OK, yesterday there were presentations during lunch but I ignored them to talk to a friend and work on digesting <laughter>.

Today (Like Thursday) there were two presentations. There is a vendor Space Sciences Corp which has built a hovercraft flying saucer that seats one. The presentation was delightful with both illustrations of proposed uses and actual photos of the current model.
Picture
This is just too cute!!!! LOL

It's a wonderful individual craft. They have a three man prototype which has been built and they are looking at supplying tourist transport for Spaceport America. I was just blown away and the presenter was a very tall African American in a cowboy hat, range attire and boots. The business is housed in New Mexico and can be found at www.spacesciencescorp.com There's not much on the site yet, but I'm hoping they will post more pix of the hovercraft.

The second presentation was from one of the historians involved in the movement to preserve American moon landing artifacts from landers and crashed propulsion units to the experiments that are ongoing even now. There is also relevant data to be obtained on how the material left behind reacts to dust sprayed by the leaving units, to the incredible heat and cold of the moon's surface and to the ever present micrometeorite incursions. The presentation was well thought out if a little dull for anyone not as attuned to historical resonance as I am. (Yeah, history was an option at one point and may be again ... who knows>

After lunch, the panel included the space port managers including Karin Nilsdotter for Spaceport Sweden. It was she who brought up ITAR as the major item standing between true collaboration between the spaceports. I went and looked up ITAR ... yipe! It's basically the regulations that say what is and is not considered "military" style invention which cannot be shared with other countries. The razor edge one walks when dealing with the kind of technology the commercial space corporations build and invent on a daily basis is frightening. Communications satellites bounce back and forth between DOD and Commerce somewhat like a ping pong ball at a Chinese competition event. I got dizzy reading about it.

Spaceport Sweden has a lot going for it in it's arctic circle placement. Very cool, and not just because of the arctic weather!

I was really looking forward the the following panel, but whatever bug or bit of food I'd caught that disliked me put an end to my attendance. The most I got out of it was that NASA is fully supporting the private vendors in space flight to get away from depending on the Soyuz program for transport and to bring those flight and cargo delivery dollars back to the US where it will do our economy some good.

That was the end of my attendance. I took a few pictures after lunch while sitting in the sun trying to see if warming up would shoo off the discomfort. It didn't and I bade farewell to the names and movers in the area of space flight, spaceport construction and space experience. I'm already figuring out how to attend next year in the hopes that I might actually get to go out to the space port itself and maybe shake hands with Sir Richard Branson, assuming White Knight and the space ship 2 aren't off on a mission to take cargo and crew to the International Space Station.

It was an interesting time.

5/30/2012 03:02:37 pm

you are great on those publish

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    I have three soap boxes that are liable to intermingle: Space, education and entertainment. Now if I can just figure out how to make educational movies that allow me to go into space ... LOL

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