Tami Griffith of the Army Simulation Tech and Training Center is describing the use of current technology for training. Shows a video of interfacing a Wii and balance board with Second Life. Apparently a lot of people are hacking the Wii for things like this. She says that whole-body training is much more effective and memorable than joysticks or cockpit simulators.
Cool.
First panel is to discuss the synergy between financing for space and entertainment. “Space is not a destination.” “Space is an enabler for a variety of business verticals.” “Space accelerates and expands business verticals by providing new, disruptive ways of doing business.” Using Internmet analogy with book sales. Space-related viability may exist in areas we haven’t heard of.
Four categories: launch infrastructure, R&D and manufacturing, system operations, end-user applications. latter includes entertainment. They build on each other. “Infrastructure” is categories of large-scale hardware systems, similar to railroad lines back in 1800s. Necessary for applications: healthcare, materials, science, media/entertainment, communications, governance, energy and mining, defense, transport operations. “Governance” is things like disaster relief and planetary monitoring.
Entertainment needs infrastructure beyond mere launch — more like real estate, with facilities in space. Near-term opportunities include media and entertainment, comm and governance. Other apps are longer term. Defining media and entertainment as space tourism, ground-based training and simulations, and documentaries and GPS-related games, live video feeds from orbit, real-time earth imagery, etc.
See suborbital space tourism as important near-term app which fits cleanly within hospitality/entertainment business that requires precursor infrastructure. Virgin Galactic embodies transition — selling one-week experience with suit and simulations, not just a flight. Shouldn’t forget orbital space tourism, which is further down the road, but Bob Bigelow’s modules are an early stage of the hospitality industry in orbit.
Providing an overview of structure of hotel investment business. Major hotel chains are no longer significant investors in real estate — they manage the properties for investor groups. So don’t look to them for financing of space hotels. Look for private equity funds, insurance companies, private investment trusts, investment banks both domestic and international, which are the current industry financiers. Current markets are impacted by the financial crisis, but expects people to come back in the water in the future, because it’s a good traditional model. Hotels will be interested in participating via franchise names (e.g., Hilton) but no as investors.
What drives terrestrial hotels? Business traveler, groups and meetings, leisure. What services are required for space travel? Have to consider similarities and differences with: cruise ships, all-inclusive hotels, suborbital/orbital travel. Consider advance deposits for space hotels. Consider scuba industry as a model. Preparation somewhat similar to suborbital training in length/time, understanding of technical issues/risks. Has been very successful, and training could become significant industry in itself, even for people who don’t fly, at destination resorts.
[Late morning update]
I got pulled off into some discussions, but Jeff Foust is twittering the panels (not a permalink).
[Afternoon update]
Doug Messier blogged this panel as well.
I’m parked in the back of the room — there’re no designated tables for blogging, but I have a chair against the wall, and power, and the hotel wireless seems to work here, so I’m on the air.
Here’s an interesting piece on him, as one of the fathers of modern American liberalism:
Wells’s “Samurai,” an updated version of the New Republicans, would keep track of their charges through a centralized thumbprint index of all the earth’s inhabitants. Latter-day Puritans in everything except sex, the Samurai would lead lives of irreproachable rectitude, abjuring tobacco, alcohol, trade, and games, which they could neither join nor watch. These elect, “the clean and straight” men and women capable “of self-devotion, of intentional courage, of honest thought, and steady endeavour,” would rule in the name of the new godhead: Progress through Science. As Wells would later put it, science was to be “king of the world.”
“Everything except sex.” Gee, there’s sort of a pattern here.
He, of course, coined the phrase “liberal fascism.” He knew the score, even if modern “liberals” are ignorant of their own intellectual history.
…with sex.
It’s the oldest advertising gimmick in the book.
But not back home, yet. I’m in Orlando, and may be here the rest of the week, for the Space Investment Summit tomorrow and the ISDC after that.
Instapundit explains the insane Obama rationale for nationalizing health care.
After Obama assumed office in January, whatever hesitation that existed in North Korea’s policy-making circles regarding the likely response of U.S. administration has disappeared, and its leadership now feels it can defy the U.S. and the international community with impunity.
A series of actions taken by the Obama administration have created an impression in Iran, the “Af-Pak” region, China and North Korea that Obama does not have the political will to retaliate decisively to acts that are detrimental to U.S. interests, and to international peace and security.
Among such actions, one could cite: the soft policy toward Iran: the reluctance to articulate strongly U.S. determination to support the security interests of Israel; the ambivalent attitude toward Pakistan despite its continued support to anti-India terrorist groups and its ineffective action against the sanctuaries of Al-Qaida and the Taliban in Pakistani territory; its silence on the question of the violation of the human rights of the Burmese people and the continued illegal detention of Aung San Suu Kyi by the military regime in Myanmar; and its silence on the Tibetan issue.
I’m afraid it could be a lot worse.
[Early evening update]
More thoughts from Victor Davis Hanson:
Fate, chance, luck, and more will contribute to the outcome of any presidential action — unpredictable, of course, but in the cruel game of assessing presidential decision-making, no grounds for excuse.
Moreover, both these problems not only antedated Obama, but antedated Bush as well, yet they cannot be massaged with “reset” button and a “Bush did it,” nor by soaring “hope and change” rhetoric. Neither Ahmadinejad nor Kim Jong-il care a whit about Obama’s landmark advance to the presidency, or his sober and judicious efforts to show rational concern for their own predicaments; instead, they calibrate only the degree to which Obama poses an obstacle to their regional ambitions, whether they be rational or not.
As David Pryce-Jones notes, the more sincere he is, the more naive he seems.
I didn’t watch, but reportedly Newt dismantled Dick Durbin on Meet the Press yesterday on the subject of the disingenuity (if not outright mendacity) of the Obama administration claims to be breaking from the Bush administration on military commissions and Guantanamo. Andy McCarthy makes him into rubble today.
2. Durbin’s “right of counsel” claim is a joke — and one you’d think Democrats would be too embarrassed to keep repeating given the number of Obama administration lawyers who, along with their former firms, spent the last eight years volunteering their services to America’s enemies. Under the Bush commission system, the terrorists already had U.S. taxpayer-funded military lawyers and were, in addition, permitted to retain private counsel — and there was no shortage of American private lawyers (such as several at Attorney General Eric Holder’s firm) who have taken up these cases. If there’s anything these terrorists have gotten plenty of, it’s top-flight legal representation.
3. The claim that “in seven years in Guantanamo there were exactly three [detainees] who were convicted by military commissions” is another screamer. The main reason for delay in the commissions process has been the aforementioned legion of volunteer American defense attorneys who ground the system to a halt by various court challenges. At the end of this legal barrage, the only real change in the commissions was a formal one — they are now authorized by Congress rather than by presidential directive (as Bush, like FDR, had used). As a practical matter (and Obama is all about being practical, right?), they operate exactly the same way. Moreover, the current delay — now in its fifth month, with several more months to go — is because President Obama himself stopped the pending commissions against 21 terrorists (when trial was imminent in several of them) so he could first “study” them and, now, propose these illusory “changes.
There’s a lot more. These people must think that we’re as stupid as they are.
Here is a post comparing the voyages of Zheng He to the modern US space program. Arthur Kantrowitz is the first that I’m aware of to make this comparison, back in the seventies.
I think that it’s an interesting analogy, but not in the way they intend, and I wrote about it a few years ago at Fox News:
…some have argued that in essentially turning our backs on the cosmos after the rapid success of Apollo, in favor of welfare programs and pork, our own politicians have given us a similar failure of vision.
But that draws the wrong conclusion. The fact was that Zheng He’s journeys were a failure. They sent out vast amounts of the nation’s treasure with which to impress the heathens and gain tribute and the appropriate respect (just as is the goal for the current Chinese space activities). But when trade occurred at all, the ships often came back with items that were perceived to be of less value than what had been sent out to the ports. The trade was not profitable — it was draining vital resources. The bureaucrats were right.
The Chinese suffered a failure of expansionary will 600 years ago because they were doing it for the wrong reasons. And I suspect that the current leadership is similar to Zheng He in their outlook. His missions were for national prestige — not the generation of wealth — as, apparently, are the current Chinese space plans.
As was America’s Apollo program.
Space will not be settled by governments, whether Chinese, Russian, or American. It will be settled by the people who want to go, and seek their own opportunities, and dreams. Governments can help, and if the Chinese government can navigate the difficulties I describe above, and actually eventually get to the Moon, that might be one way of helping, not just the Chinese, but as the article states, all who want to go. But I suspect that there will be private activities that beat them to it, and we cannot, and should not, count on Beijing.
We will know that things are moving forward seriously in space when, in addition to remote-sensing and communications satellites, there are activities going on in space, involving humans in space, that bring more value back than is put into them. Unfortunately, communist governments (which China’s remains, despite propaganda to the contrary) are not notable for their value-added activities, and I don’t think that the present Beijing regime is that far removed from its predecessors, either in the Ming Dynasty, or the Mao Dynasty.
But I hope they’ll prove me wrong.
I continue to so hope.