International Space Development Conference 2003

05/24/03 00:00:00    

By Michael Mealling

I'm at the International Space Development Conference in San Jose and we've just wrapped up todays presentations. I've focused on the Enterprise and Lunar tracks so I'm sure there are things I've missed. The presentation last night was by Jill Tarter on SETI. The major takeaway from that presentation was the Allen Telescope Array which is a SETI project consisting of approximately 350 6.1-meter offset Gregorian dishes that is capable of simultaneous SETI and astronomical observations.

The Space Frontier Foundation sponsored the Enterprise Panel that was interesting from a purely networking point of view (about 75% of the people in the room were either in a startup or had already done a startup). What was disappointing was the fact that the session was sparsely attended. The discussions between the panel didn't really open any new ground. They mostly covered the current conventional wisdom (incremental development, multi-market products, immediate ROI, etc). While most of the people in the room who understood business knew this stuff, I think the 'typical' attendee probably hasn't heard this stuff.

As far as buzz, everyone is paying attention to people like XCOR, Zero-G, etc. But as far as something new, the buzz is about the Colony Fund which is an attempt to build a space investment community that is accessible to the small investor. This is something many organizations have discussed for several years: some way for the non-qualified investor to help support the companies that are pushing the frontier. If they execute I think this will rank as more of the more enabling accomlishments of the year.

The other buzz is around the space elevator work being done by Liftport. They have been paying close attention to the business needs and are focused on building the investment environment that can handle their capital requirements.

Now I'm off to this evenings banquet. More to come latter tonight!

Update: The speaker at dinner was Erik Drexler (the guy who wrote Engines of Creation and who is responsible for the term 'nanotechnology'). The main thrust of his comments was in introduction to the background and issues behind his open letter to Richard Smalley who is the primary mover behind the current 'nanotechnology' bill that's in Congress. Drexler is basically saying that the bill is a bait and switch since it actually contains no money for molecular manufacturing which is what the congress-critters think it actually is. There were multiple comments from people in the room that we've had the same problems and our solution is to simply forego the government route and figure out how to build businesses around it.