidify thnking, they rigidify perception itself.” We in the space movement have different perceptions of space because we are immersed in it. We need to imprint enough information in the minds of the public so that they view space the way that we do. The brain fills in much of the information that we take in through our senses. Few people have been in space, and those who have have difficulty in describing it, and pictures don’t do it. have to break down the cognitive barriers that prevent people from fully understanding the experience of space travelers–have to somehow give others an “Overview Effect” a la Frank White. Have to move beyond verbal, written and pictorial descriptions and use new media to convey it.

First speaker is Dan Curry, in charge of special effects for Star Trek shows and movies, and many other films and shows. Star Trek is space fantasy (warp drive unlikely) but distances had to be compressed for story telling. Tried to create a dream of space and future in which we’ve gotten our act together on our own planet in terms of disease and freedom from want. Showing beginning of Star Trek Voyager, with overture and cool images while credits roll. Talking about “Voyage To The Moon” as the “Star Wars” of its day. Also talking about Chesley Bonestell and his developments in movies and astronomy, and his realistic space paintings, which influenced many movies. Other critical films Forbidden Planet, Conquest of Space, From Earth To Moon, Earth Versus Flying Saucers, etc., until Roddenberry came up with “Wagon Train in space,” which became Star Trek. As time went on, the more we learned about the reality of space, the easier it became to make the movies more realistic.

Next is David Livingston, of The Space Show, who has interviewed more than 500 movers and shakers of the space. Hard act to follow Star Trek. Star Trek is in The Space Show, because if it weren’t for Star Trek, and Forbidden Planet, and Apollo, there wouldn’t be a space show [applause]. Working on a book on popularizing space, and has come to unique point of view of why there’s a disconnect between meetings like this and AIAA meetings, and the general public. The general public thinks it’s ask not what you can do for space, but ask what space can do for me, and be specific. To say that space is about settlement doesn’t connect a single dot, and velcro and medical tools or the Internet or financial transactions have to do with space doesn’t matter, because they already have those things. It’s not enough to talk to the general public in the way we talk among ourselves. They see space from their perspective, not ours. They can be made to space as a valuable part of their life, but it requires an investment. Have to bring it down to the lowest level so they can identify with it. Key is to listen to what they’re telling us, and find out what they want from space. If their priority is curing cancer, then we have to figure out how to sell it on that basis (if there’s a case to be made for it). Gives examples of how to hook people into talking about space as it could impact their lives and careers. Being on the radio has taught him how to listen (though his girlfriend doesn’t agree). Coolness counts, but the public wants personal, not screensavers. It’s easier to connect space to personal than to get people to give up personal. We have a space consciousness. To develop one with the rest of the public, we have to talk to them and listen, and learn from when we fail.

Misuzu Onuki, creator of the first space fashion show (also director of Asian business development for Rocketplane Kistler). Showing a video of the space fashion contest in 2005. Concept seems to have caught on with the general public, more than she expected. Science and technology can become more understandable to many through art. There’s been no fashion in space to date: astronauts wear flights suits or shorts in orbit. Have to develop fashions once everyday people are going. For instance, some will want to get married in space. They will want to wear wedding clothes, not flight suits. Weightlessness causes clothes to appear differently (like hair). A wedding dress with frills that lie down flat in one gee can float out in weightlessness. Also describing space themes on cell phones (I think). She sees two types of people who want to go to space: passengers and those who want to do a business in space by finding sponsors and missions. (Note: she had technical problems with her presentation, and plowed through)

Howard Bloom: scientist/engineer and media agent, author of several books on the evolution of earth to present. He was turned on to space by Chesley Bonestell’s illustrations, and when Star Trek came out in the sixties, it seemed so bad compared to that that he never watched it, but then when he happened to see the new shows in the directions, he was amazed because it had not only caught up with Bonestell, but moved beyond it (tribute to Dan Curry). Preaches imagination “Dream your ass off.” Got to get kids to identify with Burt Rutan’s machines, XCOR’s machines, and others. Raw imagination, the unexpected that will take us places. Pictures are important. This is his second space conference, and he doesn’t know what XCOR is, because he hasn’t seen pictures. Used to think that Lucas failed, because he had this great first movie, but then the theme fell apart, but his son went out and rented all six and watched them in the order that Lucas intended, and it seemed to take on a new life. Surprise is key to “grab the public by the gonads.” Need to get people interested in private space as well as NASA space. One example is “Stars, Stories and Scores.” Have to focus on stars (relates story of how he created Shaka Kahn). Should make a fictional story featuring Burt Rutan. Dow Jones average comes out every day, and creates publicity by doing that every single day. We need to come up with metrics for the space industry that come out regularly (e.g., number of dollars invested into private space efforts, published weekly). Tells the story of a department store that decided to have a parade as a publicity event. Parades weren’t new, but the idea was to hook the parade to a yearly holiday as an excuse to repeat it. Holiday was Thanksgiving. Macy’s remains a household name today even though department store industry is dying. Get kids involved with concepts and ideas with contests. He also likes idea of space olympics.

Richard Godwin, president of Apogee Books. How do we make weather so interesting, and space so mundane? Reality of Shuttle launch not captures in any way by watching on television. Took his son, who he’d been trying to get interested in space, to a launch. “Dad, that was awesome.” Have to engage the women. Explain to them that women make better astronauts than guys. (e.g., they have the same brain power for less body mass, and use less consumables). “If you really want to populate space, send the women and let the guys follow them.” We preach to the choir too much. Test: If I can change my mother-in-law’s mind about space, I can convince anyone (she thinks that the Shuttle changes the weather in Chicago). People are interested in survival and money, and we have to make those connections. Have to reinforce the connection between science fiction and science fact. Make people see that it’s not just fantasy, but that it’s important. Show them that there are things to do in space and advance our species is important, but difficult. Have one line that’s outrageous to bring in the interest. Ultimately have to get the kids involved, and get the message to them in a way that piques their interest.

Wrapup by moderator: Just building the ships will not put butts in seats. We will really have to keep selling if we want to have emigration to space. Asks question: why doesn’t this story have legs? Howard Bloom thinks that it’s because in order to do good publicity, you have to be three times as good as the best journalist you know. Take it for granted that they will screw up a lot of things, but if you have a good publicist who’s developing the story day after day you can develop habits in the press to come to you for the story. Question: is it premature to publicize this stuff? Howard thinks that if you love the audience and give it to them on a regular basis, you’ll serve it well. You have to get to the psyche of the audience. Repeats, Stars, Scores, Stories.

Need a world space fair every couple years, to show the public how space is important in their daily life, because they don’t have a clue, other than that it is difficult. David: outreach is fine, but you have to listen too, because lecturing doesn’t work.

[Update]

See also Clark’s briefer, but perhaps more useful notes.

That’s pretty much the end of the day’s sessions. Probably more in the morning, including S3x In Space! (how’s that for a teaser…?)

Preparing The Battlefield?

Is Mike Griffin just asking for help in getting humans to Mars (and note that he’s asking for help from foreign governments, not the American private sector) or is he laying the groundwork for abandoning ISS?

NASA chief Michael Griffin appealed on Wednesday to the leaders of the world’s leading space agencies to join NASA in its bid to send astronauts to the Moon and Mars.

Unless they do, he said, there will be little point in completing the International Space Station. The ISS will make a perfect staging post for such missions, he believes.

Well, I guess. For certain values of the word “perfect” (e.g., horrible)…