I am on the road once again and sit in an upper Manhattan Starbucks as I write. I face another string of busy days; Saturday morning I fly to San Francisco where I will be doing my usual Wizard of Oz impression as a backstage magician for a JP Morgan technology business conference. Then, after a week of 6am crew calls and 12+ hour workdays, I will be off on a red-eye flight to Washington DC.
In DC I put on my National Space Society hat. Within that organization I am the overseer of conferences, The One Whom All ISDC Chairs Must Fear… which brings me around to why I am writing this article in the first place.
The National Space Society’s 24th International Space Development Conference starts on Thursday May 19th and runs through Sunday afternoon at the Sheraton National Hotel. It looks like it will be quite a show this year.
NASA is running some programming tracks of their own in conjunction with the Society this time around and we also have our usual strong private space showing. Our speakers include such luminaries of the private road to space as Burt Rutan, President of Scaled Composites and SpaceShipOne designer; Dr. Peter Diamandis, Founder and Chairman, X Prize Foundation as well as Chairman and CEO of Zero Gravity Corporation; Will Whitehorn, President of Virgin Galactic; Elon Musk, President of Space Exploration Technologies Corporation; Jim Maser President and General Manager, Sea Launch Company LLC; Jim Benson, Chairman and CEO of SpaceDev; David Gump, CEO of Transformational Space LLC; Eric Anderson, CEO of Space Adventures; Brian Feeney, Team Leader of The da Vinci Project (a Canadian based suborbital space venture); and many more.
But, as the late night TV commercials say, “Wait! There’s more!” This year we have an absolutely unforgettable and unmissable event: a Gala banquet in an exciting location whose management will not allow me to disclose to you. Go through the conference agenda and see where Hugh Downs is speaking. It is a great event and who knows? Maybe you will run into me there.
I note there are no comments almost 36 hours after the post. As a builder of one of Burt Rutan’s aircraft designs – the biggest one for homebuilders, the twin engine Defiant – I have always admired his design capability. He always seems to be able to cut through to simple reliable solutions to the design problems.
His X-prize sulution is a supreme example of that.
But is the extension of manned flights in and around our globe really the most exciting thing now?
Judging by the response to this post I would say no.
Man flights to Mars now – that’s a different matter.
Can’t see Rutan type efforts doing that expedition.
Otherwise the probing of space by telescopes, probes and robots looks much the most exciting and informative.